The Yum Yum Factor

Corn season is now upon us here in Ontario and that means bushels of the sweetest, tenderest Peaches and Cream corn imaginable and it's cheap so we are eating lots of it. Apart from eating it lightly cooked with lots of melted butter and salt, I am currently having a love affair with corn soup. Usually, I am a corn chowder gal but I have found a new corn soup spirit animal. Let me be perfectly clear - the  pressure cooker corn soup from Kenji Lopez at Serious Eats is absolutely amazing and it's perfect, as it. The tarragon and the sweet corn were made for each other, it's smooth, rich and so creamy that you would swear, on your grandmother's foot pedal sewing machine, that there was a ton of creamy in it but there isn't. It's truly perfect and I have made it a million times already. This soup is NOT at attempt to improve upon it but a way to use this fool proof technique to make another flavour profile happen. I had already eaten my weight in this sou...

Okay, so when I complain about it being too cold, there being too much snow and starting whining that I need some warm, sunny weather, smack me in the head. Today, it is 34C (93F) but feels like 44C (111F) and still, my stupid family expects to be fed. Food. Which usually requires cooking. By me. WHATEVER I am making a tofu green curry in my Wizard Pot aka Instant Pot and to go with it, I whipped up a riff on my Spicy Gazpacho that would complement the curry but adding some yummy thai flavours like lemongrass, mint, cilantro and lime juice. This soup is best served ice cold, so, a nice touch is to freeze some of the soup in an ice cube tray to drop into each bowl of soup. That way, you get your ice cold soup but don't have to deal with it getting watered down by melting ice cube. As always, taste, taste taste and then tweak if you want. If you think it could use more lime juice, knock yourself out. More hot pepper? More lemongrass? Go nuts. Just don't skip the fish ...

When EarthFresh comes calling and offers me a couple bags of free potatoes so I can come up with a new recipe, I am always in. EarthFresh is a Canadian company that produce great quality potatoes, carrots and onions and my favourite thing that they do, apart from providing me with FREE BAGS OF POTATOES YO! is they pack the potatoes in a light blocking bag. I bet you didn't realize that potatoes can turn totally green after about 12 hours of fluorescent grocery store lightening - let's not even talk about how I look under those zombie lights. There is a reason that when you store potatoes it always instructs you to put them in a cool, DARK place. I buy these potatoes all the time, ever since whipping up these Indian Spiced Potatoes using their organic baby reds, so i am no stranger to these babies. Aaaaanyway, they were looking for me to come up with some sort of a potato salad and since this tomato vinaigrette is current obsession, I saw no reason wh...

So, it's the end of June and it's finally getting really hot and that means I don't want to eat hot food anymore. I start craving ceviche, salads and watermelon by the kilo and something I always think I want to make, but never do, is gazpacho. I really like all kinds of gazpacho so look for some other versions throughout the summer.  This particular dish was inspired by my June SupperClub menu which is mostly Middle Eastern but with a touch of Jamaican flavours, thanks to my Jerk Lamb Kofta . I always start my menu with one dish and then base the rest of menu around that so this time, I wanted something as first course that would be refreshing and light and lean a little towards Jamaica. Both the soup and the pickled jerk shrimp are great on their own (a bowl of shrimp with some bread to sop up the pickling liquid is a great meal in it's own right) but I find that something magical happens when you put the two together. Spicy Gazpacho with Jerk Pickled Shri...

One of my absolute favourite ways to eat really ripe tomatoes is in a raw sauce with pasta. I spent some time in Milan and this was the first meal that my friend, who had been living there for almost a year by that time, made for me the day of my arrival. He mixed up a bowl of diced tomatoes with lots of good olive oil, salt, fresh basil and some onion and let it sit out on the counter all day. When it was time to eat, he cooked up some pasta, ripped up some fresh mozzarella and threw the drained, hot pasta into the bowl of juicy tomatoes, covered that with the cheese and tossed it for a couple of minutes. The hot pasta warms up the room temperature tomatoes a bit and causes the fresh cheese to start to soften and just start to melt. The two of us finished off the entire bowl and from that day on, when I eat this and close my eyes, I am back on my friend's terrace in Milan, sweating my face off with a crisp little glass of rose in hand and all is right in the world. I found th...