The Yum Yum Factor

I have partnered up with the wonderful women of The Kingston Social , in the east end of Toronto, to host a monthly supper club to bring a little of that west end fun to our neck of the woods and I am happy to report that the response has been wonderful. For our May dinner, I knew that I was going to put both of my Anova sous vide machines to work on some sirloin cap, my favourite cut of steak and serve it with chimichurri but after that, I wasn't sure. This has been a weird spring and I couldn't be sure about what would even been in the market by the end of May. I assumed that I would find lots of seasonal produce like fiddleheads, ramps, colourful radishes and everyone's favourite weed, rhubarb. 

I feel like I am back in the saddle again with two media events in one week under my belt. After a bit of a break from eating and drinking all the damned time, I am back to eating and drinking all the damned time, which isn't the worst thing in the world. This week, the discovery of the summer was, without a doubt, Mill St Brewery's Distiller Root Beer. You heard me people, BOOZED UP ROOT BEER and it is really, really good. It's not too sweet and none of us could detect a trace of alcohol taste which is either a really good thing or a really bad thing. It was suggested that a scoop of ice cream would make for an amazing grown ass adult root beer float. I will be reporting back on that as soon as I can get my hands on a six pack to bring home (I was told that the LCBO will be stocking this sugary ambrosia by the May 24 weekend).

I have been making tons of pasta in my Instant Pot but the final frontier, for me, was to make meatballs with sauce. I will apologize now for the lack of beautiful photos but, sometimes, I am truly just making stuff for our dinner and so there wasn't much time and the next thin I knew the whole batch had been gobbled up. Take the lack of beautifully staged, lit photos as a sign of it's irresistible deliciousness. My recipe for Rigatoni with Meat Sauce  is probably my most popular Instant Pot Recipe so far at home and online. Although I get tons of great feedback on this one from readers,  it's also a recipe that I make, myself, at least once a week for Shack. Because the Instant Pot has made it feasible to make this during the week he tries to trick me into making it more often but nobody needs to eat this kind of rib sticking pasta more than once a week and until he can figure out how to work the pressure cooker properly, he still needs me to make it for...

Thanks to Gastropost and Maple Leaf foods, I finally got to attend a Terroir Symposium. In the past, Gastropost has treated me to some of the dinners and events leading up to the symposium but this was my first time at the actual event. It was 12 solid hours of culinary porn - wall to wall chefs, food writers, food photographers, food security warriors mingled with culinary obsessed super fans for a day of talks, workshops, presentations and lots and lots to eat and drink. At $300 a ticket, its only for the truly hard core, but if you have cash to burn and you want to rub shoulders with the tattooed, trucker hatted and bearded who's who in the culinary world, this is the place to be.