The Yum Yum Factor

Some pretty fun stuff is on the horizon for this old gal and one of the things I really excited about is my stint as the guest chef at an upcoming drop in dinner at The Depanneur on Friday, October 16. Diners will be eating my BiBimBap Sopes  as well as a whack of banchan and I have been recipe testing like a mad woman for the last couple of weeks. The only thing that hadn't occurred to me, was that I was also going to need a vegetarian version of my dish as an entree. A vegetarian option to pulled pork???  I work with a knife, not a wand! I will be honest and admit that I was about to throw in the towel and just make a second, entirely different dish to feed to the vegetarians when I remembered reading about jackfruit and how it's THE go to ingredient to replace pulled pork in recipes. One google search revealed that this is absolutely a thing and by the way everyone raved about it,  I figured it was worth a try. Of course,  I was  highly...

In my continuing efforts to attain world peace through food, today we are going to look at the similarities between Middle Eastern food and Jamaican food. I was asked to come up with a BBQ recipe using a Grace's Jerk Product as part of their #GrillWithGrace campaign and since you will always find Grace's Jerk Seasoning as well as the marinade in my fridge, I didn't hesitate to accept the gig. I have never really perfected my own jerk, to date, and so I use Grace's all the time. Shack is really picky about jerk and he doesn't like it too allspicey and he doesn't like too hot and since he loves the flavour of Grace's Mild Jerk Seasoning and Marinade, that is what we go with. We always have to keep the picky toddler happy. The traditional way to use this stuff is to rub the seasoning paste all over your chicken or pork and let it sit in the fridge overnight and then cook it, preferably over a grill and it's delicious as is, straight...

You might think that BBQ season is on the way out, but now is the perfect time to haul out your smoker. To celebrate smoking season, Ontario Gas BBQ is giving away 5 Grill Pro Traditional Horizontal Offset Smokers. You heard that right, 5 Free Smokers are up for grabs. If you have never been out to the Ontario Gas BBQ store, you are in for a treat because it is truly BBQ heaven. With over 150 different kinds of barbecues from propane and gas to charcoal and electric, smokers and more, it's impossible to not find what you are looking for. They are also home of the Charcoal Room featuring Charcoals of the World with over 10 brands of premium hardwood free of chemicals and additives. They regularly stock charcoal from as far away as Africa and Indonesia so if you think all there is to buying charcoal is running up to the corner store, think again. 

One of the greatest thngs about living in Toronto means that I have access to an abundance of fabulous Chinese food. Because of this, there are things that I don't even try to make at home all that often. For the most part, I will think "why would I even attempt BBQ at home when I am a 10 minute drive from Ka Ka?" but you know, I'm in the eye of the stupid winter vortex, I don't have a car during the winter and I didn't think far enough ahead to pick some up earlier in the week and I want to make Cantonese Chow Mein.  Shit happens. I used to date a Chinese guy and his parents made their own BBQ pork and duck and I recall that it was far superior to anything that you could get in a restaurant but I never gave much thought to how they made this stuff. Once, when I was sleeping over at their house I ventured down to the basement in the dark in search of my designated spot on the couch, I had a close encounter with my own  mortality. It was completely bl...

It is a new year and so it is time for a new pulled pork recipe. If you read this blog from time to time, you can't help but notice that we like our pork. Although we love all parts of the glorious pig, we do really like our pork shoulder. Some favourites have been an apple pulled pork , a Korean pulled pork , and   a second Korean pulled pork , we have done the momofuku pulled pork in the oven with nothing but tons of salt and brown sugar and make pork for tacos all the time like these carnitas . A pork shoulder jumps into the crock pot at least a couple times a month in the winter time and although I can't recall the last time we met one we didn't like immensely, I have been tinkering with something a bit more classic to make The Kid happy. Shack  makes a mustard mop that is out of this world (and I still can't get the recipe out of him because he is not a nice man) but I thought it would be good to come up with a bbq sauce version too. The Kid loves B...

I realize that summer is on the way out the door and it's probably a bit late to be busting out another burger recipe now. Where was this tasty turkey burger recipe a month ago, huh?? Well, this has been a weird summer for us and we haven't even grilled all that much. The weather has been wacky, Shack has been working too much and we have been on a terrible eating schedule with too many days of super late lunches and then no real dinners. Better late than never though. I don't know where the original recipe for these things came from so I can't give credit because I have been making them and tweaking the original recipe for years. For the most part, I have a hard time selling a poultry burger to Shack. He likes his burgers out of freshly ground beef with nothing but a good whack of salt and always says turkey burgers are dry. Of course, every time I make these ( I never actually tell him we are having turkey burgers before hand so he can't complain...

I wrote a post about ten lunch ideas for those of us with kids who aren't picky and who like to take a hot lunch to school. In order to put my money where my mouth is, I realized that I couldn't make his very first lunch for his very first day of high school a boring old smoked meat sandwich like I was kind of wanting to do. Instead I practiced what I preach and I made Vietnamese BBQ for dinner the night before so he could take it for lunch the next day. Okay, so I also made it because i LOVE to eat it myself but still, If I am going to get back into the swing of things, that is going to have include not only cooking dinner every night but doing that with an eye towards The Kid's lunch the next day. This is a regular staple around here and I have published this recipe before on my old blog, NoReEats. I have been combing the archives over there more lately and I am going to regularly start reposting the recipes that stuck that I am still making now a couple of years ...

 When I spied this blog post on The Cook Who Knew Nothing, I knew I had to make it. It felt like a great excuse to try out some new ingredients like preserved lemons, pomegranate molasses and baharat spice which are all things that I think about buying but don't because I am not sure what to do with them. North African cuisine is still very unfamiliar to me and I am just really starting to learn about Middle Eastern food this year. There are enough familiar flavours in this food that it feels like something I know but, at the same time, with these kicks of either new tastes or new combinations of spices that I wouldn't normally put together. I can't wait to try this chermoula with some fish and perhaps next time, I will up the chili and make it a bit hotter but otherwise, I wouldn't change a thing at this point. The chicken was just as good over the next couple of days either over rice or in a pita as a sort of shwarma like sandwich with some tahini sauce, pickled ...

I love chimichurri. If you read the blog at all, you might have already seen my Argentinian flank steak with chimichurri  or my roasted chicken with the stuff  . I often toss roast veggies in the sauce straight out of the oven but I had never thought of actually roasting them WITH the chimichurri until I saw the recipe in the Summer 2013 LCBO Food and Drink. The chimichurri recipe looked like a good, solid base but I like to add cilantro, use half the garlic and skip the red pepper flakes. I made these as part of our Canada Day BBQ and they were perfect. I like to avoid potato salads with mayo for these types of events and was getting bored of just plain old roasted mini potatoes to be honest. They were easy to whip up ahead of time and leave out for a couple of hours until it was time to eat. One less thing to either make last minute OR try to find room in the fridge for it and nobody died. People not dying from eating my food is always the sign of a great BBQ, in...

It was 5C on the day that I made this steak. That's about 41F and here in the great white north, that is perfect BBQ weather. We can stand around outside with a beer and a pair of tongs in relative comfort. We don't even have to wear gloves when it's that balmy!  Okay, there is still some snow on the ground but it's spring and spring means we throw on a fleece and some shorts, stop wearing socks and fire up the old charcoal. We are a hearty folk here in Canada. Tomorrow, I leave for the very first ever Food Bloggers of Canada Conference at the Hockley Valley Resort. I was a lucky, lucky girl who happened to win a free weekend pass during a twitter party, sponsored by Canadian Beef . In honour of my benefactors, I knew I had to make something with a nice chunk of Canadian beef.  I do like the taste of a good, med rare striploin, hot off the grill and smeared with some butter . The only problem is that striploins don't get marinated in my world- just kos...

I really love ribs and in the summer time we often make them in the smoker. It takes all day and it's truly a labour of love but well worth the effort if you have that kind of time. Unfortunately, we don't always have an entire day to babysit meat in the smoker and in the winter, even if we COULD smoke ribs all day out in the snow, we won't because we are not nuts and it's way too cold to spend the day outdoors cooking. I used to cook them slow and low for hours in the oven and then broil them but I always feel like I should be home when I have the oven on all afternoon - it's the paranoid old lady channeling my mother I guess. Next thing you know, I will refuse to drive on rainy days, on really sunny days, in rush hour or at night... oh wait, I already don't drive at night if it is raining. Never mind.

So, Shack and I have been living a little too large since spring. He has taken a ton of time off work to hang out with us and so there have been lots of lunches out and late night pizzas,  too many pub nights and lots of afternoon movies with huge buttered popcorns. Now, he has to go back to work and I have to make sure that I can still fit into actual pants by TIFF in September so we have spent the last 10 days going clean - no pasta, no pizza, no rice, no bread, no wings and poutine, no wine or beer. Somehow, we have managed to have lots of fun together and nobody is dying of malnutrition. HE, of course, has already dropped at least 12 lbs and looks much slimmer. I, on the other hand, have not lost one ounce although my mother in law told me that I look MUCH less bloated. Thanks for that.

I love chimichurri and could probably be persuaded to eat it on just about anything. I like to say that I would eat dog poop if you used enough chimichurri but that is kind of gross so I probably shouldn't write that here. Oh and please don't scold me because my chimichurri isn't "authentic" because it is delicious. I have had "authentic" chimichurri that has been made a bazillion different ways and each one was presented to me as "the" correct recipe. I have been told that it can never have cilantro, it must have thyme, it must have oregano, it can't have oregano, it must have lemon and it can't have lemon and definitely can't have cilantro. This is the way I make it and I am always open to trying variations til the cows come home so please share your own recipes with me to try, just don't scold me, okay? Deal? Deal. It was going to be hot and sunny and so a bbq was in order. I was thinking of doing thai grilled chic...