The Yum Yum Factor

One of my husband's favourite things to eat is pasta with bolognese. Normally, I make it with Italian sausage, ground beef, tons of kosher salt and olive oil. Clearly, my much loved version would not, in any universe, by considered "heart healthy" even with a bag of magic beans but a life without bolognese is not a life worth living.  We have not had any beef or real pasta in a month so I decided it was time to healthify our sauce and because every whole wheat pasta I have bought has been soundly PooPooed, I cut the difference with fibre enriched white pasta and we will just eat smaller portions, less often.  This was my first try and I don't think I am going to change anything, to be honest. I added in a bit of carrot and fennel to make up for the lack of fennel seed etc in the sausage and give it a bit more flavour and pretty much replaced half the ground beef with ground mushrooms a la my usual Blend and Extend mushroom magic . You can cut the fat in this recipe ev...

It’s winter, it’s dreary and it’s cold and we all want some comfort food, right? My problem is that my idea of comfort food and my guy's idea of comfort food are not the same thing. This week he asked for Shepherd’s Pie. I have made turkey shepherd’s pie that tastes like Thanksgiving dinner that I liked but other than that, it’s really not my favourite dish. He doesn’t like lamb so that’s out and I just find the basic ground beef filling to be boring. Don't send me hate mail because I think Shepherd's Pie is boring, okay? I want to make something that will make everyone happy so I had to put my thinking cap on. my controversial beef patty pops Why not make a filling that I really like and top it with some mashed something or other and just call it a day? What I really wanted was something that was a bit spicy, like a Jamaican beef patty and I thought sweet potato would give a nice balance to the heat from the scotch bonnets. Patty filling is the right consist...

I made some really delicious Manchego Stuffed Meatballs with Romesco recently to serve as tapas style appetizer. In fact, they have been such a huge hit that when I found out that Mushrooms Canada was holding their annual mushroom appetizer contest for the members of the Food Bloggers of Canada, I looked no further, although it required a bit of tweaking. The original recipe called for serving meatballs on a plate, sitting on a thick smear of romesco, the Spanish sauce made from almonds, bread, olive oil and roasted peppers. Don't get me wrong, I love serving them like this but it really only works when we are actually sitting down to dinner as the whole idea is that you spear one with a fork and drag it through the sauce on it's way to your plate. For this contest, I know they are looking for an appetizer that can be eaten out of hand so what could make more sense than using an actual mushroom cap as a little bed for the meatball right? It's not like ...

I am on a mission to come up with a bunch of tapas style dishes that I can whip up for my summer entertaining because although I love to have guests over, I get in trouble for spending too much time in the kitchen while they are here. I have vowed to serve fewer items, served at room temperature or cold and that require very little last minute prep. Your guests want you to spend time with them, not leave them alone while you make magic happen in the kitchen, right? One quick search of this blog will tell you two things: I LOVE a meatball and I love to add mushrooms to my ground meat a la Blend and Extend. Inspired by my most recent  recent farm tour with Mushrooms Canada and Ontario Beef  , I couldn't stop thinking about doing a meatball stuffed with a bit of Manchego and served on a smear of spicy Romesco sauce. It's all the flavours of Spain that I love - nutty manchego cheese, garlic, smoked paprika and the ubiquitous, slightly chunky romesco sits somewhere be...

As one of the ten chefs participating in the Ten for the Next Gen Series at Harbourfront's Hot and Spicy Food Festival   I was tasked with coming up with something that would fit the themes of sustainability and passing traditions on to the next generation. Since I can't really draw on my own family traditions, unless I wanted to pass along my mom's delicious Sherif's lemon meringue pie and, don't get me wrong, she made a mean Sherif's lemon meringue pie, I was going to think outside the box and come up with something of my very own. photo: Shack Shackleton Some of my Blend and Extend Recipes: Blend and Extend Beef Patty Pops Shroomy Beef Keftedes Spicy Mushrooms with Pork Chicken Mushroom Salsa Verde Besides coming up with recipes for Mushrooms Canada and their Blend and Extend program, I have totally embraced the philosophy in my own kitchen and you will almost never find me using any sort of ground meat without adding in a huge whack of grou...

I have a cooking demo coming up this weekend at Harbourfront for the Hot and Spicy Festival where will talk about Blend and Extend while serving up my Mushroom Beef Kofta . To freshen your memory, Blend and Extend is a marriage between Mushrooms Canada and Ontario Beef where you replace a portion of ground beef with ground mushrooms in your recipes. This makes your meat go farther, cuts out lots of saturated fat, adds a portion of vegetable to the dish and really just lightens up whatever you are making. Because of this, my brain is on a full on blend and extend, mushroom trajectory. Now, The Kid has been gainfully employed all summer long at Harbourfront as a nerd camp counsellor but because his bento doesn't fit in his Murse (ManPurse) that he takes to work, he has been taking a smaller lunch bag with only cold items. It has been the summer of sandwiches for the poor, young soul who has had to learn to love sandwiches in a hurry. School starts next week and school mean...

If you read this blog, or know us personally, you will know that there are only a handful of ways to eat pasta in this house. Shack, who loves pasta above all other things, really just means spaghetti/rotini with tomato sauce and meatballs OR with meat sauce, which is just really tomato sauce with meatballs smashed up in it. The only two exceptions are, of course, lasagna which is just a shape shifting pan of spaghetti and meat sauce and carbonara but that has lots of bacon in it and, well, BACON. I, on the other hand, love all forms of pasta with all kinds of sauces - olive oil sauces, cream sauces, fettuccine, farfalle, orecchiette - you put a bowl of some sort of carby goodness in front of me and I will be happy but if I say I'm cooking "pasta" for dinner, I mean meatballs/meat sauce/marinara with spaghetti or rotini, maybe penne if he is feeling adventurous. For that reason, I  was absolutely certain that I must have written down my recipe for plain old spaghett...

As part of my continuing experimentation with this whole  blend and extend  thing, I have discovered another recipe that is improved by the addition of mushrooms. The mushrooms release liquid that keeps the filling from drying out and it really does make your meat go a lot farther.  I managed to make 7 burritos using only 300 grams of beef and because this filling doesn't have to hold it's shape like a meatball, I think that you could even up the mushroom to beef ratio in this recipe without any trouble. I am going to try it half and half next and will report my findings. If anyone tries it first, please let me know how it went in the comments. As August comes to a close, I start to panic about the lunch sitch with The Kid and I am suddenly obsessed with the need to stock the freezer with lunch items. It's like a foodie mom's non pregnant nesting or something and I can't stop until I know that I have enough food for at least three lunches/dinners a week for S...

Oh, it's all blend and extend all the time in this house right now. Last week, I finally got around to trying this method of adding ground mushrooms to ground beef in order to make your meat go farther and add a serving of vegetable to dishes while you are at it. The result were these  Jamaican Patty Pops  and I have to tell you, I was actually kind of amazed at how much the addition of the mushrooms worked as far as texture and and keeping the meat moist was concerned. I spent the rest of the week perfecting these Middle Eastern Inspired MeatBalls, which had been my runner up idea for the appetizer challenge until I got it right. These little meatballs are also great on their own and made a nice little dinner served with a  dollop  of  tzatziki, a greek salad and a chunk of bread. If you are lucky to live near a store that sells middle eastern groceries, you can find the preserved lemons, pickled turnip and sumac there and some larger grocery ch...

About once a year I toy with the idea of making homemade Jamaican beef patties after having one too many stale, microwaved corner store patties. I get all fired up, spend hours reading recipes but then I start thinking about having to find beef rennet for the dough and all of that work and muse to myself "since I have to get on the subway anyway to go find this beef rennet, why not just drop by Bathurst station and buy myself a delectable beef patty and skip all that work?" and that is usually what I do. One bite of that hot, juicy meat pie and all thoughts of beef rennet fly away. Have you ever had the patties at the Bathurst Subway Station??? Honestly. So, there is a bit of a contest going on over at the Food Bloggers of Canada  and I am not one to resist a contest. Mushrooms Canada and Ontario Beef have teamed up to promote their new concept, Blend and Extend. The idea is that you replace some of the ground beef with finely chopped mushrooms in your favourite reci...