The Yum Yum Factor

typical selection of banchan I am presently designing a set of banchan (the small plates of delicacies that accompany any Korean meal) for an "open mic" dinner that I am making for a place in Toronto called The Depanneur.  I will be serving a version of my BiBimBap Sopes so we are already starting from a Korea meets Mexico kind of place and that means that I want the banchan to reflect that as well. I have been experimenting with replacing some of the more traditional Korean ingredients with things that you might find on a Mexican dinner table with great success so far. For starters, both cultures love to pickle things and since the flavours meld together beautifully, it's been a ton of fun to experiment with different combinations although some have been more successful than others. Because I am not crazy pants, I am only sharing the success stories with you and trust me, there are often spectacular failures. The first recipe that I will share is this recip...

Okay, it's winter. I give. There is finally a bit of snow on the ground, I had to dig out The Kid's boots today and it's really cold out there. Really, the only part of winter that make life worth living, to me, are the soups and stews that we don't really eat during the warmer months. The two things that tend to show up on the menu on a weekly basis are some sort of stew and some sort of pulled pork crock pot dish. Last week we had a lamb stew with truffle mash  and a sort of pork paprikash made with my weekly pork butt and this week, I made this yummy beef stew to officially welcome the stupid winter since it insists on coming. I also want to talk about stew, in general. I am always surprised when I hear that people don't really make stew or feel like they can't just wing a stew and need a recipe every time because, to me, this is the ultimate cooking for dummies. You follow a few small rules, you throw a bunch of stuff in the pot along with nicely br...

Who would have thought that I would ever be the proud owner of a 12 year old boy? One day you are pulling him down off of the bookshelf and the next, you are buying him Axe deodorant and he is asking you if you think he will look good with a beard?