The Yum Yum Factor

You may have noticed that I am not keeping up with my regular pace on the blog. For the last 8 years, I've tried to add at least 1 or 2 recipes a week but my own cooking gigs have kept me out of my own kitchen since the fall. During the holiday season, I was so busy working for my friend in his catering company, that I barely made more than a piece of toast at home. Day after day, I would break down up to 40 lbs of beef into stew meat and then braise it all in the oven, making another 5 or 6 restaurant pans of scalloped potatoes, moussaka, or cutting up and marinating about a metric ton of chicken thighs followed by at least three evening parties a week so trust me, when I got home, we were ordering take out and apart from playing Candy Crush and checking twitter, I barely looked at a camera or a computer. December, in the catering business, is not for the faint of heart, weak of back or fallen of arches. Now, it's the new year and I am finally feeling like get...

The Kingston Social and I are teaming up again for the new year and resurrecting our monthly Supper Clubs, starting in January. For my first menu, I will be doing a Yum style Peruvian dinner. My MVP pop up was one of my most popular of 2017 but, not one to rest of my laurels,  I really wanted to add something new to the meal and because it will be in January, soup just makes sense. This particular soup is based on the classic Peruvian soup, Aguadito de Pollo, also known as Levanta Muertos which translates into a soup to wake the dead due to it's restorative, nourishing properties and I have been told that it may or may not be great for a hangover. I am down with that. The soup, at it's most simple, is made with tons of cilantro, chicken and vegetables, usually served with whole, skin on chicken legs or thighs but that is not really my thing. Instead, I removed the skin, crisped it up until it was transformed into a chicken chicharon/cracker. It is crispy, salty an...

this version was topped with a bit of red onion and more sesame seeds  It is no secret that we love ceviche around here but I only have a couple of actual recipes on the blog because, for the most part, I make straight up, Mexican style ceviche and the only thing that usually changes is the type of seafood I use. I always use raw fish, scallops or shrimp and let it "cook" in lime juice and although none of us have any issues about eating seafood prepared this way, many people still view it as raw and don't want to try it.

Oh Cinco de Mayo, how I love you because you are another excuse to throw a pork roast in the oven and make some tacos. Okay, I don't really need an excuse to do that but sometimes it's nice to be put yourself on the spot when you realize it's been ages since you have roasted up a big, old chunk of pig to wrap in stack of corn tortillas. Sometimes we all need a push. I like to use this David Chang recipe for pork sometimes because the meat comes out delicious, with crispy, crunchy bits but the flavour is neutral and I can use it for a ton of different things afterwards. A bit of ginger scallion sauce with some gochujang something or other and it's kind of Korean or add some smoky BBQ sauce and I have a pulled pork sandwich. Since this was a big 10 lb picnic pork roast, I wanted lots of leftover meat that could be repurposed. I am not even going to link to any one of the 100000 versions of this recipe that are out there because everyone makes it, everyone tweak...

There is nothing that tastes fresher or cleaner than ceviche and it's my go to dish when I have a spent a weekend of eating debauchery. There is no oil or added fat of any kind, it's raw, it's cold, it's fresh and it has crunch.You can eat a huge bowl of it and it will amount to almost nothing at the end of the day so you can sit right back down and eat another bowl, guilt free. Clearly, because this dish is not cooked, you want to buy yourself some really fresh fish from a reliable fishmonger like Hooked or my Beaches staple,  The Beach Fish House . Look, I don't know where you live but if you don't know where there is a great fish shop in your hood, take the time to find one. You can thank me later. Ceviche is a popular dish across Mexico, Central and South America and I have yet to meet one that I didn't love. Basically, it's fish or some sort of seafood, marinated in citrus and served cold and from that point, the variations are endless. Gra...

 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...

We celebrated Easter a while ago and for us that means that there was a ham bone hanging around the house the next day. For a really long time I always made split pea soup but for the last few years I have been making black bean soup instead. I love split pea soup but the boys seem to prefer black bean so that is the route I have taking. I recently started adding the chipotle because my kid was a wimp before but now that he likes a bit of kick to his food, AT LAST, I can spice things up around here. I usually do a chipotle crema but this time the chipotle could go in the actual soup and since that makes it a bit hot, I needed something creamy and cool but that wasn't just a drizzle of plain yogurt or sour cream. While looking at some other black bean soups to get inspired, I found one with an avocado cream on Eats Well With Others and loved the sound of that.

I can't take any more snow. I am sick to death of my parka and my boots and if I never eat another stew or casserole it will still be too soon. If I stay indoors on a day like today, I can just pretend it's a beautiful spring afternoon. The sun is shining and the house is full of light and feels warm and lovely so I decided to cook something that felt like summer. I have been eyeing this Emeril recipe for a grilled pork loin with orange juice, cumin and cilantro for some time and today just felt like the day. Because I wanted to make it just a bit more substantial, I stuffed it with a mixture of couscous, onion, garlic, pancetta, pumpkin seeds and a bit of arugula.

I feel crazy posting a recipe for guacamole because it isn't really a recipe but I am asked for one so many times that I guess it's a useful thing to do. I am also going to share my method for making those pickled red onions that are served all over the Yucatan with many dishes. When Little Shack was about 9, we were in Mexico and he said he hated onions but he ate these pretty pink onions every day because I told them they were cebelloas. I did not lie to my son, it's not my fault that he didn't know that cebello is the spanish word for onion.