The Yum Yum Factor

  I tried to make shakshuka for five days.  Day 1: ordered all the ingredients I needed online for delivery. Shit, can't get it til tomorrow. No problem, we will eat something else tonight but super excited for tomorrow's dinner Day 2: groceries come! Time to start.....oh, wait, what? You feel like ordering Thai? But I was...okay, Thai does sound like it would hit the spot. Shakshuka tomorrow, FOR SURE Day 3: make the shakshuka tomato/red pepper sauce in anticipation of tonight's shakshuka. Sit outside with my neighbours for a glass of wine and the next thing I know, we grab The Kid and venture on down to sit on the patio at The Pub. It's the only place that will let us take a table for 8 so we can sit at opposite ends of the table and their salt and pepper wings are really delicious..... Day 4: TODAY IS THE DAY. WE are making this damned shakshuka if it kills me, but first, a visit to drop off something to friends we haven't seen since January. Go to drop it off on...

Every easter, my mom made ham, scalloped potatoes, baked beans and because there were five kids and that means there were A LOT of hard boiled easter eggs, she would always make devilled eggs. Her's were not fancy. She would mash the yolks with a fork and mix in Miracle Whip - YES SHE USED MIRACLE WHIP- a bit of sweet pickle relish, salt and pepper and a bit of finely chopped green onion. There was no piping of the filling either. She just heaped the creamy yolk filling into the hollows of the whites and sprinkled a bit of paprika over the top. I love those simple eggs although I don't use Miracle Whip for anything but I also love the look of these pink eggs. The curry gives a nice balance to the slight tang from the brine but you can totally use your own favourite recipe for the creamy yolks. Unlike my mother, I prefer to using a piping bag (or a sandwich bag if you don't have a piping bag handy) so I can achieve maximum pretty. A bit of parsley (or dill or ...

I love a good frittata but, for some reason, I never make them. There are only so many meals in a day and when you cook for a living, you are always making something new and that can mean that tried and true old favourites are forgotten until you are forced to make one and then you remember how much you miss them.

You can keep your because I have been craving my brand of KFC - Spicy Korean "Fried" Chicken- all week. They are like the sexiest little chicken nuggets on earth - all spicy, sweet and crispy. YUM Traditional Korean Fried Chicken calls for double deep fried chicken served with or without and addictive, spicy/sweet gochujang sauce and, personally, I can't get enough of it. Because I don't really like to deep fry at home all that much I usually "oven fry" my chicken and when I really want to make it even more comforting, I just make some boneless, chicken nuggets so that I don't have to wrestle with bones and all that comes with an intact chicken leg. Sometimes a girl just doesn't want to deal with tendons and skin. My Spicy Korean "Fried" Chicken Recipe Regardless of what style of KFC you like, you are going to need some potato salad, right? Since this is Korean Fried Chicken, it stands to reason that I am going to make K...

Sometimes I don't want to make six servings of creme brulee because, frankly, I don't want to find myself eating the three leftover ramekins the next day when I am home alone and they are in the fridge, singing their siren song. I have often dreamt of being able to make just one or two perfect little creme brulees so that the kid could could have one after dinner and then another for breakfast because all children benefit from a breakfast of leftover pie, cake or custard from time to time. There is no way I was going to preheat the oven, get a water bath together and go through all those hoops just to make one little ramekin but that was before my Instant Pot. With a pressure cooker, making one serving suddenly became not only possible but necessary! The Kid and I did a day of taste testing until we decided that this version is the one we liked the best. Two eggs made it too rich and dense, if that is at all possible and we both agreed that this version r...

Okay, it's egg time. Well, it's always egg time around here since The Kid eats them almost every morning for breakfast, let's be honest. I love a good poached egg but what I don't love is a watery egg with wiggly whites sitting in a watery bowl. Blech. I have had great success with sous vide using my Anova to make  onsen tomago  , or eggs poached in the shell and when I am making ramen or bibimbap, this is my go to method but it's a bit fussy for 7:30am on a Tuesday morning before I have had my coffee, so that is where my Instant Pot comes in. The first time I tried them, they were perfect. I put them in a little steel mixing bowl, set it on the trivet with a cup of water and cooked them for 2 minutes at low pressure on steam and did a quick release. Lovely. This week, I picked up some silicone egg baskets and thought that these would be my new egg poaching dishes, cracked a couple of eggs into baskets and followed the formula that has b...

Wanting to make a special treat for our wonderful friends, The Neighbours, I wracked my brains for a week. They are both really good cooks so I can't easily wow them but I recalled that the topic of scotch eggs had come up more than once over the holidays. They both have fond memories of his mother's scotch eggs so there is a sentimental attachment, making them the perfect dish to bid goodbye to one year and usher in the new. For this first trip down the old scotch egg highway, I didn't want to mess around with the classic recipe too much since I knew that this was a very nostalgic thing for my friends but you know that there will be Korean Scotch Eggs, Mexican Scotch Eggs and more coming down the pipe. Scotch Eggs Makes 6 eggs 7 large eggs 2 large, fresh sausages 2 scallions, minced about 1 tbls grainy mustard fresh pepper about 1/3 cup of flour spash of milk about 2/3 cup panko Put 6 eggs in a pot of cold water and bring to a boil. Let them boil...

the 13 minute at 75C egg was almost perfect but that white was still just a bit too runny for me I'm a bit obsessed with poached eggs and, to be honest, for most of my life, I never made them at home. They are fussy, the white are always all over the place, I either undercook them or overcook them half the time and I always have to drain off the water from the bottom of the bowl before I eat them. Never mind the headache of trying to make them for more than one or two people, keeping them all hot, holding them over in a water bath, yadda yadda. It's just easier to order them in a restaurant that specializes in great breakfasts. With that in mind, it makes sense that the very first thing I made with my hand dandy Anova sous vide cooker was a poached egg. Actually, I made half a dozen poached eggsI had barely busted that baby out of the packaging before I was firing up a big pot of water. At first, I was cooking them at between 63C and 65C , which is touted as being THE...

Today was The Kid's 14th birthday. If you are a mom with older kids, you understand how surreal this new era is and if you are a mom with little kids, you have no idea, but your time will come.  My adorable, chubby little baby now towers over me, wears his father's shoes on his hairy hobbit feet, has to shave his dirty stache and his mile long legs are covered with black man hair. He is still young enough to tell me he loves in his best Issac Hayes' voice every day but old enough that he has a job and does his own laundry.

Back when I used to work on set doing makeup for tv commercials, I enjoyed a thing called Kraft Service. The Kraft Service people are responsible for feeding us all day and at the time, I didn't always appreciate them as I should have. The one thing I always loved though was our morning breakfast burrito (as long as they were using real eggs and not egg beaters. No offence to the fine people who make egg beaters but they are just not for me). I apologize to every Kraft person I have gave the gears to over the years because now that I no longer have people who make me breakfast and snacks and soup and cheese trays and cut up my fruit and put out trays of M&M's and jube jubes, I realize how wonderful you all were. My ass, on the other hand, never wants to see you again. Anyway, I had three corn tortillas left over from last night's calamari tacos and couldn't bear to throw them out so I made the Little Prince, which is what we call The Kid when we realize we...

We are not birthday cake people at all. For my birthday, I usually have a lemon tart or a pie - this year, Jen, at Piccante Dolce made me a delectable lemon meringue pie which was THE highlight of my birthday dinner. Last year the kid requested a chocolate wafer/whipped cream cake that my good friend, Kate, makes and this year he asked for creme brulee. The problem is that I couldn't find my creme brulee recipe anywhere. I read a hundred others and couldn't find anything that sounded right and I was about to have a breakdown when I thought "Look to Ina. If anyone knows a really fattening, terrible for you but delicious, decadent dessert it would probably be her. I took down my Barefoot in Paris book and there it was. The perfect creme brulee with just a couple of small changes and now I don't care if I ever find my old recipe because this one is absolutely perfect. Creme Brulee adapted from Barefoot in Paris 1 large egg 4 large eggs yolks 1/2 cup sugar p...