The Yum Yum Factor

I make my  Instant Pot Butter Chicken  fairly often but I don't always plan well enough to marinate the meat overnight and I do believe that an overnight marinade is essential to achieve a rich depth of flavour in the final dish and avoid it tasting like bland chicken plunked into delicious sauce. My theory was that if I added the chicken marinade ingredients INTO the meatballs, it wouldn't have to sit for so long before I can cook the finished dish. We also really, really love meatballs. A quick search for meatballs on The Yum Yum Factor will reveal my obsession with these orbs of tender delight so it stands to reason that I eventually try to meatballify every favourite recipe at some point. I have been mulling a meatball conversion with Butter Chicken for a while but I have been so busy cooking at work, that I have barely cooked more than scrambled eggs in my own kitchen all year but I finally got around to making it this week. don't be alarmed by...

Butter chicken is like the moo goo guy pan of Indian food. Unlike other recipes that were first made hundreds of years ago in some small village, passed down through generations from grandmother to granddaughter, this is a relatively new dish. In fact, it only dates back to Delhi in the 1950's, an invention of some chef at the Moti Mahal hotel but the Brits fell in love with this mild, flavourful curry and it is now one the most popular Indian dishes in the world. I have been trying to perfect butter chicken in the pressure cooker for months now. I started out by trying other, popular butter chicken recipes and some of them were better than others. A couple called for using cornstarch to thicken a too thin sauce, which is just wrong in my book. None that I could find called for marinating the chicken in a masala before making the final dish and without that step, there is a depth of flavour that is missing for me.  Now, I understand that the whole appeal of the  Ins...

Butter chicken is like the moo goo guy pan of Indian food. Unlike other recipes that were first made hundreds of years ago in some small village, passed down through generations from grandmother to granddaughter, this is a relatively new dish. In fact, it only dates back to Delhi in the 1950's, an invention of some chef at the Moti Mahal hotel but the Brits fell in love with this mild, flavourful curry and it is now one the most popular Indian dishes in the world. I have been trying to perfect butter chicken in the pressure cooker for months now. I started out by trying other, popular butter chicken recipes and some of them were better than others. A couple called for using cornstarch to thicken a too thin sauce, which is just wrong in my book. None that I could find called for marinating the chicken in a masala before making the final dish and without that step, there is a depth of flavour that is missing for me.  Now, I understand that the whole appeal of the  I...

What to do with a 1 lb bag of gorgeous, organic baby red potatoes? I have been eyeing this recipe for Baby Potato Roast  on Relish the Bite forever and so I used it as my inspiration for this dish. Many of the spices she uses will not be familiar or easy to find for many people and I already have my own spices that I like to use so I made quite a few changes. Also, I thought some beluga lentils would be nice so they could get a bit crispy and add some protein so those were added to the mix as well but this delicious recipe was the inspiration for my own Indian Spiced Baby Potatoes. Earth Fresh Foods asked me if I would come up with a recipe using their Organic Red Baby Potatoes if they sent me a bag, so, of course, I said yes. Earth Fresh are Canadian producers of premium potatoes, carrots and onions but they specialize in potatoes, sourcing their products in 9 Provinces and 38 States. These are some nice potatoes and you can find them at Longos and Metro. Because t...

Sometimes I feel like bag of hammers but other times, I am the luckiest girl around. I get invited to my share of food events and menu tastings but occasionally I get to attend one that feels more like a great dinner out with fantastic wine at a place that I would happily return to every week if it were just a bit closer to me. Fellow blogger,  momwhoruns , invited me to a media event to introduce items from the spring menu for a new restaurant that has been getting a lot of good buzz in the west end called  Pukka . I won't call it an Indian restaurant because owners Harsh Chawala and Derek Valleau would prefer that it be known as a great restaurant that happens to serve Indian food. I understand the difference. It's not the we don't have other high end Indian restaurants, like Amaya's Indian Room which is also a favourite, but this place feels just a bit younger. I could totally see myself coming here with a big group and making lots of noise celebrating somethi...

This month's challenge in the  Great Canadian Food Experience  is called Canadian Love Affair. Hmmmm We have covered so many aspects of what constitutes Canadian cuisine. We have talked about regional specialities and food traditions from our families and our childhood and I just keep coming back to the fact that Toronto is a melting pot of every type of international cuisine imaginable. This is the city that introduced me to pho and to Ethiopian food. I learned the difference between a Punjabi butter chicken (the most common regional cuisine served here in North America) and the dosa, a staple of Southern India right here in the city. You can get authentic Iranian food at the Persian Plaza for lunch and then pop over to J Town on for some imported Japanese groceries and grab some bibimbap at The Galleria on your way home.  We also have a huge Italian community which means we have an endless array of authentic Italian restaurants and grocers serving the commun...

I was invited to an event at beautiful The St Lawrence Market Kitchen (upstairs at the market) to introduce me to Fresh Canteen  , a new dinner prep concept launched earlier this summer here in Toronto. It's a service that caters to people who want to cook fresh, delicious dinners in their own kitchens but are often just too busy to shop for all the ingredients they need. They are quite committed to using locally sourced products whenever possible and that appeals to me very much. I have used Supperworks in the past to stock up for those times that I am too busy to shop but you still have to put aside time to drive down there, put all of the stuff together and get it back home. You also have to remember to take those damned bags out of the freezer the night before so it will be thawed by dinner time so you can actually cook it which doesn't come easily to me.  I love the idea of everything for a dish being brought to my house for me by a handsome stranger. Okay, I just li...

We are still Shackless as it seems like his movie is never going to end and he is never coming home from Montreal. The only thing we can do to stop ourselves from crying ourselves to sleep every night is to continue to dine on the creatures of the sea. It is our cross to bear. I was actually not planning to make salmon at all today (I was going to whip up some chili nachos) but then I went to the store for mustard and ended up buying a nice piece of salmon instead. It wasn't quite enough to serve the two of us so I needed to stretch it a bit. I toyed with the idea of making a salmon risotto or pasta or something but nothing was grabbing me. Time for salmon cakes. I often make extra salmon just I can make cakes the next day but this was the first time I cooked salmon just for that purpose. Because I have been craving Indian food for a week, tandoori salmon cakes were now on the menu. As is often the case, I have made them before but I have never really paid attenti...

Shack is working late and won't be home for dinner so I promised The Kid that I would cook salmon since his crazy whackheaded father doesn't like it and we both adore it. Along with David Bowie, The Legend of the Seeker and egg salad, salmon has become one of those things we indulge in when it's just the two of us. It's best this way. For some reason, salmon really lends itself to indian spices and I often make a proper tandoori salmon but today I wanted to do something just a little bit different. I also didn't want to bbq it and tandoori is best bbq'd but after my failed attempt to start the charcoal last night armed with nothing but an old electrical bill envelope, a nascar lighter,  charcoal and some fondue pot fuel DOH I wasn't in a hurry to try that again. I found this tasty looking recipe on Family Style Food and although I think I would love the corn salsa thing, it also required the grill and I don't know that The Kid would appreciate...