The Yum Yum Factor

Fall is starting to get a bit long in the tooth, the wind is kicking up and the nights get progressively colder. As we sadly acknowledge that BBQ season is over, our tastes start to turn to heartier fare that sticks to the ribs and fills the belly. Unlike most people I know, I didn't grow up eating mac and cheese so I was a little late to the party but I have become a bit of an expert this past year, making a number of different versions in my pressure cooker, but I know that not everyone has one so stovetop mac and cheese lets you whip up the ultimate comfort food with the ease and speed that a pressure cooker provides. One pot, baby. I am all about the one pot dinners and as we start to gear up for the hustle and bustle of the impending holiday season, we all need a few one pot show stoppers in our back pocket. When Grace hired me to come up with a recipe using a couple of their Organic coconut products , I already had a bunch of them in my pantry so I jumped at the ch...

I don't trust people who don't love bacon. Even my friends who don't eat meat will admit that the smell of frying bacon is enough to send them over the edge and those who were not always vegetarian can still get teary eyed over the memory of the taste. To me, bacon is a perfect food. It is salty, fatty, crispy, smoky and it is just as great with sweet as it is with savoury. Honestly, even bad bacon is tasty but why not just go with GREAT bacon? I was approached by duBreton to come up with a recipe using their product to celebrate International Bacon Day, which takes place this year on September 3.Since I am one of the 90% of Canadians who love bacon, I jumped at the chance. To to be honest, it was a struggle to narrow my ideas down to one recipe. I had made a version of this crispy coating a while back to accompany my first ever pressure cooker mac and cheese recipe (I also used it again on my second pressure cooker mac and cheese recipe   ) and I make sure to ...

Last week I attended The Grate Canadian Cheese Cook Off - Mac and Cheese edition, hosted by the Dairy Farmers of Canada. We got to watch as four Canadian chefs went head to head in an attempt to woo the judges with their unique, elevated interpretations of this classic comfort food. Top Chef Canada alumni and popular Calgary caterer,  Nicole Gomes, made a really interesting Apple Beer Mac and Cheese that was only narrowly edged out as my favourite by the Smoky Cauli-power Mac & Cheese whipped up by defending champion,Chef Andrew Farrell, Chef de Cuisine at Halifax restaurant, 2 Doors Down. He took top honours in 2014 with his Crispy Greens Mac & Cheese and he looked reluctant to give up his crown. Chef Thompson Tran ( BC's The Wooden Boat) took the best name with his Cod You Believe It's Shmoked Mac n' Cheese but it was ultimately Toronto's own Chef Alexandra Feswick (The Drake) who stole the trophy out from under Chef Farrell's nose with h...

When a company contacts me and asks me if I would like some cheese to play with, I am certainly not going to say no. Do I look crazy to you? Only a crazy person turns down free cheese. Armstrong cheese has been making Canadian cheese for over 100 years so they know a thing or two about making a good product. As soon as I tried the old cheddar, I knew what I would make with it. For an old cheddar, it's actually on the milder side and the texture is very smooth and creamy - some cheddars can be grainybut I could tell that this one was going to melt beautifully, and it did. If the cheese was too strongly flavoured, it would have overpowered the delicate flavour of the lobster but this cheddar let the lobster sing it's lobster song. Mac and cheese, baby. But not just any old mac and cheese. LOBSTER mac and cheese. Not just any lobster mac and cheese. PRESSURE COOKER lobster mac and cheese. I have been dying to make the pressure cooker mac and cheese from America...

This weekend was the final week of  Love 4 Lasagna at Piccante Dolce  and I had decided that I was going to try to make some sort of Lasagna Carbonara for poor Shack. He liked the pastitsio alright but none of these lasagnas have really rocked his world and I am feeling a bit guilty. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage doing a carbonara because the eggs would scramble when baked and that would most likely NOT score me any brownie points with anyone. I was looking around and reading recipes when Food Network Canada announced a cooking club challenge in which you must make Bobby Flay's Macaroni and Cheese Carbonara  . Come on, now perfect is that timing?? I had already decided that I would also make the pasta from scratch this time so this is what i did today: I made a half batch of homemade pasta with italian parsely and mixed up some ricotta and swiss chard  and made a small lasagna with half the ingredients and I made a mac and cheese like in his recipe w...