The Yum Yum Factor

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.

Corn season is now upon us here in Ontario and that means bushels of the sweetest, tenderest Peaches and Cream corn imaginable and it's cheap so we are eating lots of it. Apart from eating it lightly cooked with lots of melted butter and salt, I am currently having a love affair with corn soup. Usually, I am a corn chowder gal but I have found a new corn soup spirit animal. Let me be perfectly clear - the  pressure cooker corn soup from Kenji Lopez at Serious Eats is absolutely amazing and it's perfect, as it. The tarragon and the sweet corn were made for each other, it's smooth, rich and so creamy that you would swear, on your grandmother's foot pedal sewing machine, that there was a ton of creamy in it but there isn't. It's truly perfect and I have made it a million times already. This soup is NOT at attempt to improve upon it but a way to use this fool proof technique to make another flavour profile happen. I had already eaten my weight in this sou...

The Contest Once again, the time comes in a young girl's life where she has to come up with a recipe for the annual Lentil's Canada recipe contest. This year, the theme is "Star of the Show" and all of the entrants must make a short video to go with their recipe, so here is mine   - please feel free to go and watch it, like it, share it using the hashtag #LoveLentils . You can see all of the great entries  here  2016 has been declared the International Year of the Pulse by the UN and the fact that Canada is the world's largest producer and exporter of lentils was not lost on me. Even though I cook with them often anyway, I am making a concerted effort to make sure they are on the menu at least a couple times a week this winter. Last year, my Dulce De Lentil Ice Cream took first place in the Dessert Catagory, was featured in the Ebook along with my Spicy Caramel Corn With Crispy Lentils , a runner up in the freestyle catagory. The year before, my C...

When we were in Portugal, we ate some version of octopus salad everywhere we went. Some had tomato and onion, some were just bowls of chopped octopus, doused with copious amounts of olive oil, vinegar and herbs and others were brightened with lots of cilantro and lemon juice. I don't think I could even pick a favourite if I tried, but, if you put a gun to my head, I might say that it was the octopus salad we ate at Ponto Finale (check that meal out here  ). When I don't have the time or inclination to cook and prepare my own octopus, I buy a few chunks of cooked octopus in olive oil from my favourite little Italian grocery store and use that. This is a typical dinner for The Kid and I when we are on our own - just add some crusty bread and a green salad (and a frosty glass of rose for me) and you have got yourself the perfect summer meal and you never had to turn on a stove or do anything more strenuous than chop a tomato. Although I do love it with cilantro, for a ch...

 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 ...

The Neighbour has something like 321 siblings and out of that big group of family there are three sisters who have become known in our world as The Sisters.  Every year The Sisters come down from The Miramichi in New Brunswick to spend a week with The Neighbours and this is always a very busy, festive week full of belly laughs, lobster rolls, chips dipped in hot fudge and long island iced tea. This year, not only did they bring us a couple of HUGE clumps of rhubarb to plant in our garden, but a bag of chopped rhubarb to cook with as well. I have not been buying rhubarb this year because it has been kind of hard to find and when I do find it, it is ridiculously expensive and not even particularly nice. Come on, it's a damned weed and the grocery store wants to charge me $4 a stalk? What's next, hormone free dandelions for $9 a pound with a side of $20 organic poison ivy? Anyway, if that weren't enough good luck, another friend sent me a message that she had a big b...

I have spent quite a bit of time in Greece. I lived and worked there in my late twenties and, oddly enough, I don't have a ton of great food memories. When I think of my time in Italy or in Spain, I can almost taste all of the delectable delights that I enjoyed on a daily basis but when I think of Greece, there are only a handful of food memories that I can still conjure up. While there, I would tell people I was from Toronto and they would often say "Oh, my brother/cousin/uncle has a restaurant on the Danforth. Toronto has the best Greek food in the world!" and I would always laugh but I kind of got what they were saying. In my head, I think that I don't care for Greek food but if you go through both of my food blogs, you will find that I actually cook Greek all the time. I never said I was a reasonable person. I find that I often turn to Greek food when I have to feed a crowd in an informal setting. It just makes so much sense to put out a spread of mezes an...

We are very close with The Neighbours and spend most warm summer nights sitting together on the front porch, drinking wine and eating and enjoying each other's company. Sometimes we like to make girly drinks or a pitcher of sangria when it's too hot for wine so it makes sense to try to turn some of our favourite cocktails into frozen treats. The upside is that it doesn't look like all we do is sit out there and drink because people will walk by and think "look at all of those lovely wholesome people enjoying a fruit popsicle on this balmy summer evening!" As long as I make sure that I colour code the sticks so the kids don't grab a frozen bloody caesar by mistake, I think we are good to go.