The Yum Yum Factor

So, we just got back from a trip to Paris and Rome and my head is so full of recipes that I want to replicate that I almost don't know where to start. Keep any eye for all of my upcoming posts about the trip so I can share all of the great things we ate and the fun stuff we did, but for now, here is my first recipe inspired by our travels. I bet this guy could use a good carbonara You can't go to Rome and not binge on carbonara and even though that is exactly what we did,  here we are, needing more. We make carbonara all the time and I can't believe that I haven't used the Instant Pot to cook the pasta all this time. I am the first person to lecture about adapting EVERYTHING to the pressure cooker, whether it's suited to it or not, but because this dish relies on the starchy pasta cooking water,  it makes even more sense to cook the pasta in the pressure cooker. When you pressure cook pasta, you are always left with this thick, starchy water...

One of the most surprising things I have discovered since getting an Instant Pot is how well it does pasta. Because you cook the pasta right in the pot with the sauce, you are not wasting litres of water, it cooks in half the time and the flavours are much more infused and intense, which means I can get away with less and I always like to get away with less when I can.  RIgatoni with Meat Sauce                                                              Lobster Mac and Cheese                                                              Smoky Mac and Cheese Sometimes, I don't want a heavy pasta full of sausage or cheese and , to b...

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...

Okay my people, the Instant Pot adventure continues. If you love to cook but live under a rock, the Instant Pot is a 7 in 1 electric pressure cooker that also serves as a slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker and more and it is taking the world by storm by the look of it. I was given one to try out and review and I love it so much that I just bought a second one (it came last night!) and I am going to start teaching pressure cooking classes in Toronto with them. You could say I am obsessed.  I am going to honest here and admit that I had NO intention of trying to cook sauce and pasta all together in this thing. I thought it was going to be disgusting and watery. Most the recipes I was finding called for using a jarred sauce and I will be using a jarred spaghetti sauce right before I pose nude for Dog Lover's Almanac. Then i got the Cook's Illustrated pressure cooker book called Pressure Cooker Perfection and since America's Test Kitchen is my #1 go to ...

One of my absolute favourite ways to eat really ripe tomatoes is in a raw sauce with pasta. I spent some time in Milan and this was the first meal that my friend, who had been living there for almost a year by that time, made for me the day of my arrival. He mixed up a bowl of diced tomatoes with lots of good olive oil, salt, fresh basil and some onion and let it sit out on the counter all day. When it was time to eat, he cooked up some pasta, ripped up some fresh mozzarella and threw the drained, hot pasta into the bowl of juicy tomatoes, covered that with the cheese and tossed it for a couple of minutes. The hot pasta warms up the room temperature tomatoes a bit and causes the fresh cheese to start to soften and just start to melt. The two of us finished off the entire bowl and from that day on, when I eat this and close my eyes, I am back on my friend's terrace in Milan, sweating my face off with a crisp little glass of rose in hand and all is right in the world. I found th...

If you read this blog, or know us personally, you will know that there are only a handful of ways to eat pasta in this house. Shack, who loves pasta above all other things, really just means spaghetti/rotini with tomato sauce and meatballs OR with meat sauce, which is just really tomato sauce with meatballs smashed up in it. The only two exceptions are, of course, lasagna which is just a shape shifting pan of spaghetti and meat sauce and carbonara but that has lots of bacon in it and, well, BACON. I, on the other hand, love all forms of pasta with all kinds of sauces - olive oil sauces, cream sauces, fettuccine, farfalle, orecchiette - you put a bowl of some sort of carby goodness in front of me and I will be happy but if I say I'm cooking "pasta" for dinner, I mean meatballs/meat sauce/marinara with spaghetti or rotini, maybe penne if he is feeling adventurous. For that reason, I  was absolutely certain that I must have written down my recipe for plain old spaghett...

It's throw back thursday and so I am sharing this recipe that I made back in March of 2011 for NoReEats and decided to make again tonight. I have made a few changes since I started making this dish in an effort to lighten it up without sacrificing any flavour because if that can't happen, I will always go with the original, full fatty creamy dish but, in this case, I am happy to report that it's every bit as delicious as the original version that sported a full cup of 35% cream. It's bad enough that we are putting bread crumbs on our pasta - we might as well just throw in a bowl of rice and some mashed potatoes, really. Think of it as an ode to carbs and just don't eat it every day. In the end, this pasta is everything I think pasta should be: quick, easy, flavourful and filling. Since we are leaving for our two week Jordanian adventure in a day and half-ACK- I am just trying to use up the food in the fridge and my fridge almost always contains arugula and b...

It's tomato time!    2011   was the last time we spent the day with Nonna and the gang, washing, blanching, grinding, skinning, boiling and jarring bushels of juicy plum tomatoes. Looking at those pictures, I can't believe how much The Kid and his friend, Patricia have grown and wonder how it is possible that as everyone else gets older, Nonna keeps looking younger all the time! Guardians of the future If you have never done this before, you might wonder why anyone would work from the crack of dawn until suppertime just to come away with 20 litre bottles of tomato puree? At $20 a bushel for the tomatoes, approx $1 a jar for jars and lids, surely you can just buy cans of decent San Marzanos for a couple bucks and save your lower back and shoulders? three teens, three adult women plus Nonna and one strong man to tighten the lids and it still takes over 7 hours to process a dozen bushels As I have said many times, I didn't grow up with any...

Peter Blush of Pucks Plenty When I anticipated my trip to check out Savour Stratford , the city's annual culinary festival that celebrates all things food and drink in Perth County, I was only expecting to eat. Being home to the Stratford Festival, one would expect that they would have to have a couple of fine dining restaurants, like Rundles, to service the theatre crowd. I assumed we would have some nice meals out, maybe visit a  couple of shops selling some local cheese or something.... how much could a small town like Stratford actually offer a big city girl like me, right? Wrong. This place is like some sort of culinary super magnet, attracting all sorts of chefs, cooks, coffee and tea sommeliers (did you know that even existed?), foragers and farmers, cheese makers and funeral directors turned chocolatiers. What kind of town actually starts up a Chef School primarily so that they can always be sure that they are creating top level talent to hopefully stay ...