The Yum Yum Factor

I really wanted Korean food the other day but I didn't feel like leaving the house, which happens. It was overcast, cold and dreary, I didn't have the car so that would also entail cramming my body onto the subway to go downtown...not today, Satan, not today. Luckily, I keep a pretty full pantry of Korean ingredients and had a couple pounds of chicken thighs in the freezer. I decided I could manage throwing a coat on over my pjs for a quick trip to the fancy pants organic market on the corner for some vegetables if it meant that I was going to be able to whip up some Spicy Korean Chicken Stew (Dakdoritang) Instead of the more traditional carrot, I threw in a sweet potato since they are both orange and added daikon because I like the texture and worked backwards on my math to adapt my regular recipe to the Instant Pot because not only did I not want to get dressed or leave the house, I also wanted it immediately. The one major change was to skin and debone the c...

I am Back!! I have been sick since mid April, hence my absence from the blog. I bet you thought I had quit, didn't you? After a lengthy bout with some sort of lung plague, I am finally emerging from the fog and forced myself to get in the kitchen today. Okay, I have been in the kitchen but it's been all grilled cheese sammies, frozen potstickers and soup, mostly made by The Kid as I croaked out instructions from my sick bed on the couch, Netflix droning on in the background. I have a Supper Club coming up and the first course will be a version of this Basque style Leek and Potato Soup with Cod and Serrano Ham so it seemed like it was as good a time as any to whip up a batch and make sure it is as delicious as I recall. It is. The Traditional Soup, called Porrusalda, if often made with cod but you would normally add a whack of reconstituted salt cod and cook it IN the broth for a chunk, rustic soup. It's absolutely delicious and homey and wonderful but I n...

I lived in Madrid a million years ago when I was in my twenties and I admit it - I was a tortilla addict. I ate tortilla in the morning. I ate tortilla mid morning. I ate tortilla at lunch, at dinner and again in the evening as a tapa. I also gained an alarming amount of weight which only made sense AFTER I watched somebody making it. Potatoes cooking away in a big pan of simmering oil was all I needed to see to understand why my steady diet of tortilla and beer was also responsible for my waist white wall tire. DOH. After I got home, I could never get the hang of making it myself, almost always resorting to just popping it in the oven to cook the top instead of flipping it because it constantly fell apart. I understand that this was also probably because I was constantly trying to lighten it up, make it a bit less fattening and leaner so I could eat more of it, more often. I have now given up on that and I am making it properly - poaching the potatoes in plenty of olive o...

I get it, I don't always feel like cooking some huge holiday meal either. I find, as my son gets older, we do less and less Christmasy stuff and spend the time off hanging out together. We go to movies, we play inappropriate games like Cards Against Humanity and visit friends because nobody has time to get together apart from Christmas. It has been a couple of years since our last, big, Xmas eve open house and I can't remember the last time I hosted a giant dinner. Our new ritual is to get up, go for dim sum and drive our Christmas Dog (we babysit her while her family flies out west to visit family) back to her family at their chalet and spend a few days drinking too much wine, eating too much food and relaxing. Now, does this mean I still don't want to eat turkey and enjoy the flavours of Christmas? Of course not. I LOVE turkey, I love stuffing, I love mashed potatoes and gravy and eggnog. Sometimes, when I can't even imagine cooking a turkey, I make something ...

What to do with a couple of leftover, cooked chorizo, two potatoes and some leeks? MAKE SOUP!

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...

For the last four days, I can't eat anything but soup after a difficult molar extraction. I know you feel me. There is only so much miso soup a gal can eat before she realizes that she is about to eat her own foot and when that happens, it's time to whip up something a little more hearty. My brain wants to eat steak and potato chips but my mouth has other ideas. When I make anything with potatoes, I always like to throw in a sweet potato to make it a bit more nutritious, flavourful and to give it some beautiful colour while I'm at it. Making it in the pressure cooker makes an easy soup, even easier and we are always on board with that. When you factor in the time it takes for the soup to come to pressure, you probably are not saving a ton of time but what you can do is throw everything in the pot, set the timer and walk away, catch up on American Horror Story and not worry that the pot is boiling over or losing too much liquid. Because there is no evaporat...

When EarthFresh comes calling and offers me a couple bags of free potatoes so I can come up with a new recipe, I am always in. EarthFresh is a Canadian company that produce great quality potatoes, carrots and onions and my favourite thing that they do, apart from providing me with FREE BAGS OF POTATOES YO! is they pack the potatoes in a light blocking bag. I bet you didn't realize that potatoes can turn totally green after about 12 hours of fluorescent grocery store lightening - let's not even talk about how I look under those zombie lights. There is a reason that when you store potatoes it always instructs you to put them in a cool, DARK place. I buy these potatoes all the time, ever since whipping up these Indian Spiced Potatoes using their organic baby reds, so i am no stranger to these babies. Aaaaanyway, they were looking for me to come up with some sort of a potato salad and since this tomato vinaigrette is current obsession, I saw no reason wh...

Okay, it's winter. I give. There is finally a bit of snow on the ground, I had to dig out The Kid's boots today and it's really cold out there. Really, the only part of winter that make life worth living, to me, are the soups and stews that we don't really eat during the warmer months. The two things that tend to show up on the menu on a weekly basis are some sort of stew and some sort of pulled pork crock pot dish. Last week we had a lamb stew with truffle mash  and a sort of pork paprikash made with my weekly pork butt and this week, I made this yummy beef stew to officially welcome the stupid winter since it insists on coming. I also want to talk about stew, in general. I am always surprised when I hear that people don't really make stew or feel like they can't just wing a stew and need a recipe every time because, to me, this is the ultimate cooking for dummies. You follow a few small rules, you throw a bunch of stuff in the pot along with nicely br...

It's a rainy day out there and even though it's not actually cold yet, it looks cold out there from inside the house so that's a good enough excuse to make chili. Actually, Saturday is technically the first day of fall so it really is time , isn't it? Tonight we will eat it over baked potatoes with chipotle cream and cheese and then I can send some in The Kid's lunch tomorrow and alleviate my mom sandwich guilt for the week. I am also taking a container of it over to Jen's house ( Piccante Dolce Jen) who is hugely pregnant and due this week so she won't have to cook tonight. So many birds killed with this one chili stone. This is a tasty, basic chili with no fancy surprises or anything. The addition of masa harina at the end thickens it up a bit and since we are eating it over baked potatoes, I wanted a thicker chili as opposed to a soupier chili. It's not spicy either so that it can please all of the people in the house - the chipotle cream a...

Last week I made baked potato soup and it was a huge hit, especially with Little Shack so I decided to keep with the potato trend and make him a simple Potato Leek Soup. I was inspired by this fabulous zuppa di porri  and even thought this isn't the soup I ended up making (but I plan to), it did inspire me so I want to give him props. Since I am adding potato and, therefore, not doing the toasted bread and parmesan thing, I am making parmesan tuiles to serve on the soup. See? I am totally inspired by this guy's soup. Last week I made his risotto verde, and it was so delicious.

First of all, It seems I was just awarded a Stylish Blog Award by Kimberly at the Farmer's Wife!  I'm not sure what that means since I am totally green as a blogger but it certainly made my day! I think that I am supposed to tell you 7 things about myself and then give this award to some other blogs that i love: I am a professional makeup artist I work with lots of celebrities but I prefer cooking by myself in my kitchen I am a not very fast but very enthusiastic, very amateur, self taught race walker who is about to start training for my second half marathon I am an avid yoga practitioner who has lost her way but is slowly trying to get my mojo back The only I vegetable dislike so much that I cannot eat it is okra I can't stop listening to Adele  I prefer salty, crispy over sweet any day Now, I will pass this award on to some blogs that I am loving these days: Jen @ piccante dolce Jean @ lemons and anchovies Suzie @ suzie the foodie rachael...