The Yum Yum Factor

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here, or anything, but a friend made Middle Eastern Lentil Soup and so I decided to get some going as well. This is a soup I cook all the time and it's one of my favourite comfort foods but today, it's humid and dark and rainy and I need something with a bit more kick to it. I made my regular recipe, more or less but swapped out the spices for my favourite Turkish chili flakes, added a drizzle of my Crispy Garlic Chili Oil because that always makes everything better and a mound of my crispy fried shallots or onions that I always have in the pantry. They are tasty and easy and cheap and you can get them in any type of Asian grocery store. Wow, that's a lot of crispy things going on. Urfa Biber Maras Both are available online if you aren't lucky enough to have a Turkish grocery shop nearbye. I put them in everything and go through an alarming amount of them. Thankfully, I buy big jars of them at the Turkish store so I never run out. T...

I enjoy the challenge of offering a vegetarian version of dishes I serve that are an equally delicious version of the meal that the carnivores are going to eat instead of completely different plate. I wanted to put  Aguadito do Pollo  on an upcoming menu and I knew I wanted to feed the vegetarians something that will have the same flavour profile and so I tried a few things. Aguadito de Pollo is a traditional Peruvian meal that is often served for breakfast after a big party aka for a hangover, making it a staple for New Year's Day or after a big wedding or party. Adding tofu was okay but not great and I also didn't feel like the Jackfruit worked - I wanted something that would really add some heartiness and also have the soft texture of the pulled chicken and neither of those options did that for me. Using a small white bean -either cannellini or navy beans- hit all the right notes. Other than no crispy chicken skin, I didn't feel like I was losing anything by replacing th...

  I have been taxed with the task of making our food more heart healthy and although I have always assumed that we already eat very well, thank you very much, I have been shocked by how much sodium we consume. SHOCKED, I say. One of our favourite things to eat is ramen and when I did some digging, I realized that each bowl of delicious spicy miso ramen had over 3000mg of sodium and that isn't even accounting for some of the add ins. This will not do. I have spent weeks working on my favourite recipe and I have managed to get it down to under 700mg of sodium per bowl, which is still a bit high but nothing close to what we were used to. There is also some disagreement about how we process the sodium in miso and although it is significant, a traditional Japanese diet which is high is miso and soy sauce does not result in any sort of widespread heart disease and, in fact, may actually be considered part of a heart healthy diet. I am trying to cut the difference and not worry too much a...

  I tried to make shakshuka for five days.  Day 1: ordered all the ingredients I needed online for delivery. Shit, can't get it til tomorrow. No problem, we will eat something else tonight but super excited for tomorrow's dinner Day 2: groceries come! Time to start.....oh, wait, what? You feel like ordering Thai? But I was...okay, Thai does sound like it would hit the spot. Shakshuka tomorrow, FOR SURE Day 3: make the shakshuka tomato/red pepper sauce in anticipation of tonight's shakshuka. Sit outside with my neighbours for a glass of wine and the next thing I know, we grab The Kid and venture on down to sit on the patio at The Pub. It's the only place that will let us take a table for 8 so we can sit at opposite ends of the table and their salt and pepper wings are really delicious..... Day 4: TODAY IS THE DAY. WE are making this damned shakshuka if it kills me, but first, a visit to drop off something to friends we haven't seen since January. Go to drop it off on...

Hello, fellow home sheltering peeps. It's been a looooong couple months, hasn't it? Where are we now, anyway? Is sourdough over? Have we started canning and panic buying all the Bell jars and pectin yet? I know that finding vegetable plants for me wee, city garden is probably going to be a hellscape, but hey, what can you do when you live in a shoe?  Aaaanyway, I have a few processed foods that I unabashedly love. I LOVE good instant ramen. I love to soup it up with poached egg, chili sauce, vegetables, leftover meat or seafood. Love it. I also love Campbells Everyday Gourmet Sweet Potato Tomatillo Soup. A big bowl of that with a grilled cheese to dip into it...ahhh. For some reason, and this precedes the pandemic so I know it's not soup panic hoarding, I haven't been able to find it for months. I had thrown some canned tomatillos in the freezer a few weeks ago and decided to try to recreate it at home. It's very weird for me to want to create a Campbe...

I know that this week is going to be cold thanks to some polar vortex that we can add to our global pandemic and the hot, new Murder Hornet situation, but go and check out the latest issue of Vitalize Magazine  where you can find my recipe for this Canadianized homage to one of my favourite restaurants, Mexico City staple, Contramar  (recipe starts on page 74). This herby, Salmon A La Talla with an easy salsa and yummy salad will put a spring in your step whether we are stuck in our apartment or lucky enough to have an outside space to enjoy a summery meal. Make yourself a big, icy gin and tonic with a slice or two of cucumber and put on some Grupo Firme (download anything you can find on Itunes or Spotify and thank me later). Little did I know that my last Contramar meal this past Christmas would be my last for what will most likely be a long time. It looks like I am going to have to start replicating lots of my favourite dishes here at home so keep an eye out for that ...

Yup, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. We are all spending way more time in our homes than usual and for some of us who are not working, that means ALL of our time in our homes. While I have watched all these people teach themselves how to knit, learn Mandarin, choreograph family dance routines and bake sourdough bread four times a day, I have been allowing myself to do nothing. Doing nothing is an option, by the way. Doing nothing has been my way of coping, of keeping myself calm and hold the zombie apocalypse fears at bay. We can't all be A type git' er done people and we all do what we need to do to stay sane. We are eating well but my guys really miss pizza and I am not super comfortable ordering it out. I am not at the full on paranoid, pressure washing my mail stage, but I do feel more comfortable ordering food that I can pour into my own pots and reheat, like Thai or Indian food. We have also had a couple of great meal kits from some of our favourite local r...

Makes 2 loaves As I mourn the impending end of my beloved summer weather, my thoughts start to turn to homemade bread, stews and other cold weather dishes. I do love fall though so I am not quite ready for stew but I couldn't resist turning on my oven to make some soda bread. Browning the butter gives the bread a nice, nutty flavour and it really is the easiest thing to whip up. No yeast, no resting, no rising, just dense, chewy, delicious bread that is best on the day you bake it but it makes great toast for the next day or two, not that you will have anything left to test that out. Brown Butter Soda Bread 1/4 cup of unsalted butter 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats 1 tbls sugar 1 tbls chopped fresh rosemary and more whole rosemary leaves for topping 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp kosher salt 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper plus a few more grinds for topping *1 3/4 cup buttermilk 1 egg white, beaten with a sp...

Mujadara, mujaddara, mejadra - I have seen many variations on the spelling and slight variations of the recipe, depending on which part of the Arab world it is coming from. Christian Arabs eat this during lent, it's popular with Jewish communities from Israel to Syria and Egypt and it should be popular with you too. Packed full of flavour and protein, it makes a great vegetarian meal alongside some steamed or roasted vegetables. I served it with harissa yogurt and shrimp fried in the shallot oil for these photos. You can drizzle some Zhug or other hot sauce, serve with yogurt or smother it in fresh herbs like mint, cilantro and parsley - that's all up to you. What I give you is a solid, basic recipe for mujadara made in the Instant Pot. Doing it in the pressure cooker means you don't have to cook the lentils and rice separately and no babysitting the rice on the stove is required. I do cook the crispy shallots in a small frying pan because I don't find that sauté ...

Spring is in the air and a young girl's thoughts turn to....... Wine Poached Pears with Vanilla Whipped Yogurt. Okay, pears are not in season here until late summer, I know, but they are still easy to find in the grocery store. As the weather gets warmer, I want lighter treats. My winter pies and molten chocolate things start to feel too heavy and I just want fruity, lighter desserts. Poaching pears in wine (you can totally do this with white wine too but you won't get the fabulous colour) I also really love the tang you get with whipped yogurt - there's enough cream in there to ensure that it's still rich and decadent, don't worry. I also love that this dessert looks incredibly fancy but is so easy to make. You can make the pears a day in advance and store them in the fridge with the poaching liquid and then just bring them to room temperature while you reduce the poaching liquid until it's syrupy. Wine Poached Pears with Vanilla Whipped Yogur...

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 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...