The Yum Yum Factor

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...

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...

It's a new year and I am starting to book some new, exciting events and classes. First up will be another Drop in Dinner at The Deppaneur here in Toronto on Friday, January 22 starting at 6pm. I will be serving this salad with either a delicious Pork Chili Verde or my vegan Jackfruit Pozole  , some Agua de Jamaica to wash it down and Mexicanish Compost Cookies for dessert. I made the salad that this was inspired by and it was delicious but some things just didn't work for me so I made some changes and tinkered with it and came up with this variation. Don't get me wrong, Rick Bayless's version was delicious but the dressing was thicker than I wanted and I found that the addition of orange juice brightened it up (and I thinned it out a bit too). So, you can make this yourself OR you can come to the Deppaneur, say hi and let me make it for you.  Beets, Roasted Fennel and Oranges with Pepita Crema adapted from Rick Bayless Ingredien...

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...

In my continuing efforts to attain world peace through food, today we are going to look at the similarities between Middle Eastern food and Jamaican food. I was asked to come up with a BBQ recipe using a Grace's Jerk Product as part of their #GrillWithGrace campaign and since you will always find Grace's Jerk Seasoning as well as the marinade in my fridge, I didn't hesitate to accept the gig. I have never really perfected my own jerk, to date, and so I use Grace's all the time. Shack is really picky about jerk and he doesn't like it too allspicey and he doesn't like too hot and since he loves the flavour of Grace's Mild Jerk Seasoning and Marinade, that is what we go with. We always have to keep the picky toddler happy. The traditional way to use this stuff is to rub the seasoning paste all over your chicken or pork and let it sit in the fridge overnight and then cook it, preferably over a grill and it's delicious as is, straight...

I honestly feel like all I have done lately is go out to eat. I am either at a media preview for someone's new summer menu or a cocktail party to promote Savour Stratford, which is great so don't get me wrong. I just feel like I haven't cooked anything beyond dippy eggs and toast for weeks. Father's Day was the perfect excuse to grill up a couple of beautiful striploins, bake some potatoes and make a giant salad. Simple, delicious, and most importantly, made by my own hot little hands. I taught my first cooking class at Loblaws a couple of weeks ago and it went very well, I think. Nobody threw things at me or booed and, most importantly, everyone seemed to actually listen to me. I was given a recipe for a seafood chowder with fennel and then I was to supply a second of my own choosing. Since the chowder would use up half a bulb of fennel, it seemed like a good idea to use the other half in a salad and showcase a way to eat it raw. The ladies in the class...

 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 ...

I made these incredible toasts from Not Without Salt last night and I ended up with half a baguette's worth of toasted bread left since The Kid didn't come home for dinner. I kept staring at them all day, wondering what to do with them when I thought "fattoush!" I just got myself the cookbook, Jerusalem, and after reading it cover to cover I am mildly obsessed with all things middle eastern right now. I often find myself walking down the street and "fattoush!" will just pop into my head and I have to run home and open Jerusalem and read it a bit to calm myself down.

Have you ever eaten something that haunts you long after the fact? About a year ago I had a raw brussels sprout salad in a restaurant. I am pretty sure it was Pizzeria Libretto but If it was there it doesn't seem to be on the menu anymore. It was kind of rich and cheesy but with a really light, bright vinaigrette and it happened to be the first time I had eaten raw brussels sprouts. We eat roasted brussels sprouts so often that I wouldn't be shocked if I woke up to find that I had started sprouting little leaves on all of my limbs like the kid in The Odd Life Of Timothy Green. Anyway, since eating that salad, I haven't been able to stop thinking of it. Of course, I have also never tried to make it at home either, but that doesn't change the fact that despite my pining for it, clearly I was waiting for someone else to make it for me again and that didn't appear to be working out for me. I found myself with a handful of sprouts left in the fridge - not en...

I was invited to the Foodies Forever Blogger Launch put on by Cutco  Cutlery this week and I dragged Shack out with me to act as my photographer, which he does for me on occasion. He happens to be a very good photographer and he also acts as my body guard, chauffeur and male escort. If I ask him to, he also cuts my meat. He is an awfully good guy to have around. The event was held at the Liason College Campus in downtown Toronto. Little did I know that the lovely ladies of Cutco planned on dragging all of us into the kitchen (it is a cooking school) to get our hands dirty. Okay, we got our hands dirty AFTER we washed them thoroughly, of course, and then we washed them again because they did get dirty. I was in a group with the effervescent Linda Nusca, Cutco's top Canadian Sales Consultant. She basically guided us through what they call "the Cutco cooking experience". People can contact the company and set up what is almost like a little dinner p...

Even though his dish didn't win the regional Almost Famous Chef competition last week, it was my favourite. Kellie Callender's Slow Roasted Salmon with Quinoa Salad is totally my jam. Don't get wrong- all of the other dishes were great but this was something I could see myself eating at home all time. Salmon is our "Shack is away working out of town" fish so I skipped that part for now but I didn't let that stop me from trying the salad because, luckily, he doesn't care for salmon but he really likes quinoa.

Summer like weather is here, even it it's not supposed to be this hot yet and that means we have already started to eat like it's July. Last summer, I was knee deep in my no reEATS  challenge so The Kid and I were pulling our hair out, trying to come up with things we felt like eating in the hot weather. Generally speaking, I keep all sorts of dips and salads and condiments in the fridge and then we will grill some fish or sausages or a bit of meat and that will be dinner night after night. Some nights we might have some greek pita, other nights a bit of pasta salad, a little chunk of cheese and olives to round out the platter but we are all pretty happy eating basically the same meal night after night.  You know, I was fine with the no repeating a recipe during the cold winter months, but the summer almost killed me. I won't tell you how many nights I broke down and cried in my kitchen because all I wanted was some dip, bread and a bit of grilled salmon but I had t...

I have one of those weird kids who adores salad. He especially loves the salad dressing that they serve at one of our favourite local sushi restaurants. It is really light and sweet, has grated apple, carrot and ginger, doesn't appear to have much oil and, unfortunately, I have never been able to replicate it. Over the years he has come to love the various Japanese dressings we are served in the japanese restaurants we frequent - the weird beige dressing that I think is a sesame seed dressing, the weird orange one that I think is the sesame seed dressing with some ketchup added to it and pretty much any other variation of an asian tasting vinaigrette. This makes my quest a bit easier because I no longer  have to replicate the original beloved dressing to get him to eat a dressed salad. (He used to eat his salads dry in protest) I have read a million versions of dressings that have ketchup in them and even if I think he will love it, I am not emotionally prepared to go that ro...

Last weekend, we had a major kitchen disaster when we managed to turn a nice looking tri tip beef roast into a grey mass of flavourless shredded meat. It was a mustard rubbed roast that I thought would be okay if we threw it in the slow cooker all day and then I planned to make a sauce and eat it on mashed potatoes. NOT! I drained all the liquid off and put the offending roast in the fridge and gave myself a day or two to think of a clever way of making this thing edible. It was either going to be some sort of taco or make BBQ and because it was already covered in a grainy mustard rub, I decided that BBQ made more sense. If we are going to have BBQ fake brisket sandwiches out of my beef rescue , I was going to need to make some coleslaw.

So, it's the third week of Grilled Cheese month, otherwise known as April, and I was craving something that would feel taste like a cheese ball. Doesn't everyone my age have happy childhood memories of parking themselves right next to your aunt's famous cheeseball that she rolled in toasted walnuts and just hoovering the entire thing? The cheeseball I am remembering had a bit cayenne and a tiny bit of brandy added to it so it was exiting to eat as a child. I would pretend that I was feeling all tipsy from consuming a tbls of booze. Or is that just me?

I think I am over soup for now because all I can think about are salads. I want crunch, I want some sour, I want spring freshness and light dressings with herbs. I had made a really light red curry chicken for dinner and was thinking I would make a green mango salad but I couldn't find any green mango. What I did find was a green papaya and a big chunk of daikon which is actually even better. Fresh thai basil, cilantro and mint and I was ready to roll. Green Papaya and Daikon Salad -1/2 green papaya, seeded, peeled and sliced into thin julienne slices -6" piece of daikon, peeled, cut into thin strips on the mandoline and julienned -3 or 4 radishes, cut on the mandoline and julienned -a couple of tables of fresh cilantro, thai basil and mint. The proportions and amounts are really up to you. I love cilantro so I always go a bit heavier on that -a handful of bean sprouts Dressing 1.5 tbls fish sauce 1.5 tbls of palm sugar or regular sugar 1.5 tbls of f...

I don't get how people can hate beets. They say they taste like dirt. I haven't tasted dirt in a very long time but I don't recall it tasting sweet and delicious. Plus, how can you not love a vegetable with such beautiful colour? I love everything about beets. I love them roasted, I love them hot, I love them cold, I love them grated raw in salads, I love them cooked and then fried in butter the way my mom used to make them and I love them pickled. I roasted some beets Saturday so I could make a salad with them Sunday to go with our pork panini dinner, my entry on no reEATS today. The smooth, sweetness of the beets goes beautifully with the peppery flavours of arugula, the crunch of a radish, the smooth silkiness of avocado and the salty bite of a few roasted pumpkin seeds. That sounds like bad copy for a tv commercial for the salad board but it's true. Anyway, it's a very simple little salad but simple is often all we really need. dressing: 1/2 cup extr...