The Yum Yum Factor

Some pretty fun stuff is on the horizon for this old gal and one of the things I really excited about is my stint as the guest chef at an upcoming drop in dinner at The Depanneur on Friday, October 16. Diners will be eating my BiBimBap Sopes  as well as a whack of banchan and I have been recipe testing like a mad woman for the last couple of weeks. The only thing that hadn't occurred to me, was that I was also going to need a vegetarian version of my dish as an entree. A vegetarian option to pulled pork???  I work with a knife, not a wand! I will be honest and admit that I was about to throw in the towel and just make a second, entirely different dish to feed to the vegetarians when I remembered reading about jackfruit and how it's THE go to ingredient to replace pulled pork in recipes. One google search revealed that this is absolutely a thing and by the way everyone raved about it,  I figured it was worth a try. Of course,  I was  highly...

As the proud owner of a new FoodSaver vacuum sealer  (my review will be up soon), I have spent the last week playing around with it and sucking the air out of everything in my path. I had used the zip lock bags, the jar sealer, sealed up potato chip bags, and made a custom bag to marinate some flank steak in as well as using another one to freeze some soup. The only thing left to do with it was to take the quick marinator out for a spin and, as luck would have it, my door on my mini freezer in my basement was left ajar overnight and so a rack of pork side ribs was almost completely thawed out and I had to use them asap. That decision was made for me, ribs it would be. I was fancying some sort of miso flavoured meat so I whipped up this marinade, threw the meat and the marinade in the marinator container and let the machine work it's magic. I would usually leave these ribs in the fridge overnight but, to be honest, my fridge is almost always packed and I hate having to ...

Last week I went to Momofuku with my friend, Alice,  for ramen at long last. I have been putting this visit off since it opened because it seemed like it was nearly impossible to get a seat at lunch but we happened to be working at the Shangri La Hotel all day so I couldn't not go. More or less living up to the hype, the soup was pretty damned fabulous but the thing I couldn't stop thinking about afterwards was the poached egg they add to it. We get a soft cooked egg in our ramen all the time but it just comes to the table with the egg already in there and I have always just assumed that they poach them the same way I poach them. I bring a pot of water to a simmer, stir the middle to make a vortex - DAMN YOU WINTER VORTEX- and gently slide in an egg that I have cracked into a small bowl. I simmer that for about 3 minutes and gently remove with a slotted spoon and then drain on another paper towel lined slotted spoon. It's not brain surgery but it requires your full att...

It is a new year and so it is time for a new pulled pork recipe. If you read this blog from time to time, you can't help but notice that we like our pork. Although we love all parts of the glorious pig, we do really like our pork shoulder. Some favourites have been an apple pulled pork , a Korean pulled pork , and   a second Korean pulled pork , we have done the momofuku pulled pork in the oven with nothing but tons of salt and brown sugar and make pork for tacos all the time like these carnitas . A pork shoulder jumps into the crock pot at least a couple times a month in the winter time and although I can't recall the last time we met one we didn't like immensely, I have been tinkering with something a bit more classic to make The Kid happy. Shack  makes a mustard mop that is out of this world (and I still can't get the recipe out of him because he is not a nice man) but I thought it would be good to come up with a bbq sauce version too. The Kid loves B...

I am such a lucky girl lately. I was asked to take a programable  Crock-Pot© for test drive and give it a review. I was giddy at the offer because I am still using the crock pot that my mother gave me over 25 years ago. To be very honest, after she gave it to me, I never used it. I packed it away and it followed me from house to house, city to city, unused and mostly forgotten, much like her gift of a dreaded red, orlon sweater with a giant asian dragon embroidered across the front. I would wear that hideous sweater once a year when I went to pick her up from the train station at Christmas. She would see that red dragon peaking out under my coat and squeal with delight "oh, that's the sweater I bought you!" and I would say, offhandedly, "did you buy me this? Oh that's right, you did" like I wore the thing so much I couldn't remember when it came from. The things we do for love. Yikes!

Okay, I am a self admitted food snob but I am also a bit of an inconsistent food snob. The bottom line is that I like delicious food and for the most part, that also means real, whole foods. Blah blah blah I also love McDonald's fries, Nacho Cheese Doritos with a hot , white passion and don't even think about getting me to promise that I will never eat doctored up ramen again. So, admitting that I do love selective crappy foods, I have been feeling a bit guilty about my rantings and railings against the use of "cream of cack" in dishes that are , otherwise, composed of yummy ingredients. I also have to admit that I have lots of time to cook things from scratch during the week because I work freelance (which often means that I don't work for days on end and can sit at home on my butt, playing Candy Crush Saga on facebook and soak great white northern beans for soup) and I only have one kid who is gone from 8:30am to 6pm because, unlike his mother, he WORK...

I really love ribs and in the summer time we often make them in the smoker. It takes all day and it's truly a labour of love but well worth the effort if you have that kind of time. Unfortunately, we don't always have an entire day to babysit meat in the smoker and in the winter, even if we COULD smoke ribs all day out in the snow, we won't because we are not nuts and it's way too cold to spend the day outdoors cooking. I used to cook them slow and low for hours in the oven and then broil them but I always feel like I should be home when I have the oven on all afternoon - it's the paranoid old lady channeling my mother I guess. Next thing you know, I will refuse to drive on rainy days, on really sunny days, in rush hour or at night... oh wait, I already don't drive at night if it is raining. Never mind.

Who doesn't love pulled pork? Crazy people, that's who. Making pulled pork in the crockpot is such a no brainer, easy meal that requires almost no time, skill or finesse that I wonder why we don't eat it every single day to be honest. I have still never found THE ultimate pulled pork recipe so I am always tinkering and trying new sauces, new rubs and one day I will find that pulled pork love of my life and I will shout from the rooftops. The best thing about pulled pork is that there is almost no such thing as bad pulled pork. Even if you just throw a pork butt in the slow cooker with nothing but some salt, pepper and a slurp of chicken stock or soda pop or apple juice and then toss it with a good bottled sauce afterwards, it's going to be good enough that your family will still think you are a rock star.

The last couple of weeks have been a very trying time as we suffered a loss of a much loved family member. Not only did I not blog at all, I have only cooked one meal in all that time. We have eaten out or ordered in every night and now it's time for all of us to get back on track and , for me, that includes getting back in the kitchen.