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Standardby Julie10 Comments

This was the trickiest of the lot, but perhaps the most satisfying to crack. The cheddar Mmmuffins had a slightly sweet, cakey texture, and were brilliant orange. My initial tests were tasty but missing the mark… it wasn’t until a CBC listener messaged me with a tip: back in the eighties, working at a different chain eatery, she used powdered cheddar when making the muffins. I added about half a pack of the cheese mix from a box of KD and voilà—extra cheesiness, but also that intense orange colour that acts as a visual cue, making them taste even cheesier. You could, of course, use extra-old white cheddar here—and you could omit the powdered cheese… just expect them to look a bit different.

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Standardby Julie2 Comments

Gnocchi is one of those dishes that can feel fancy and intimidating until you learn how to make it – and if you grew up with your family making it from scratch on the regular, and perhaps your job was to sit at the counter and roll little nubs of dough into gnocchi like it was for my good friend Emily Richards, it’s not intimidating at all, but a meal you can make quickly on any regular night. Emily is truly one of the best people I know.. and also one of the most knowledgeable when it comes to cooking. She comes from an Italian family, and is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to pastas and sauces and gnocchi, which she mastered at the side of her mom, aunts and grandmas.

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Standardby Julie4 Comments

I’ve been in rugelach mode all weekend, making batches of sweet versions (dark chocolate-tahini! apricot-pecan! apricot-chocolate! Nutella! pistachio paste! cinnamon-sugar! for a couple virtual cooking classes (these ones were fundraisers for the CBC Calgary Food Bank Drive), and then doing a shortbread Instagram live bake with Amy, she mentioned having made everything bagel rugelach… and thus the seed was planted.

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Standardby Julie13 Comments

I’ve been at two events in the past two weeks that served plates of this whipped feta topped with roasted beets and dukkah – both were celebrating the launch of the new Calgary Eats cookbook, a collaboration between 40 Calgary restaurants including Ten Foot Henry, whose chef, Steve Smee, contributed this recipe. I have a bowl of roasted beets in my fridge (you can do them in the slow cooker!) and is there a better combo than beets and feta or creamy goat cheese? Wait – how about whipped feta you can drag through with soft flatbread instead of relying on a green salad as delivery vehicle? This is going directly into my regular repertoire.

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Standardby Julie0 Comments

I could live on potatoes and cheese, I think—or bread and cheese, pasta and cheese… anything and cheese, provided it’s the buttery, meltable kind. So when the folks from Jarlsberg asked if I’d be wiling to come up with another way to use their creamy, nutty cheese, I was more than happy to oblige. This is one of the best parts of my job. Since Jarlsberg is a Swiss style cheese, I thought I’d make a rösti—a substantial potato pancake, crispy on the top and bottom, and in this case stuffed with melty Jarlsberg. If you’re not familiar with it, you may recognize the yellow patterned rind—Jarlsberg came to be in a small Norwegian village called Ås in the fifties, as a group of students conducted experiments using various cheesemaking techniques typically used with Gouda and Emmental. Because it’s so creamy and meltable, it’s fantastic in fondue and mac & cheese, and really anything you’d like to be a bit gooey. It’s fab on aContinue reading

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Standardby Julie15 Comments

You guys! I’ve been holding out on you. I had the most amazing pimento cheese at a Christmas party last weekend, and although I haven’t had or made it in years, it was like a rebirth into the world of pimento cheese. I had forgotten how much I love its intensely cheesy, mayo-y, briny deliciousness. I immediately requested the recipe from the friend who had brought it, who had found it on the conversation thread of a makeup tutorial YouTube channel she frequents. Ah, the internet. Remember when you got recipes from your neighbours and small collection of cookbooks, or clipped it out of the newspaper? So this particular pimento cheese came from a woman who got it from her southern mother – pimento cheese is a southern thing, not surprisingly from the same era as the cheese ball. At its core, it’s extra-aged cheddar and mayo, with a hit of spice in the form of cayenne or chili flakes. I instantly asked my FacebookContinue reading

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Standardby Julie6 Comments

Following the unexpected runaway success of a random Facebook post of a sheet pan full of grilled cheese sandwiches – yes, you can simultaneously cook as many as you can fit on a sheet by baking them at 450F for about ten minutes, flipping them halfway through, and they’re perfectly evenly melted and toasty – I decided to do the same with a batch of croque monsieur. It was perfect timing, as Grimm’s is currently doing a holiday campaign in which they ask food writers across Canada to cook with their products, and in return donate $500 worth of Grimm’s Fine Foods products to their charity of choice – so I made these to share in support of Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids (BB4CK), an organization that feeds 4,400 kids in Calgary every school day. It seems fitting to share our lunch in exchange for providing so many kids with a lunch they might not otherwise get. The folks at Grimm’s sent us a coupleContinue reading

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Standardby Julie13 Comments

Even though buds are popping out in the back yard as we speak, I’m in a comfort food state of mind – and really, for many of us grilled cheese and tomato soup are about as nostalgic as it gets. I got it in mind awhile ago to take the gooey toasted bread that typically lids a baked French onion soup and apply it to tomato soup using cheddar, and save us all the trouble of dunking our grilled cheese sandwich into our soup. I mean, look at it.

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Standardby Julie4 Comments

I partnered with Jarlsberg to bring you this cheesy goodness. I’ve seen mention of patty melts here and there, and each time I see one I wonder why it is not number one on my all-time favourite foods list. A mash-up (truly) of grilled cheese and burger – two of my favourite things, yet mysteriously missing from restaurant menus (at least in my vicinity), and not something I’ve clued in on enough to attempt to make of my own accord. I’ve been meaning to rectify that, and Jarlsberg came along and gave me reason to finally jump in. A patty melt, if you’re unfamiliar, is an American thing – I’m not sure of its origins, but won’t bother Wikipedia-ing it because it doesn’t much matter – all that matters is that onions are caramelized, a burger patty is smash-cooked in your skillet afterward, and it’s all piled between two slices of bread (to make it grillable) with plenty of meltable cheese to glue the wholeContinue reading

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