GREATNESS BY ACCIDENT

Sometimes cooking something new doesn't go as planned.  Especially when you use your experiences from previous recipes and try coming up with your own creation.

A recipe that you followed and turned out excellent will inspire you to use similar methods to try making something different.  If it worked then, if should work now, right?  Not always.  And sometimes when things don't go as we thought it would, our natural reaction a lot of the time is to throw in the towel.

But just because your original idea didn't work, it doesn't mean that you were not on to something.

Sure, there are times when you substituted an ingredient for something similar and it turned out to be a disaster.  In the early stages of when I started taking my cooking a lot more seriously, I had made a homemade pasta sauce from a recipe I found and it turned out great.  It turned out so great that the following week I decided to make it again.  Unfortunately, none of the supermarkets near me had fresh basil, which the recipe called for.  So I turned to dried basil that you get in your typical spice aisle.  BIG mistake!  The sauce was ruined.

But there are also times when a dish is still salvageable.  You just need to change the game plan.

Previously made Pesto Pasta.  Perfection.

Last year, I had an idea to make a pesto dish using broccoli and cauliflower instead of pasta.  A pesto pasta recipe I made a few months prior turned out great and I figured replacing the pasta with broccoli and cauliflower would be simple enough.

I went back to the pasta recipe to remind myself of the ingredients I needed to make the pesto sauce and the basic instructions to make it.  The sauce called for cashews soaked for a few hours, some basil, garlic, lemon juice, grated Parmesan and extra virgin olive oil.

I bought the ingredients and started with soaking the cashews first.  I used more cashews than the pasta recipe called for, thinking I was going to make a large batch of pesto broccoli and cauliflower and therefore needed lots of sauce.

Once the cashews had soaked for a few hours to soften them up, It was time to put them in my food processor and periodically add everything else.  Unfortunately, the mixture was not creating any kind of smooth consistency.  It was becoming more like a ball of dough than anything else.  Adding a little extra olive oil wasn't helping.  I had made the mistake of using too many cashews, and if I wanted to get the mixture smooth, it would have meant adding a lot more olive oil which I didn't want to do.

When my attempt at a Pesto sauce for a Broccoli & Cauliflower dish didn't work, I came up
with Plan B: Operation Salvage.

I stopped the food processor and looked for a minute at what I had.  It looked more like a stuffing you would have with turkey than any kind of sauce.  I decided to give it a taste and it tasted excellent!

I decided that I needed to change my game plan as I had stumbled on to something.  I still had the broccoli and cauliflower, but I also had some grape tomatoes, half a brick of mozzarella and an extra red pepper leftover from the previous days' creation.

I roasted the red pepper, cut the grape tomatoes in half and grated the mozzarella.  I kept some grated mozzarella to the side and put everything else into a large bowl with the cauliflower, broccoli and cashew mixture.  Mixed it all up, put it in a baking tray, topped with the remaining mozzarella and some pepper.  Baked at about 400 degrees for 15 minutes and out came my Cheesy Baked Cauliflower and Broccoli with Pesto Stuffing!

Greatness by accident!

CHEESY BAKED CAULIFLOWER & BROCCOLI with PESTO STUFFING

INGREDIENTS

4 cups of raw natural cashews.

1/4 cup fresh chopped basil.

3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped.

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice.

2 Tbsp grated parmesan.

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil.

4 cups broccoli florets.

4 cups cauliflower florets.

1 pint grape/cherry tomatoes (about 20 of them), sliced in half.

1 red bell pepper, roasted and chopped.

4 cups grated mozzarella.  Put aside 1 cup for topping.

1 tsp ground black pepper.

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  Soak cashews in water for about 3 hours.

2.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees after the cashews are done soaking.

3.  Mix cashews, basil, chopped garlic, lemon juice and parmesan in a food proccessor while slowly adding the olive oil during the mixing process.  Continue mixing until it has a stuffing texture throughout.  Process will take close to 10 minutes depending on how powerful your proccessor is.

4.  Put stuffing mixture in a large mixing bowl and add the broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, only THREE cups of the mozzarella and the ground pepper.  Mix and combine in the bowl.

5.  Put the entire mixture into a baking pan line with non-stick cooking spray.  Top with the remaining mozzarella.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Serve.

Chef Nairby

MAKE YOUR OWN PASTA SAUCE

Quick!  You are going to make a basic pasta dish for dinner tonight.  What do you need?

Think about it for a second....

Did the term, "jar or can of pasta sauce" squeeze its way into your list of ingredients?  Why?  Convenience?  Do you know how easy it is to make your own sauce?  It is as simple as tomatoes, tomato paste and your imagination.  And this is not coming from a professional Chef.

Maybe it is a price issue.  A jar or can of sauce is ready to go and cheaper than buying the ingredients, right?  Not exactly.  One jar of standard, simple pasta sauce can cost up to $4 or more.  And you're lucky if you get two servings out of it.  Meanwhile, buying fresh ingredients in bulk might cost a bit more, but you can create a sauce that not only blows anything from a jar or can away, but also yields enough to last several meals and is not filled with preservatives.

Homemade pasta sauce is all about the tomatoes and whatever else you choose to put into it.

A simple homemade pasta sauce does require extra effort and time to make, but the final product is worth it.  AND you can experiment with different ingredients and create your own signature sauce that your friends and family will go crazy for.  You can make that special homemade sauce that has people saying, "If I was on death row, I would want YOUR pasta sauce for my last meal!"

A homemade pasta sauce starts with the tomatoes.  Lots of tomatoes.  Whatever kind you choose.  Chop them up, throw them into a big pot, stir occasionally and watch as they become the base of your sauce.  Add your favorite chopped veggies, spices, red wine....THE SAUCE IS YOUR OYSTER!

Lots of tomatoes, some spice and veggies.  Add meat if you want!

Set a date aside for some homemade pasta sauce-making and experiment.  If you're like me, you will never go back to pre-made in a jar again!  If you're like me, you will soon realize that you have more time than you initially thought to experiment with cooking for REAL.

Effort and hard work are worth it.  You have a food artist locked inside of you that is aching to get out!  You will quickly start to enjoy the process of creating something of your own as you not only create food art, but memories as well.  Those are things you cannot get from a jar.

You cannot get this from a jar!

Check out another "How-to" video from Chef Nairby!  "Make Your Own Pasta Sauce", with special guest, Dr. Hannibal Lecter!  Music by Sergei Gavriliuk.

EASY HOMEMADE PASTA SAUCE

INGREDIENTS -Lots of tomatoes, chopped.  Base how many tomatoes you need on the size of the pot you will be making your pasta sauce in.  Use enough tomatoes that would almost fill the entire pot. -3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped. -2 medium sized cans, or one large can tomato paste. -4 cups of sliced mushrooms. -1/2 cup fresh chopped basil. -2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil.


INSTRUCTIONS 1.  Heat olive oil in your large pot.  Add chopped garlic and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. 2.  Add mushrooms and stir.  Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Mushrooms will give off liquid.  Good! 3.  Add chopped tomatoes, tomato paste and chopped basil.  Stir.  Cover and cook on medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.  The tomatoes will turn into a thick sauce over time.  How thick you want your sauce depends on your liking, so use your eyes and nose to determine when sauce is ready.

**If you choose to add more vegetables to your sauce, such as celery, carrots, onion, etc, add them step 2.  If adding meat, such as ground beef, cook the ground beef in a separate pan and add AFTER the tomatoes, tomato paste and basil stage.

Pasta with homemade tomato and mushroom sauce.

Chef Nairby

FOOTBALL FOOD

It's Super Bowl time!  And that means Tailgating and Super Bowl parties!  And THAT means FOOTBALL FOOD!

It's odd how there are countries that have their own unique style of cuisine, but there are also occasions we celebrate where you can't just have your basic meat and potatoes or simple hamburgers and hot dogs if you want to do it right.  Christmas and Thanksgiving have turkey.  Birthdays have cake and ice cream.  Super Bowl parties, or in my case as a Canadian, Grey Cup parties (GO ARGOS!), and just football tailgating in general are in their own league!

Grey Cup 2007 week.  Many many pounds ago!  Partying with Saskatchewan Roughrider fans at Riderville.

Lenny Kravitz performs the Halftime show!

We have all seen them on TV.  Most of us have not been lucky enough to attend a REAL tailgate party.  Here in Toronto, we have the Canadian Football League and the Toronto Argos.  Unfortunately, our Argos don't usually have much of a pregame tailgate party going on except those put on by corporate sponsored vendors where the beers are $14 a can and the hot dogs are your basic sized hot dogs stuffed in a standard bun with an option to top with whatever sauce company is sponsoring the zone you are in.  It is not the real deal.  It is not like what you see from our neighbors to the South.

The Super Bowl, NCAA Championship game, and yes, even the Grey Cup but to a lesser extent are not just events, they are a celebration.  And one things for sure...they are also a celebration of food!

Full house at the SkyDome (aka Rogers Centre) for the championship game  Roughriders vs Blue Bombers.

Final score.  The Saskatchewan Roughriders win the 2007 Grey Cup, as we all expected.

One of the things on my bucket list is to attend an NFL game and an NCAA football game as well as a real pregame tailgate party.  The crazy thing is that, up until 2004, I hated football with a passion.  I was a hockey guy.  But then the NHL lockout of 2004 occurred and I needed a sport to fill the void.  That became football after stumbling across a Boise State Broncos home game on TV.  The insane atmosphere of the crowd was one thing, but the blue field is what got me hooked instantly and I suddenly remembered that we not only have a professional league in Canada, my city has a team which at that time had just won the Grey Cup!  I ordered season tickets for the following year and my football fandom journey began!

A few years ago, we held the NCAA International Bowl here in Toronto.  I attended two of them, but much like the Argo home games, the tailgating was not the real thing like what we see on TV.  I want to experience the slow cooked pulled pork!  The jumbo hotdogs, ribs and burgers!  And that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Much like Christmas and Thanksgiving, Super Bowl Sunday is a day where millions of people throw whatever diet they might be on out the window.  Everything becomes super-sized!  I like super-sized every now and then.

Ingredients for Slow cooked Mozzarella Stuffed Italian Meatballs.

I like meat!  And on special occasions, I like fatty meat!  And lots of it!  And I like my slow cooker!  I like beef, sausage, fresh spices and cheese!  I like meatballs!  I like meatballs stuffed with cheese and spices!  And Super Bowl means super-sized!

This giant mozzarella stuffed Italian meatballs recipe is perfect for the big game!  Granted, they’re not as mind blowing as a lot of the tailgate items people come up with, but they do the job!  And they make the house smell awesome!

Meatballs stuffed and ready to spend a few hours in the slow cooker!

I got this recipe from Buzzfeed and I highly recommend trying them out!  I wasn't able to find ground Italian sausage, but I did find linked hot Italian sausage and it was as simple as removing the meat from the casing.  Give them a try.  (Insert football cliche here!)

Here is a link to a video quickly detailing the process:

Mozzarella Stuffed Italian Meatballs

Done!

Touchdown!!!

INGREDIENTS

1 lb Ground Beef

1 lb Hot Italian Sausage

1/2 tsp Garlic Powder

2 tsp Salt

1 tsp Black Pepper

1 cup Bread Crumbs

1/4 cup Parmesan

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup Parsley

1 Jar Traditional Pasta Sauce

1 Brick Mozzarella Cheese, Cut into squares the size of one die (or dice, however you want to pronounce it).

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  Place all ingredients, EXCEPT PASTA SAUCE and MOZZARELLA, in a large bowl and combine.

2.  Take a handful of the mixture and roll into a ball, slightly smaller than a tennis ball.

3.  Place a mozzarella square into the middle of the meatball, cover and roll into a ball.  Place in slow cooker.  Repeat until you have used all of the meatball mixture.  It's ok if the meatballs are stacked.

4.  Cover all meatballs with the pasta sauce.

5.  Cook on HIGH for 2-2.5 hours (I cooked on high for about 2h 45m).  Mozzarella will most likely escape from some meatballs as they cook.  This is normal.

6.  Scarf 'em down and enjoy!

Chef Nairby

Welcome!

Meeting renowned Indian Chef, Sanjeev Kapoor

Welcome to my Blog page!

My name is Brian, aka Chef Nairby from Toronto, Canada, and I have been a lover of making food since I was a kid and I put grape juice in my Froot Loops because we ran out of milk.  It tasted awful, surprise surprise, but it got the ball rolling as I would fantasize about putting different ingredients together and imagine what would come out. Surely ingredients that taste good on their own should taste good when mixed together, right?  Five words.....Froot Loops and grape juice!

Two years ago, I started taking my health a lot more seriously, and began improving my culinary skills by spending hours in front of my computer, browsing recipe ideas and creating them in my own kitchen.

Chef Nairby's "Feel It!" Pasta

I like to use proper ingredients, as little premade as possible, and I have grown to love even the prep work that goes into cooking something great!

My love of cooking has become such an obsession over the last two years that I own seasons 1-13 of Hell's Kitchen and put them on as I do my workouts in my living room!  Sometimes I wonder if I would secretly thrown reward challenges just so I could stay behind and do prep work!  For real!

Homemade Butter Chicken.  Made the real way.

Over the last two years, I have cooked close to 200 different dishes, some from recipes I followed and some I came up with from my own noggin.  You can check them out and follow me on Instagram @IamNairby, and feel free to offer any tips and suggestions.  If there is a recipe or idea you are curious about, lay it on me and I will give it a go for you.

Thank you for checking out my page.  Stay tuned for more pictures, some recipes, rambling and videos in real world and cartoon form (I animate in my spare time, too.  Boopsy Creations on Facebook and Youtube.).

Chef Nairby