chromedome

I know an ex-pat Brit in Rio...I'll make inquiries. All I know of Brazilian food myself is the Bahiana specialties from Amado's novels. Haven't tried making any of them, though...and dende oil might be a challenging grocery item in DC.

Doner kebab and its cognates are the origin of the Canadian "donair," no question. It's a variation on the theme, with seasoning and sauce which vary from the originals on the other side of the Atlantic. Donairs, in this incarnation, are universally available across Canada, while Greek-style gyros and Turkish-style doner kebab are found only in ethnic enclaves. Next time you're in a major Canadian city, hunt down all three and try them. Donair sauce is notably sweeter.

Donairs are a close cousin to gyros and several other similar middle-eastern dishes. They were invented in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, by the Lebanese owner of a company now called King of Donair. The bulk of it is a large log of spiced ground beef, set up on a vertical rotisserie and slowly browned. For service, several slices are whittled off and thrown onto the flattop. A pita will be tossed on top of the meat to soften up as the meat browns. Then the meat will be placed in the pita with onions, chopped tomatoes, and - the crucial detail - a sweet/sour milky sauce, which is what distinguishes the donair from similar items. When done well, they are a superior late-night-when-I'm-drinking food; hence their popularity in hard-partying Halifax. When done poorly, like most fast foods, they can be truly vile. Badly-handled donairs, between the milk-based sauce and the slow-cooking ground beef, are a wonderful breeding ground for food-borne illness.

We'd raised pigs a few times, when I was younger. I can remember being eight years old and seeing my father bring home garbage bags full of food scraps from the mess (I'm a base brat). He'd point wryly to, say, 10 pounds of superannuated salmon steaks and tell me that we had the best-fed pigs in the province. Later, in Newfoundland, he used pigs as excavators. He'd build their pen in the section of our property which had the most stumps. By fall, when we slaughtered, the stumps would look like alien jellyfish, with their roots all exposed. Dad would chop them out with relative ease, and the next year set out garden beds in the place the pigs had been. Last month, as part of our curriculum, my class took a field-trip day to go to a couple of food-related sites here in the city. One was the University of Alberta's model pig farm. My instructors were under the impression that we'd be touring the facility itself, but in fact we were taken to the interpretive centre, which is geared to children of elementary school age. The bemused guide did her best, but it was all-too-obviously not a good situation. There were bright and colourful displays and dioramas on the walls, with titles like "See the Pigs", "Touch a Pig" (pigskin on the wall), "Hear the Pigs" (pre-recorded squeals), and - my personal favourite - "Smell the Pigs". I wish I'd taken a camera so I could get a picture of that one. The "piece de resistance" was a large diorama illustrating The Poop Cycle. When you turn the handle on the side, moving silhouettes demonstrated the pig manure going to fertilize the fields which grow the grain which feed the pigs which produce the manure which.... Needless to say, The Poop Cycle has become something of a catchphrase with my classmates and I.

In 1984, when I first moved to Vancouver, I lived in a punk house in East Van. Feeling domestic one day, I set about making a big batch of gingersnaps. When the cookies had been in the oven for a few minutes, I realized that something was not quite right. The smell coming from the vent was not at all a good smell for gingersnaps. In fact, it smelled downright...garlicky. I grabbed the bottle labelled "ginger" and gave it a sniff. Yup. Garlic powder. I will say, though, that if you're going to make that particular mistake, a punk house is the place to do it. The cookies were gone before they ever cooled off. I suspect that the level of general intoxication was a contributing factor...

There are KA-sized Hobart stand mixers out there, as well...we have several in my school. I don't know whether they're currently in production, but they are still well-supported at any rate. I bought my 300-watt Kitchenaid refurbished from the service centre for about 40% less than the regular retail. I've only had it for a year, but so far so good. And the tendonitis in my whisking elbow has subsided considerably!

Mine would be pretty prosaic, really. A dishwasher...I've never had one. Enough prep space. Good-sized counters, and maybe a long island with a butchers-block top, like we have at work and at school. A smoke detector that's far enough from my stove that it doesn't go off everytime I open my oven or saute something in a hot pan. <======(pet peeve) A double sink. A gas stove would be wonderful. I've finally moved back to an area that has gas, and my kitchen is electric. Bummer. A good vent hood. Something that actually draws air out of the kitchen, and is quiet enough that I can bear to have it on for more than 5-10 seconds at a time. Lots of storage. Big bins for dry goods would be wonderful.

Atlantic salmon (salmo salar) is the species caught in Atlantic Canada, Scotland, and Scandinavia. For various and sundry reasons which I've never bothered to investigate, they are easier to farm than other species; and to that end large quantities of fertile eggs have been transplanted to the West Coast. A significant concern, now, is the number of Atlantic Salmon which have escaped from the farms and which now compete with the indigenous species. Wild Atlantic salmon have a marvellous flavour, but as remarked above they are now rare and difficult to find outside of a limited geographic area. The farm-raised "product", like farm-raised trout, are in no way comparable to the wild creature. Remember the difference between a factory-grown pullet and a mature free-range chicken, and you've got a reasonable frame of reference. Atlantic salmon, unlike their west-coast brethren, do not die after spawning. They make yearly pilgrimages from the ocean to their birthplaces; there to spawn again and (hopefully) again, year after year. Like a mature chicken, I maintain that they gain in flavour and character with each passing year. Unlike a chicken, of course, they don't get any tougher. West-coast salmon, while a fine product in general, I don't personally find to be as good. It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of them are harvested as they attempt to return to fresh water to spawn; at which time they are dying. This has some impact on the condition of their flesh, and may contribute to the sensation of "mushiness" that some of you have commented on. I also find that the fattier west-coast species tend to develop off-flavours very quickly. Having said that, my recommendation would be to buy the freshest (unfarmed) salmon available to you, regardless of which coast it comes from. If you buy a larger piece, like a whole side, you may wish to take a small portion from the tail end and simply poach it in court bouillon; this will give you the opportunity to evaluate its flavour and fattiness, and plan your cooking methods/accompaniments accordingly. The finest piece of salmon I've ever eaten was in 1979, on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. My father and I chose one of appropriate size and shook it out of the gillnet, then headed to shore. My father filled a pail with water from the inlet; then we gutted and rinsed the still-wriggling fish and cut it into thick darnes. We put the salmon in the bucket and poached it over the fire my uncle had kindled on the shore; and ate it as soon as it was *just* poached. How could that possibly be improved upon?

On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals (Second Canadian Edition) -Labensky et al, Prentice-Hall 2003

At school, they tell us not to use convection. The reason? The damn' blower will splatter your delicate egg whites all over the inside of the oven, which is then a right pain in the arse to clean. Mind you, domestic ovens may not generate quite the gale that ours do at school.

One minor quibble about the meringues... I believe the basic "hard" meringue, as described, is not "Swiss" but "French." To make a Swiss meringue, one heats the egg whites and sugar gently in a bain-marie before whipping them. Accordin' to my textbooks, anyway. In practice they're more or less interchangeable, but the Swiss meringue is somewhat more stable.

Ghastly cloying stuff, to my palate. Got so that I wouldn't drink chard at all, until my boss persuaded me to taste some French ones. Makes a decent sauce, though...

<wistful sigh....> Last year in Nova Scotia I worked for a retailer of organic foods. I always had quinoa in my cupboards. I used it in several ways, including soups and pilafs, though I never thought of breading things with it (love how couscous works for that, though...). My favourite thing to do was to precook some quinoa, and soak some cornmeal overnight, and then combine them in a bread (with wheat flour providing the backbone of the loaf, of course). The texture and flavour were outstanding. If I had any leftover soaked grain, I used that in waffles. I reasoned that these two Meso-American staples must share some sort of psychic affinity, and in practice they work well together. No recipes, I'm afraid, I just jiggered it around until the textures felt right.

You would be referring to Glen Breton Rare, produced in Nova Scotia's Highlands in the style of a Scotch whisky. They are currently importing peated malt from Scotland, but have run a test batch with Alberta barley and are awaiting the result. They are currently marketing a ten-year-old whisky, with plans to add more-aged bottlings as the passage of time permits. For more information, you may wish to check out the website of the Glenora Distillery. There is a very decent restaurant onsite, and good lodgings available in the area.

These two are related. In a perfect world, we could gather our dough "until just mixed" and the gluten chains would not form. In practice, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Even if you are using pastry flour, the gluten will form strands; if you are using all-purpose flour you will see even more gluten develop. Resting the dough, before and after rolling, allows the strands to relax. Rolling the dough after refrigeration, you should see the dough "bouncing back" less as you roll it (though as McDuff says, it's easier to roll when it's a little warmer). Giving a second rest after you've put the dough in your pans will give you less shrinkage in your finished product, as it allows the gluten developed in the rolling process to relax. All of the other points are valid too, though, to a greater or lesser extent.

In Iranian cooking, apricots are considered to be the natural accompaniment to lamb (just like that grotty mint sauce is in England). Try them stewed with the lamb; or in a rice pilaf served with a mild curry. Both are excellent.

My father-in-law is a Crown Royal man. I find it a titch too sweet (which tells you I'm not a keen bourbon drinker, either); I prefer Gibson's Finest (the gold label, not the silver) which I find dryer. I used to really enjoy the Hudson's Bay Company whisky (remember those stoneware bottles?) but I haven't seen it anywhere for some time.

It occurs to me that I've overlooked what should have been an obvious recommendation...my school's restaurant. Cleverly known as "The Dining Room at NAIT", this is a large and recently-renovated facility with very decent food and aggressive pricing, for what it is. There is a three-course lunch special for about $25, IIRC. I won't be cooking there that week, but some of my classmates will be; and between us almost all of the city's leading restaurants are represented. The #9 bus will get you there from the downtown quite easily (about 15 minutes).

Sorrentino's is a family-owned local mini-chain, and reputed to be very good at what they do. I haven't eaten there myself, but I know people who have and they don't really have much dirt to dish. Essentially, "what they do they do well." I have a couple of classmates cooking at l'Attitude, right now. I'll sound them out about the decor, food, etc and see what sort of feedback they have for me. Harvest Room is still mining the East Coast-meets-prairies dynamic introduced by former chef Roary MacPherson. Again, like Sorrentino's, I know people who have worked there and I can't recall hearing anything bad about it. Back-of-the-house "dirt" is my most trusted guide...

I'm a piker. A mere 20 or so. God, I love the library.

A $30 limit pretty much rules out Hardware Grill and the Harvest Room; probably l'Attitude/Chance/Boulevard as well. You might do it, but you'd be picking from half the menu or less, from what I can recall of their menus. The other choices listed are pretty viable, I think...I'm sure between us we can get you geared up.

Generations of my forefathers fished until they fell over dead, or until their boat didn't come back one day. My father decided he didn't want that, and broke the cycle. In times past, it was a rare chef who could count on more than a local reputation. Today, people from all corners of the globe can get together in a forum like this to debate, praise, or condemn a chef who is thousands of miles away from any of us. Chefs today benefit from the communications and transportation revolutions which have made "franchises" (in the literal or metaphorical sense) possible for them, as for other businesses. More to the point, though, people in our generation expect more and want more from life. Keller sees a need on some level to either "extend his brand", or to seek out new challenges, or to build a legacy, or whatever. I say more power to him...he's earned our respect by his commitment to excellence, and until that commitment is visibly tarnished I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

One pie pan? One? I have a large and deep 10" pie pan for when I'm expecting company, two 9" (one for tonight and one for the freezer), and two 8" for making pies to take to potlucks etc (I put the pie in a foil pan, then the foil pan into the "real" one, which I find makes the crust work a little better). You may also want to get one or two of the "tart" pans with the removeable bottom. The 11" size is the most common, commercially, though others are available. Many of the stylish recipes you see in magazines will call for these, and there is an added bonus: the bottoms are a great tool for lifting and moving layers as you assemble your layer cakes. I would also vouch for the utility of a scale. More cookbooks are (finally!) beginning to include weight measurements, and with the wealth of recipes on the Internet there is a greater likelihood that you'll want one (since recipes from outside the US will be more likely to use weight).

I find whetting my blades on a stone to be curiously relaxing and soothing, so I tend to do my own rather than taking them to a professional. Also, I think that the mechanical sharpening done by the pros tends to wear away the blade more quickly, and that just tweaks my East Coast frugality gene. Project, I know a few other people with treasured carbon-steel blades of similar vintage. You're right, the steel is softer to a significant degree, and can be kept at a pretty fine edge by a steel in skilled hands. Of course, by the same token, they require a LOT of sharpening in high-volume use. That requirement for TLC (frequent sharpening, and rust prevention) is probably what ensured the emergence of the contemporary knives with their "high-carbon stainless" formulation. That being said, I live in hope of finding one in a bin at a thrift store or yard sale some day.

When are you going to be in Edmonton? I'm relatively new to the city myself, but between the food geeks at my work (a "posh" place on Whyte Ave, but outside the trendy Old Strathcona area) and the food geeks at my school, I can probably come up with a few choices for you. Happy to exchange info here or in PM.