chromedome

Thank you kindly. The ones I have must be the softer (gur) version. I've got a kilo of gur sitting in my cupboard, waiting for me to be inspired to do something with it. Every week or so I'll pull out one of the little disks and break a piece off and let it dissolve slowly, trying to decide what to use it for. The flavour is very distinctive, and I'd like to really run with it. At the rate I'm going, though, I'll probably wind up just eating most of it as it sits. The only thing I've really made with it so far is some *damn* good hot buttered rum!

Things have been covered pretty thoroughly here, but as a native Haligonian I'll throw in a few words of amplification/clarification/etc. First, the restaurants owned by the Bertossis... Da Maurizio is the lynchpin of their chain, and their flagship. This is straight Northern Italian food, done well and consistently. Bish is less geographically-oriented, having some Italian food but also delving into other cuisines. Their Il Mercato outlets (the Bedford one opened since I left a year ago) are more of a trattoria sort of thing. I do not believe that La Perla, across the harbour in Dartmouth, is owned by the Bertossis but I could be wrong. It is easy to get to...just take the ferry across from downtown Halifax, and when you walk out the front doors of the ferry terminal look across the street and a half-block to your right. I had truly wonderful lamb there a few years ago. Bacchus, at the Sheraton, has revitalized the hotel-food scene in Halifax. Before chef Raj Gupta arrived at the Sheraton the hotels were content to turn out decent but pedestrian food for those who didn't want to go off-site for their meals. Bacchus was more adventurous, and was successful enough to inspire the city's other major hotels to revamp their menus. Bud the Spud rocks. You'll find a lot of very decent Lebanese places downtown; Lebanese food being Halifax's preferred finger food (the donair is locally considered to be a Lebanese thing). Ray's, in the food court at the Scotia Square Mall downtown, makes a better-than-average falafel; frequently voted best in the city by the readers of the local free weekly. Everything FG said about Fries & Company is justified, and an understatement. If you like fish and chips, eat there. Unfortunately, the city's most legendary bowl of chowder is no more. "Mama Camille" held court for decades across the street from the naval base in Halifax, but when she retired and sold out the new owners decided to build a chain and conquer the world. Their business sense falling short of their ambitions, they went belly-up several years ago. The Five Fishermen, across the street from the Grand Parade, is generally conceded (among my acquaintance, anyway) to be the best of the downtown's plentiful seafood restaurants. When I left they'd just opened a "faster food" outlet in the same building, called Little Fish. Both establishments are located in a block of heritage buildings which have been transformed into a complex of bars and restaurants. The proprietors refer to this site as "the Entertainment Dome," but to everyone else in the city it's the "LiquorDome." Either way, ask anyone you meet to point you to "the Dome" and you'll get there. Economy Shoe Shop is not far from there, and is reputed to serve better than average food and drink. Fid is by all accounts superlative, Dennis Johnson being one of those self-taught people who make the rest of us feel talent-deficient. Maple is gone. They stood on the reputation of Michael Smith, and after he left they failed rapidly, despite the experience and prior success of the new owners. The chef/owners of Chives are his proteges, and he has a financial interest in the restaurant. If you enjoy the Food Network show "Food Hunter" you may wish to visit Pete Luckett's store, Pete's Frootique, in suburban Bedford. Pete is exactly as you see him on TV. If he's in the province at all, you'll probably see him in the store sorting over his produce and explaining things to passersby. If you don't see him, ask...he's seldom too busy for an out-of-town visitor. Hmmm...what else... At Citadel Hill, students dressed in the historic uniforms of the 78th Highlanders stand sentry and fire the noonday gun. They also host evenings of single-malt tasting in the centuries-old barracks. Worth checking out, if you like whisky. Maxwell's Plum, just a few blocks from anywhere downtown, has the city's best single-malt selection and also lots of cigars, if your taste runs that way. They also have a large selection of draft beers. So does the Halifax Alehouse, a new bar in a pseudo-18th century style. Not that there's anything wrong with busty barmaids in period garb, mind you. Domaine de Grande Pre, in the Annapolis Valley, has the reputation of doing winery tours as well as anybody in the country. Their owner, chef, and menu are all Swiss. They make very drinkable wines, which can only be purchased onsite. Grand Pre is also the center of Acadian history in Nova Scotia, which makes it a great place to visit in this of all years. The Acadian community is celebrating their 400-year history with a year of special events. If you have the opportunity, you've got to get in on that party! The Glenora Distillery, in Cape Breton, distills a scotch-style single malt, the only one in North America. They have a restaurant and tasting room. The restaurant is said to be good. The tourist trap at Peggy's Cove has a restaurant called the Sou' Wester, which offers little but standard truck stop fare. They do offer lobster dinners, of course, but the thing to get there is their hot homemade ginger bread. Even on a summer's day, the wind there can be cold enough to make you glad of it. It's worth eating, for sure. Anything else? Mmmmm.... ah, yes. Black Bear Ice Cream. They're located in the Historic Properties, but they also have a little hut set up on the Halifax waterfront. Have fun! Wish I could be there too...<sniffs the the transplanted Easterner...>

Several months ago I was in the little Punjabi store near my sister-in-law's house. In their shopping cart of clearance items I found several bags of pebbly-looking things covered in sesame seeds. Unfortunately for me the grandmother was working the counter that day, and all she could convey to me was that they were a sweet. They are about the size of a hazelnut; they are covered on the outside with sesame seeds; they have a firm but not hard consistency; they taste of cardamom. What are they? I'm sure I'll want to buy some more some day, and I'd like to know what to ask for.

Having married into a Mennonite family, I'm all in favour of that! Come to think of it, I've got a couple of Mennonite cookbooks on my shelf. I should look at those.

My next-door neighbour was asking a few days ago whether I had a good recipe for homemade doughnuts. Appears his mother used to make them, and he's had a hankering lately. Well, now I've got the itch. Unfortunately, while I've tried a few recipes over the years, I've not been happy with any of them. Do any of you have a good recipe for either a cake doughnut or a yeast doughnut? I've just been given one of those Moulinex deep-fryers, so the timing seems to be coming together just right...

I just cooked urad dhal last week for the first time ever. I'll second that observation (and so will my wife...).

This is really the heart of your problem, and it's good that you are able to step back and see it. I was a *damn* good culinary student, and as a career-changer I had a full 25 years behind me as a good and adventurous home cook/baker. Even so, I was entirely out of my depth during my first few months in a real workplace. I needed to be shown things...it was that simple. I needed to know what the real-world expectations were. Take things slowly. Be explicit. Work on one thing at a time. Put them in writing, for when you're not there (or are too busy). Ensure that your employee knows exactly what you expect. Then, if she fails to deliver, she'll know exactly where and how she has let you down. You may want to turn to your local library for a copy of a book by Zig Ziglar called "Top Performance." It includes a section on this very issue of managing results, which I found very useful as a retail manager. You needn't adopt his methodology wholesale, but it would provide a good framework to build your own system upon.

This is the one that most of us would be familiar with, and use. I'm not immediately familiar with the one you've shown, but I've had a similar bar in a blue/silver wrapper. Those were a good-quality candy bar, I'd guess them to be at around the 50% mark (SWAG* only, not to be counted on). Best suggestion I can make is to try it out and see what you think. If nothing else, it'll be great for dipping strawberries in! *SWAG, if you are unfamiliar with the term, is "Scientific Wild-Ass Guess"

Interesting stuff. I'd always considered canola oil to be neutral in flavour until my third semester in cooking school, where as part of one class we taste-tested spoonsful of 10 different oils and vinegars. To my surprise, the canola oil had a profoundly musty flavour, rather like window putty. Some growers here are putting out a fancy-schmancy cold-pressed organic canola oil, which we also tried. It has a beautiful green-gold colour, and more body to it than the regular kind, and...tastes even mustier and more like window putty. <sigh> The baking soda vs. baking powder thing interests me too. I taste the baking soda very clearly in any recipe it's used in, so I generally just avoid them. I know that people have different sensitivities (as regards flavour) and everybody's palate is different; but to me the effect of baking soda is bizarrely reminiscent of how my mouth feels after vomiting. You know, sour flavour, teeth feeling stripped? Still gonna have to try some of these, though. I'm enjoying these "ultimate [fill in the blank] cake" threads. When do we get to genoises? Or have I missed that one already?

My student kit was composed entirely of the Victorinox Fibrox line; that's also what we use at my work. I really like these knives. My grip is impeccable even when the handles are slick with blood or grease, and the textured handles are large enough that I can handle them deftly even on a bad-arthritis day. They may not hold an edge quite as well as the more expensive knives out there, but the converse is also true. It takes no time at all (a few quick strokes of the steel, or the stone if you've neglected your blade) to bring it back to a brutally sharp edge. I've tried various higher-end knives from my classmates' kits (Henckel, Wusthof, Global, and the upper-end Victorinox knives) and didn't see any compellling reason to change. I'm thinking seriously of a Japanese-style knife for at home (want to teach my kids proper knife skills, and the smaller knife would be easier for them to handle), but I really prefer a longer blade for serious work. That Sanelli looks like a good choice, for my home knife. Gonna have to see who carries them locally.

Salmonella is carried on the outside of the eggshells, having been acquired from the hen's innards. If I am going to prepare a mayonnaise (or anything else using raw eggs) I give them a good scrubbing with a green 3M scrub pad, some hot water, and the antibacterial dish soap I use. Any sanitizer would do the job, for that matter. And of course, once the eggs are in the water, wash your hands, too... My sister is so paranoid about mayonnaise that she won't even use it in her son's school lunches. I should e-mail her some links to recent studies showing that commercial mayonnaise is so acidic that it *kills* salmonella bacteria injected directly by the researchers!

I worked eight hours today at my day job, then six at my night job. I took ten minutes' break around 2PM (I'm supposed to take 30, but I just don't have the patience); then I had a nice 40 minutes or so on a crowded rush-hour bus going between jobs. At my night job we all sit down to eat after service, but (again) I don't have the patience to really linger over my food. I just want to clean up and get home. So I don't get a whole lot of "sit time" there, either. Not that it's unavailable, for me. I'm just congenitally incapable of sitting down while I'm at work. At home, now, it's another story...

Word. When I had my little mid-life meltdown a couple of years ago, I came back to one bottom-line notion. I knew it would be crazy hard work; I knew that (graduating at 40) I might not be able to handle it physically in the long term; I knew that it would be a long time (if ever) before I made any kind of reasonable money at it. But at the end of the day, I'm doing something I enjoy for its own sake. That counts for a lot.

I just graduated from cooking school, Milena, with one year in Nova Scotia and one year in Alberta. In both of my schools, the split was very nearly 50/50 in gender. Granted, there are many more men than women in the profession presently, but it is beginning to change. One evening after a competition, a female from a small-town campus of the NSCC told us of her difficult apprenticeship, . The chef she was apprenticing under told her flatly that he'd been told to hire her, because his superiors wanted to have a woman in the kitchen. He then went on to tell her that she would never make it in the business, and that he was going to personally see to it that he drove her out, because it would be a kindness to her in the long run. When he retired, five years later, she got his job as the exec. On his recommendation. For at least one more generation, it will probably continue to be tougher for a woman to make it. But things are changing, and will continue to change. Hang tough, and keep on plugging. And as often as necessary, come here to vent or learn.

panch phoron amchoor carom seeds white poppy seeds Poha Bhel Puri Mix Coconut Flakes (unsweetened) asafoetida I'll have accumulated most of those before summer's over. I was at the little Punjabi store near my sister-in-law's house yesterday, but I only replenished my stock of coriander seed and picked a squeeze tube of mehendi for my daughter's birthday party (next weekend, all the guests will get a "tattoo"). Now I just need some time to enjoy it all. <sigh>

I've had this one from the library and found it very informative.

Some things are universal, apparently. My grandfather in Newfoundland was a deeply opinionated man. One of his quirks was that he had nothing but scorn for those who drank alcohol. His house, though, was never without a bottle of brandy for medicinal purposes; specifically for those occasions when he had a "bad head" (headache). For 50 years or so, he had a "bad head" quite reliably every Friday evening.

In Canada the Loblaw's chain (Superstore) sells tinned Devon cream. I've never had it, so I can't offer an opinion on it. Then again, I've never had Devon cream from anywhere else, so why the heck should anyone care about my opinion?

Damn it, I should know not to come in here at night. I've just been catching up on the forum here and had to put everything down to go and make potatoes with cumin. I don't know why it is, but cumin has a curiously powerful effect on me. It's certainly not a childhood memory, because in the time and place I grew up even things like broccoli and zucchini were exotic "ethnic" items. Whatever the cause, the smell of cumin seeds toasting in my cast-iron skillet gives me an intense feeling of well-being, just like the smell of bread fresh from the oven. It's surely not part of my ethnic heritage, but cumin is certainly part of my personal "comfort food" heaven.

I think I've got about 3/4 of the items on Suvir's list, and a few others besides. I've mostly accumulated them one at a time; initially to meet the needs of a specific dish I wanted to try, and then later just to have them on hand to expand my "range", so to speak. My two most recent additions are nigella seed (kalonji) and curry leaves.

What an interesting thread! In my gastronomy class, just a few short weeks ago, we'd covered the longtime association between zin and primitivo; and the instructor had mentioned that there was some doubt as to whether primitivo was in fact the "original zin" (pace Bonnie Doon). I'll have to forward him the links to some of these articles. To make it more interesting, I'd bought a bottle of plavac mali just a few weeks ago from my local bottle shop. It was a 1997 "Kastelet", and cost me all of $9 CDN to try...I've been hearing that some of those eastern European wines are great bargains, so I picked one at random. It was a little bit strange on my palate, as I've not had any real exposure to zin, but it was quite an acceptable table wine in my admittedly non-expert opinion.

Ummm...I don't really have a recipe as such. Par-cook your rhubarb (I just nuked mine for about 4-5 minutes), cool, place in unbaked pie shell, sprinkle with sugar ('till it be enough) and cover with pastry cream. Bake it at 375F or thereabouts, until the crust is baked and the top of the cream is just nicely golden. You may want to partially prebake your pie shell. I didn't, because my oven in that particular house heated primarily from the bottom; so my piecrusts always baked through very quickly. I'm sorry that's so vague, but before I went to cooking school I didn't really pay much heed to recipes.

Not surprising, I guess. There's been a lot of back-and-forth between New England and the Atlantic Provinces over the years. A lot of our regional specialties are similar.

I'd just like to throw out a comment about the keeping qualities of organic vs. non-organic produce. Last year, when I lived in Nova Scotia, I worked for a company which was pioneering the "box delivery" business model in Halifax. We bought our produce locally to the greatest extent possible, then (as our all-too-short season ended) went to Ontario, and British Columbia, and eventually the US and points south. My observation was that the locally-grown product held up better in my refrigerator than non-organic (and non-local) supermarket items; imagine my surprise at finding a three-week old head of overlooked romaine to be still in usable condition! Unfortunately the "imported" organics did not fare so well, I had to use them more quickly than the supermarket product. Of course, the notion that buying local produce is better is hardly a news flash...

Back in Nova Scotia, it's common to use a beaten egg with a bit of sugar in it to bind up the excess juice. I've taken that a step further and used pastry cream with the rhubarb, and rather liked the combination. Then my wife and kids, looking to extend the whole tart-rhubarb/sweet-filling theme, suggested a rhubarb pie with butter tart filling poured over. That's been their biggest favourite so far, though personally I prefer the pastry cream version. Either way, the rhubarb needs to be partially pre-cooked and cooled before going into the shell.