chromedome

I remember years ago seeing a magazine interview with an anthropologist and his wife. They'd met in the Amazon...he went there to study her tribe, and wound up studying one of them (her) in significantly more detail. The interviewer asked the wife what kind of adjustments she'd had to make, changing from the Brazilian rainforest to (I think) Iowa. "The tarantulas you get in the pet stores here," she replied. "They just don't taste like the ones back home."

The year that I met my wife, I was living in a small residential enclave in a mostly-industrial part of East Vancouver; kind of a border zone between the mostly-asian Chinatown area and the more-caucasian Commercial Drive area. I was the only caucasian on my block. After a few months, I came to notice that my neighbours were, without exception, buying Pearl River Bridge; so I started buying it myself. Now my taste buds are attuned to it, and most others don't taste right. I do like mushroom soy from time to time, though.

Years ago, when I lived in Vancouver, a friend of mine was a vacuum-coffee fanatic. She'd keep her eyes open whenever she was in a thrift store, and would frequently find whole or partial vacuum units. She'd always have two or three on hand, so that when she inevitably broke the chimney on the one she was using, she could trot out a replacement immediately. She did make damned good coffee.

You are correct in both of your assumptions about my post. I was envisioning a full-sized loaf pan, not a mini pan; a mini pan will be fine. And yes, the whole business with the weights was to provide support for the cardboard liner; you don't need to do that with just your pan.

You might find that, unless your recipe is a gurt big 'un, a loaf pan makes a pretty flat terrine. Suggestion: cut a couple of pieces of corrugated cardboard to fit your loaf pan, turning it into a "V"-shaped receptacle. Carefully line your cardboard with foil (you don't want wrinkles), and then line the foil with plastic film wrap as detailed above. You may find that the plastic wrap "slicks down" more smoothly if you mist the foil lightly with water or spray it with Pam beforehand. The smaller-volume terrine(s) will cook more quickly (and cool more quickly, which is a food-safety consideration), and will be more visually appealing when turned out and sliced. Oh...and if you'll be weighting the terrine (it gives a better texture and mouthfeel, so I'd recommend it) you'd want to have dry beans or baking weights or gravel or something to provide a base for the cardboard pieces to rest on.

Bo Friberg's version (Professional Pastry Chef, 4th ed.) 115g granulated sugar 310g almond paste 170g beurre noisette 3 eggs at room temp 1 tbsp calvados 85g bread flour 1/4 tsp baking powder melted butter sliced almonds, lightly crushed powdered sugar Brush 20-30 small madeleine forms with melted butter, coat with almonds, place forms on sheet pan. Place sugar and almond paste in a mixing bowl. Blend in butter gradually. Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly, then blend in the calvados. Sift the flour and baking powder together and stir into wet ingredients. Best to do this manually, as overwhipping will make the finished product dry and crumbly. Pipe the batter into the forms with a mid-sized plain tip. Bake at 400F for about 20 minutes until golden brown top and bottom. Dust a sheet of parchment with powdered sugar and invert forms onto sheet. Let cool, then remove from forms. ============================================================================= My instructor's version, acquired privately from a French former co-worker: 600g sugar 400g ground almonds 200g flour 500g beurre noisette 550g egg whites Mix sugar, almonds, flour. Blend in beurre noisette. Blend in egg whites. Pipe into forms, and bake, as above.

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...