Panaderia Canadiense

Spiralled quinua-herb with blue-corn/amaranth pumpernickel. I've been producing this for orders for about 6 months, but this was the first loaf that I actually had surplus to taste (I do know what the two breads involved taste like separately - I wouldn't sell something completely untested!). It made delicious jaffled sandwiches.

Strawberry-blackberry cheesecake (happy 15th, Valeria - this is a new twist on the "pink cake" and I like it!) Orange-spice cake with bits of candied mandarine orange in it, filled with manjar de leche and covered with bittersweet ganache. Pastillage flowers (Happy Birthday, Alegria - you always ask me for such interesting flavour combos!) And then a pair of birthday cakes for candy-junkie husband and wife team: Joyce is all about the Kit-Kats, and her husband Diego is Mr. M&Ms. And I revamped my formula and packaging for Chocobolitas, a sort of soft cookie bon-bon thing that is very popular at parties.

Well, that all puts my sticky ginger chicken on ramen noodles to shame, folks.

Thanks - I hope he'll think so too. It's too bad about the photos - in life that cake is eye-searingly bright colours, just like the movie.

My friend Geoffrey turns 54 today. This is my surprise to him. And a detail of the Glovey

I've always used Monty Python as my defining line. A gourmet is someone who knows what's going on with food and has definite preferences for quality, but doesn't overindulge. Mr. Creosote, on the other hand, is a gourmand.

Thanks so much! Now I know what to ask my local decorating shop for.

Do you have a stencil for getting the lettering that even? Or how is that done? I'd love to be able to replicate the effect on my cakes.

Hah! Half my photos didn't attach. So here's some more, including extreme amounts of fun with gumpaste. Altar bread for the big Easter masses at the Ambato Cathedral - the Bishop asked for my bread specifically, which was tremendously flattering. These loaves are sweet quinua Challah, and they're about 3 lbs each (since there's nothing to indicate scale, I should mention they were baked in 30 cm diameter tall springform pans.) Tito's 5th Birthday, complete with Spidey. Layla turned 6 (this is the same girl who wanted mermaids last year) Fernando turned 40, and proved that sugar figurines are definitely not just for kids! These are players from his favourite football team, Liga de Quito. Mother's day brought a tonne of cakes; this pair are representative of the 60 cakes I delivered over a 2-day period. And finally, Dorian had his first communion. These are a coconut chiffon cake and a carrot cake, under all that fancy-pants fondant and royal icing work. Also, last weekend in the town of Cevallos, Panaderia Canadiense took first prize as best booth in the show, which was a sort of best-of the county's produce. I was invited to attend because I'm part of the value-added chain of producers who use quinua grown there. The only other participants to win prizes at this show were guinea pigs….. (And yes, that's me.)

Oh my goodness, such amazing stuff from everyone lately. I just looked through this thread and realized I've been missing in action for *almost half a year* which is utterly inexcusable. So here are the last 6 months' greatest hits! Orange spice cake with orange-amaretto glaze and almond encrustation. Death By Chocolate Cake for the citywide Carnaval's Festival of Fruits, Flowers, and Bread competition, and the full table of my entry. I swept all categories, which was unheard of in the 66-year history of the festival. Benjamin and Sofia's 5th Birthday Cake. Three layers of chocolate chiffon filled with coconut buttercream and covered in fondant. Cinnamon Yummmmm

Old Rabbit Gold. Old Rabbit is a particular brand of rice here, primarily from the provinces of El Oro and upper Guayas; it's a naturally gold-branned rice (as opposed to the GMO "Golden" rice varieties, which are illegal to grow or possess in Ecuador). Old Rabbit Silver (Conejo Viejo de Plata) is a polished version of the same cultivar - mud stickier, but not as tasty.

Mostly the bran on whole-grain rices will inhibit the formation of stickiness…. Hassouni, on your behalf I so wish that Ecuador was exporting Conejo Viejo del Oro this year. It's a gold whole-grain rice that comes out of my cooker beautifully sticky with only a short pre-soak. But this year the blah-danged snails have seriously damaged the yields, so it's all being kept in-country.

Bigger week at the market, and the first time in a while that it hasn't just been more of the same. Of note this week are the green, in-shell Andean black walnuts. Ecuador has recently introduced very heavy tariffs on imported foodstuffs, and walnuts are one of those things - the ones from Chile that I used to buy have gone up 45%. So, this week's challenge is to see how long it takes me to shell and dry 100 local, green walnuts, and find out how many pounds of finished nutmeat that actually yields me. It's also peach season, so I couldn't pass that up! Durazno type peaches have a flavour that's somewhere between peach and apricot; also available in the market were a type called Abridor, which is a white clingstone variety, and my own tree is producing Guaytambo, which are white freestones.

I love beet greens too, but unless I go to one specific lady in the big market and ask her really nicely, I can't get them - the farmers all cut them off and feed them to the pigs! This time she was too busy to have done that, and there was a big old pile of them hiding off behind the napa cabbages. She was astounded that I would want to consume pig fodder, but asked very on-point questions about how to prepare them. I weep for you northern dwellers - fruit here in Ecuador has a completely different set of flavours than I'd ever have thought it would have (based on growing up in northern Canada.) To digress slightly, I used to call papayas "old shoe fruits" until I ate my first tree-ripened one. Carambola, when they're really green like the ones in the photo, are tart and acidic kind of like Granny Smith apples or fresh green mango, but with an order more acidity - very good with salt and chili powder. Once they start to yellow up (but before they get the brown edges) they've got a delicate slightly perfumed flavour, medium acidity, and high crunch. They're not for everyone, but if you like gooseberries or red currants then tree-ripened carambolas would be right up your alley. I purposely bought them quite green this week because my other option was overripe, and if I store them with my avocados they'll be perfect by Friday when I need them for cheesecake decorations. And since I got so many, I'll be able to munch out on them if I want to.

Various things, Huiray - the front portion of the building had some of its roof supports replaced, was re-roofed, and has been reopened to the public. The back half of the market is being completely rebuilt. This means that my fishmongers will be a more frequent addition to this and the Fishery thread. Just, not during Lent. The price of fish almost triples for 40 days in my city, because it's customary to give up meat.

It's a weekly fluctuation depending on the harvest. Next week they might be 30 for 50 cents.

I will never again put a bottle of ginger syrup that I forgot in the sunshine, into the stock cupboard. It blew up with such force that it shattered two adjacent bottles, drove glass shrapnel into the cupboard door, and covered absolutely everything with a sticky-sweet fermented ginger mess. I still find splatters of it sometimes when I clean.

A slightly bigger week at the market this time. Not pictured are the specialty flours (quinua, amaranth, 000 milled whole wheat), shredded coconut, yeast, and other bakery supplies.

Thanks, Crepes! They've recently reopened the front portion of my favourite fish market, which burned down around this time last year; I was planning to make a trip if not this weekend (which is Carnaval and therefore extremely busy for me) then next. I've been craving good fish, and frozen just doesn't cut it. I will of course post back here when I do, and also to the Eating the Fishery thread if I find something new - which is almost guaranteed, since the waters here are bountiful.

Sunday, 1 Feb 2015. At the big farmers' market.

Shoot, I don't buy anything more expensive than $7 a bottle unless it's a very special occasion (then I'll splash up to $20). There are some very nice wines in the low price ranges.

Like Nina, I don't use wine for cooking that I wouldn't also like to drink. There's a bottle of rather cheap but also not at all ugly dry Merlot under my counter at the moment, which makes beautiful sauces. The under-counter red, which just sits with its cork in it until I require it for a sauce or a sip, is usually either a Merlot, a Malbec, or a blend of the two, and it's also usually either Chilean or Argentine. I've also got a cheap bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge that is a bit young for the table but which adds to sauces where a red wine would be too heavy. The white bottle of sauce wine in the fridge is usually cheap Sauv Blanc from Chile, but occasionally it's a slightly snootier Chardonnay. And when I can afford it and find it, it's a Vinho Verde from Portugal.

Oooh, ooh, me! I use it. Parchment is nearly unavailable in my country. I line cake pans with it, daily - it makes turning out the big 18" squares and rounds and absolute dream, even with batters that are otherwise hellishly sticky. It goes on the bottom of my springform cheesecake pans, to make it easy to float the cakes off the bases. I wrap large empanadas in it. I wrap caramels in it.

You're also going to want to consider how far $10 goes in any given country. For example, I'm in Ecuador. For $10 US at my local farmer's market, I can buy an entire week's fruit and vegetables, a couple of pounds of gold rice, and a pound of pasta, and I'll still have enough left over for a pound of small shrimp…. As such, 99% of what I cook is less than $10 for four people each meal. These same meals, were I to make them in Canada, would be considerably more expensive.