Panaderia Canadiense

I found a mystery thingie! It appears to be some kind of mould for producing roses, but I have no idea whether it's intended for use with fondant or cake or what. I'm hoping one of you wonderful folks knows what it is for sure. Bears the legend "Wilton 1972" on the top of the hinge, and "Chicago 60643 Made in Korea 510 500" on the bottom. Appears to be cast aluminum.

I have these, and I love them to little bits - then again, I chop a ridiculous amount of herbs on any given day. They take the stress right out of it. Just make sure you get a pair that has a little comb to get the bits out of the blade spaces. It makes it so much easier to clean them.

Mine is to be more daring with flavour combinations, particularly in sweets.

NYE was more about food than NYD will be. NYE we had turkey chill with black eyed peas in it (no-pork household), big green salads with avocado dressing, and chunks of Ambateño beef chorizo, which were cooked on the NYE fire - about this more in a moment. Ecuador has some fun food traditions, though, which we observe (especially since my barrio is in the habit of having a block party on NYE). It's usually a potluck affair, and since everyone knows that I'm the baker on the block, I generally bring the chocolate cake (chocolate representing luck in love - it's one of the traditional must-haves). Other things on the traditional list include: empanadas de verde (green plantain stuffed with cheese) for folding cash, empanadas de morocho (flint corn masa stuffed with spicy beef) for coin, tamales de gallina (chicken, egg, olive, and avocado tamales) for family, quimbolitos (sweet corn and raisin steam-bread) for children, chorizo (and here we have the all-beef Ambateño version, which is famous across the country) for home, and 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight so that nobody will have hunger in the 12 months to come. All of this was at out block party, and all of it was incredibly tasty. There are also the toasts, which are traditional for health. Everyone in the barrio of legal age brings a bottle of liquor of their choice and a shot glass to the party, and we all toast each others health, luck and prosperity until every single bottle is empty. On my block, that's 15 different bottles at the moment; next year it will be 16. At the end of the night, after the 12 grapes have been eaten, we burn the old year in effigy and dance around the bonfire until we can't stand any more. Given this tradition, NYD is more about managing your hangover and other assorted body pains - hence my simple NYD breakfast of pancakes and copious amounts of water.

If you've got a probe that will stand up to that kind of treatment, it should work beautifully. I learned to do it by pressing the fish with my finger, and pulling just when it starts to feel springy instead of, well, fishy, if that makes sense.

1 - It will work, but I'd advise against deep-frying. You'll get better results in shallower oil, frying first one side of the fish and then the other. If you're talking about the kind of sea trout I'm thinking you are, it will respond better to this kind of treatment and it won't lose you the fish oils the same way. 2 - Yes. 3 - A light dusting of cornflour would be my choice, to crispy up the skin a bit without detracting from the fish's naturally lovely flavour.

Day old challah, for me. Buttered and toasted until it's gold.

Nope, it's gold before I cook it. And thanks to Ecuador's constitution, it's definitely not GMO. I have absolutely no idea if it's even carried outside of the country - this year's rice crop was poor due to an invasion of African snails, so I doubt we're exporting any.

For me, it's Conejo Dorado (Golden Rabbit), a type of locally-grown rice that's a brilliant orange colour. For those of you with Latin American groceries available, I'd recommend looking at the varieties - they're different from the old-world rices and some of them, the Conejo Dorado included, make amazing tahdigs.

You'd probably also really enjoy Ecuadorian Caldo de Patas, which is cow's foot soup - soooo much yummy collagen and cartilage….

You'd probably know them better as offset spatulas - I find myself translating directly from Spanish more and more for things like this! They're called "cuello de ganso" in most chef supply shops here. It's a metal spreading spatula, usually for icing, that has a kink in the neck to raise the handle above the spreading plane. I had only very large ones, which made making small desserts kind of a pain in the tush.

Club Rojo. This was supposed to be a 4.5% abv red lager, but it's failing on a number of counts (including actual redness!) Not sure I'd drink it again - their lagered porter is better.

I got a deluxe 42-piece decorating tip-set from Ateco, complete with quick-change nozzle adaptor, a small gooseneck spatula, and a smaller version of my very favourite pan ever: a black iron omelette pan (which I use for everything but). I love my parents!

8 lb turkey, oven roasted with our family's traditional savoury bread stuffing. Mashed potatoes Romanesco and Carrots Mushroom Gravy Pumpkin (well, squash) pies with rum whipped cream. We're traditionalists at our house.

It's a Saint-Honoré for me as well.

I'd be tempted to go with small cups (if you have stemmed shot glasses, they're perfect for this) of zabaglione, perhaps with a hint of amaretto. Just enough to tease the palate and clean it from dinner.

Club Negra. This, odd as it may sound, is a lagered stout at 5% - meant to be drunk ice cold. The whole concept weirded me out a bit, but the brew itself was quite tasty - malty and pleasantly bitter with tones of coffee and bitter chocolate. This brewery is known for really hoppy profiles, and the hops do assert themselves even here, but not so much as to be off-putting (I flat out hate the standard Club Gold pilsener because all other flavours are lost to the hops, but they seem to have themselves under control here.)

I've had a dish popularly referred to here in Ecuador as Camarones a la Piedra - it's shrimp served on a hot stone, and the server flames them with cognac at the table. On one memorable occasion, the flames went a bit higher than intended and left a scorch mark on the ceiling (I think this was the one time they used overproof Pisco instead of a proper brandy - it's much higher proof so I'd expect more of a fireball); I've never ever been injured by it though and I do eat it regularly.

I think maybe you are forgetting your eaters. But on the upside, now you know that they don't want to eat transfers or lustred chocolates (I can't quite see why myself, but there is sometimes resistance from people who are used to commercial types of bonbons, and are simply completely stumped by some of the stuff that artisan chocolatiers or bakers do) so you don't have to go through the same effort for them. For my part, I do some really elaborate things with gumpaste for wedding cakes, and I'll usually pack a couple of extra figurines or flowers or whatever and conspicuously eat them while I set up the cake (something most brides want me to do in full view of the guests - go fig!). This seems to show the eaters that the decor is meant to be comestible, and then they're more likely to follow suit. Although in the case of a couple of cakes, the guests took the edible figurines home as keepsakes…..

I was taught 1/3 C shortening for every 1 C cake flour (cut in until short), then ice water by tablespoons just until it forms a semicoherent dough, never ever over handling. Great Gran had a steel rolling pin that could be filled with ice cubes, which she used specifically for pie crust. For the filling, I'm like Pam R - apples with cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla or amaretto, and about 1 tsp of manioc or corn starch. If I'm baking kosher, I leave the butter out; if I'm baking parve, I put a bit in. Alternately, if you want a more store-bought type filling, you can stew sliced apples with a little apple juice, cinnamon, and allspice, then thicken the resulting broth with corn starch to get the gooey-oozey filling you're after.

I'd bard with bacon, myself. Over in the dinner thread (I think we're on part 6 now), Norm Matthews showed off a lovely method for this on a meatloaf - he used woven bacon, which would in your case both add back the fat that's been stripped off with the skin and hold the breasts together while roasting, and it would likely look stupendous when it came out. Same concept as the caul fat Andie mentions - season underneath, then wrap it up and roast away.

It doesn't help that the Luqutu I can get here (wild-harvested in an altitude desert nearby) are far and away hotter than Habanero, and only mildly less spicy than Bhut Jolokia. I can normally handle pepper heat with no problems - I routinely slice and process Ají peppers with no protective gear and no consequences - but I have most definitely underestimated these ones.

I will never again cut Luqutu peppers without gloves, safety goggles, and a NIOSH-approved organic-compounds filter rebreather. I feel like I've been Napalmed.

It might be the lemon juice that's the culprit, then. Are you pressing fresh? And are you straining out all of the pulp using a tea strainer? That's another thing that can cause cloudiness. If it's not that, then I'm not sure what's happening.

How are you zesting your lemons? Are you getting quite a bit of pith with the zest, or just yellow? I ask because the pith will add extra pectin to the mix, which could be a culprit in the clouding issue rather than the milk.