Panaderia Canadiense

Slash, in gumpaste. I'll have better photos later today, when he's mounted on the death by chocolate cheesecake with the amps....

I shall have to make myself one. The effect is stunning, and I do enough of that form of loaf to make it worthwhile.

It would be killed on entry - Hawaii is on our no-go lists for live plants, even with a proper phytosanitary certificate. Too many nematodes.

Oh, that's gorgeous! How do you get the spiral effect on the crust?

I could grow a plant (even up here at 10,000 feet of altitude; if I can grow bananas here, I can grow just about anything) if I could get a live one into the country. That's far easier said than done, though.... For me, it's the flavour of the smell of freshly baked bread, toasted coconut with cashew, and basmati rice, with just a hint of the smell of jasmine.

OK, first off, thanks to Glorified Rice! I went to a couple of those stores as I was in Quito on Wednesday, but no joy. However, one has agreed to order me in some extract, the non-green stuff, which means I'm a step closer to the flavour I remember HCR having - incidentally, I did post the question because I feel that pandan is essential to the flavour - without it, HCR tastes somehow off to me. However: I grew up eating the Singapuri version of HCR, which always contained pandan leaves, and as a result I do consider them essential; as a result, the recipes I was looking at were from Singapore. I will, in the interim, be trying out the Malay style HCR - so thanks to Huiray for providing those links.

No Asian markets in Ecuador, unfortunately - if there were, I wouldn't be in this pickle! And there are only two Thai restaurants here that might have access to Pandan, neither of which would give me the time of day if I asked (they're attached to the really high-end hotels and the owners are kind of dickish about ingredients and sourcing. It's not as though I'd be competing with them, but that's how they perceive it.) I'll give the bayleaf/basil thing a go and see what that does with the flavour profile. Thanks!

Here's a question for you: is there anything out there, and more on the nose anything I've got a chance of finding here in Ecuador, that is an acceptable substitute for Pandan leaves? (I've got access to everything from breadfruits to various jasmines, but Pandan is sadly lacking in this country.) I have a serious hankering for Hainanese Chicken Rice, and every recipe I can find calls for them as a major component of the flavour. Alternately, will the dish come out tasting proper without them?

What kind of onions are they? If they're reds, check out Encebollado (link in Spanish), a delicious Ecuadorian stew/soup with seafood and boatloads of onions. The recipe linked uses far fewer onions than I do - I'd be using 3 or 4 where Laylita calls for half. It's also worthwhile to follow the link for the Curtido de Cebolla, which is a great salad topper and holds really well in the fridge provided you've got an airtight way to store it (otherwise it will make with the stinky!)

If humidity isn't an issue, pastillage and gumpaste flowers or something similar, which can be flavoured however you please, hold up fantastically in the high heat so long as they're properly dried.

I tend to weigh the "friends" thing more than the "veggie" thing, but then again, my vegetarian friends are all quite sweet and pleasant people and when we dine together it's usually one or the other of us who does the cooking (rather than eating out). It's absolutely no skin off my nose to prepare an extra vegetable course - I'm an omnivore, and I have absolutely nothing against an extra nice salad or some steamed romanesco along with a meal that will already be veg heavy (that's just how we roll in my kitchen). And I'm certainly not going to be offended if my friends don't take part in the meat portion of the meal; if I know they're coming, I generally go with a veg-based protein anyhow. If they drop in on me, well, they know I'm a veg-happy omnivore and they'll just partake of the stuff they want to eat. Then again, my vegetarian friends are not sanctimonious twits, so I have no problem accomodating them.....

Especially when that bunch is hanging in your backyard in Panama. Which, since I'm now remembering my yard in Panama... Mangoes just off the tree Papaya just off the stalk Pineapples just pulled from their nests Butter avocados pulled from the tree and ripened on your kitchen counter There's pretty obviously a pattern here. Nothing tastes like good fresh fruit. Absolutely, but I think we have to nail down the definition of "fresh" - where I grew up (just south of 60 N), fresh fruit meant "raw" and had little to do with the age or time from picking. I'd say that truly fresh fruit is what was on the tree/bush/plant right up until I crammed it in my mouth. In this vein, although the Oritos are still standouts and all other presentations of that type of banana (which northerners know best as "baby bananas") taste kind of like cardboardy marshmallows, I'd also nominate: Granadilla dulce right off the vine, slurped like obscene plant-based caviar right out of the shell which is cracked open on the balcony rail, Teensy little wild strawberries with the warmth of the morning sun still on them, Uva del Monte, which are actually wild fuchsia berries, with the mist still on them, and Perfectly ripe Babaco straight off the tree. Also, thinking about this thread, I'd also have to nominate an Arroz Marinera that I had at twilight on a deserted beach near Olon, Ecuador. The restauranteur sent her son into the surf for an octopus to include; he came back with one plus a couple of small fishes he'd speared on the same reef. It is probably the very best seafood dish I have ever eaten in my life, and I doubt that I will ever have anything nearly so tasty ever again. All other arroz marinera has paled by comparison.

Tree-ripened Orito bananas straight off the bunch while it's still hanging. Nothing else comes even remotely close.

LOL, that's just about exactly what he had to say.

What do you get the friend who has everything on his 30th birthday? 30 key lime tarts, obviously. I've told him he doesn't get to age again until he's 59 or 60, because my trays fit exactly 30 tarts... And here's a closeup of the nifty pirotines I had for these: As usual, I have only one excuse for the godzilla-like neon green of these things. The customer is always right, even when he's wrong.

I was taught that asparagus is its own plural, kind of like sheep or shrimp.

You can probably go as high as you did, but you'll need to chill the cream back down to 10 C or so before you whip it. I've done hot-infusions before with cream, but I've always given it a day's rest in the fridge before trying to whip it. Otherwise, you'll have to go the modernist route and add some stabilizers - methocel and xanthan gum come to mind.

I'm still on my major cheesecake kick. Here's a vanilla-golden plum jam swirl one with a black-plum jam topping and multiple fruits. These work so well.... Very yum.

I use almost that exact box for log cakes, but I'm in Ecuador so shipping some to you would probably be worth more than the boxes themselves.... Do you have any independent printers in your area that you could approach about making them for you, as a specialty order?

I refuse to feel guilty about anything I eat, so I've only got pleasures.

Coming back around to topic..... I'm consistently amazed how such a basic food as an omelette, with an infinite number of possible variations to it, can create such a polemic! Isn't the "right" way to make something, when you're cooking it for yourself, the way that makes it taste best to you and authenticity be danged if it tastes good? (I'll probably get yelled at for that, but it's a free internet and I have a right to my opinion.) Certainly, if you're pumping something out for restaurant service there's value in technique and uniformity, but insofar as the omelette being the test of a chef that's complete bullpucky in today's market. Skills are skills - as Soba says, what is important is that one knows their job and how to do it well. The omelette is therefore only a test for those who are making omelettes for a living..... Of course, I'm also speaking from the position of somebody who has never once in her life made or eaten an omelette, eggs prepared in this manner being something I'm violently allergic to (the proteins in the albumin, even for a "country" omelette, are not nearly denatured enough for my body to handle them), but the principle holds and I won't say I'm not very curious about them, both the way they're prepared and the endless variations thereupon. I could easily see us having the same sort of polarized discussion about the relative merits of various crepes or pancakes.

This is difficult to answer generally. For some of the "standby" cookbooks, like the Joy of Cooking for example (which is an excellent basic skills book for American and Canadian dishes as well as a good example of what I'm talking about) later editions are considerably less comprehensive than earlier ones, which included sections on game, preserving, and other "traditional" skills that are being lost today and which have been omitted from newer editions because technology has made them "obsolete" (although they're still of interest to those of us who are cooking in the third world). For these books, it's worthwhile to look at the comments sections on Amazon to see what people have to say before choosing an edition - for the Joy itself, look for the editions published in the 60's and 70's for the most comprehensive version of the book; this is the one that both James Beard and Craig Claiborne praise highly. In general, though the differences between editions of generalized cookbooks are normally additions or subtractions, but rarely corrections unless something really egregious has been printed - most cookbooks go through a vigorous vetting process before they're published.

It's not a joke. Speaking now from a third-world country, the worst trend here is pre-packaged everything. It's killing kitchen skills.

This couldn't be more timely - a friend of mine has just dropped off a huge volume of mini mandarins. Michaela, you think that the clementine method would work to candy these whole? The skins are crazy thin and there's almost no bitterness at all.... BHSimon - if your mandarins are large enough, you can juice them like you would regular oranges. Nothing in this world is quite so luxy as freshly squozen mandarin juice, and it makes a great base for cocktails as well.

Locro de Queso, all the way! This is a thick potato and stock soup with fresh cheese and avocado, and popcorn. My recipe for this is in the excellent Monsoons thread, along with a recipe for one of my other favourite hearty soups, Fanesca.