Panaderia Canadiense

Absolutely possible, if you follow the technique that uses cool, melted chocolate in the last layer. Simply make smaller rolls, and bake in a hotter oven for less time to develop a good crust without dehydrating the insides. (I normally go 25 F over the oven temp for "regular" sized croissant or pan au chocolat). If you're forming croissant around stick chocolate, it's much harder to miniaturize, but it can still be done (with much swearing).

Oh, but Maggi is full of salt and preservatives. It's just also got a very unique flavour that you won't get unless you've got access to lovage. Personally, I'd drizzle a little neat on the pork while making the sandwich (if I'm working with precooked meats) or (if I'm cooking my own pork) I'll use it in the marinade for the meat. Maggi isn't nearly as thick as most soy sauces.

In my experience, callo de hacha is probably better translated simply as "scallops" - the figurative translation is "axe head" which refers to the shape of the shells. Those look like the curved scallops typical of Ecuador's oceans....

No, you're never going to get the same flavour from soy as you will from Maggi. Maggi's secret is the addition of an herb called Lovage (Levisticum officinale), which (at least in my experience) works kind of like MSG as well as boosting the umami factor quite a bit. Reason, of course, why I grow Lovage (which is actually called Hierba Maggi over much of the Spanish-speaking world) in the garden - it's absolutely indispensable in the kitchen. Minor edit for spelling issues.

Another meniscus-reader here..... Read from the top seems to me to be almost counterintuitive, given the generation upon generation of bakers that grew up with and are perfectly accustomed to the "classic" shape of Pyrex measuring cups. I'd also want to see how stable the new design is - it seems to be an awfully small base to support the volumes of liquid/flour (heavy things, yes?) that one is expected to measure in them. On the good news front, though, Anchor-Hocking hasn't changed the shape of their cups one single bit. (Incidentally, what I've got apart from an excellent digital scale, are Anchor cups and graduated tempered beakers and cylinders. Oddly enough, I bought both at the same place - the chemical supply shop.) ETA - Sorry, my 34 oz'ers are from Marinex.

My initial reaction on seeing the thread title was Papitas a lo Pobre (new potatoes poached in olive oil with garlic, red onion and green pepper). I've got no idea how to make that hors d'ouvre-y, though.... Maybe the individual papitas on picks with a bit of the other veggie?

My initial point was also less about nutrition, and more about tradition and flavour.... (Although the plantain retains its potassium and vit a through the frying process - and I'd want to know which type of plantain was tested against the corn. The FHIA-types available down here are much higher in protein and soluble fibre than French Horn types, not to mention the Maqueño, which is the king of plantains and which also contains beta-carotene.) My two cents? I'm always going to prefer fresh chifles (and I won't buy commercial ones - they're too easy to make and taste worlds better fresh than bagged) with ceviche, since as far as I'm concerned they're as much a part of the dish as fresh popcorn. I could no more do without them than without lime in the broth.

Fried plantain, Jenni, is much higher in various minerals, most notably iron and potassium, than fried tortilla; it's also got more soluble fibre (vs. tortilla's insoluble) and a significant amount of protein.

Ummm, the traditional one? Which is to say, chifles.... If you've got an asian or latin grocery in your area, go out and get some green plantains. Peel 'em, then use your potato/carrot peeler to chip them into hot oil. Fry 'til golden, then drain. Super yum.

Tibetan Cooking by Elizabeth Kelly is a great one - she details both the traditional ingredients as well as the best substitutes in western kitchens.

*Bump* Yesterday was a festival of pickling down here - not only was dill available at the Monday market (yay!) but I also found the caselot sellers of cucumbers (double yay! The smallholder sellers charge 25-30 cents per cukes, but the caselots are closer to 10 cents). Unlike the rest of you lucky ducks, I can't buy pickling type cukes, which has led me to be inventive. So here's my entry: kosher-dill style sliced English cucumber pickles. I don't have any thrilling procedural photos (I was up to my elbows in cukes and my hands were covered in chorophyll and juiciness) but here are the finished jars. My process is to wash the cukes, then use my citrus zesting tool to peel away strips of the rind down the length of the cukes (5-6 stripes around the cukes). Then sliced finely and quick-brined in very salty water for about an hour. Packed into hot jars with sterilized garlic (1 clove per), coriander (1 TBSP), kosher salt (1 TBSP), and chopped dill (1/4 oz), then topped with vinegar and sealed in boiling water bath for 25 minutes (as reccomended by the INEN norms for hot-canning at my altitude). 500 mL jars seem to hold about 8 oz of sliced cukes. I got 32 jars of 500 mL, and one giant 2 L catering jar out of a sack of 32 large cukes, and 50 cents worth of dill. These are among my favourite pickles - I wouldn't have expected that slicing cukes would be tasty done in this way (I was taught that they're not for pickling, ever) but they're simply scrumptious and they're the first thing I reach for when making sandwiches.

It might be a bit hard to source, but Frutas y Postres by Eric Trueille is an excellent one (which I have on "loan" from the library - at least until I find my own copy). The other, which will be nearly impossible, is the huge, multiauthour Cocina del Ecuador which is published locally by a small firm. Its section on candying and preserving fruit is comprehensive and impressive (bet you didn't know you could sugar uvillas the same way you would plums?)

Do you read Spanish, ABPC? If so, I've got a couple of books that would probably be a great addition to your shelf.

Oooh, if you've got the wherewithal to grind sunflower seeds into paste, then try your favourite chocolate sugar cookie dough formed around balls of sunseed paste with cinnamon, salt, and a bit of confectioner's sugar (to stiffen it up and sweeten it a bit). They come out like peanut-butter cup cookies, but so much better.

You should be able to buy flaxseed, no? Then just mill it in your coffee grinder. Voila, flax meal. And another question: is Stevia (sweetleaf) available in Holland? If so, it's an even better option than splenda....

There are all sorts of torte-style cakes that call for either almond or hazelnut/filbert flours in place of wheat.

In applications as standalones with spices, toasted. Paired with chocolate chunks, raw. Also, have you ever made granola cookies? Basically the same recipe as oatmeals, but use toasted granola with sunflower seeds, raisins, and pumpkin seeds in place of the oats. (You may have to make the granola to ensure it's nut and coconut free, but that's not hard by any stretch of the imagination). I'd also think that dried cranberry-sunflower seed newtons (ground together for the paste) would be excellent cookies.

Pumpkin seeds have a more robust flavour; I've had great luck with them combined with either nutmeg or cardamon in sugar cookie recipes (depending on how big the seeds are, you might want to chop 'em coarsely.) With chocolate chunks and cloves they're also very yum.

Milk chocolate in Ecuador has to be labeled as "Milk Chocolate" (well, Chocolate de Leche), to set it apart from the "true" chocolates and to clearly state the role of milk solids in the bar's makeup. It's not considered to be in the same class as the higher cocoa bars. It's worth it to consider that the most common chocolate in most Ecuadorian pantries are round disks called "mother" which in the 90% cocoa solids range - this is the standard for preparing drinking chocolate, and is dissolved in hot milk and then sweetened by each person individually at the table. This said, a couple of Ecuadorian companies produce really stellar milk chocolates that are over 50% cocoa solids - Caoni 55% cocoa milk chocolate with cracked macadamia nuts is the bar that comes to mind. Despite the fact that they could label that bar as true chocolate, they market it as milk (IMHO justified, it's far creamier than their plain-jane 55). But something like a Mars bar, or a Nestle Crunch? They're labeled as chocolate-flavoured candy bars in Spanish, and they must be coming from Canada because the English on the packages just calls them chocolate bars....

Doesn't this come back to pink slime? And the whole honest food debate? Since we're discussing this, is there any standard in North America that properly defines how much chocolate has to be in chocolate bars? I'll admit that I'm terribly spoiled when it comes to this, but last time I was up north I picked up a Cadbury "chocolate" bar that tasted more of wax than chocolate and I was so disgusted that I actually tried to return it. Turns out that while in Ecuador the bar must contain at least 50% cocoa solids to be called chocolate (anything less, and they have to be labeled "chocolate-flavoured candy"), in Canada there's no such standard.

Who told you that couberture wasn't for cakes? I use it all the time in both baked goods and puddings with absolutely no ill effect to the recipe (granted my recipes are adjusted for lower fat contents due to my extreme altitude - caveat lector). It's absolutely essential to some of my icings/glazes as well. I'm literally thousands of miles from Callebeaut or Lindt chocolate except as finished bars at Christmastime (although both companies source beans here) so I use a locally produced couberture from select Arriba beans, which is quite good - not greasy, and a good balance of fats to solids. FWIW, I'm also spoiled by living in a chocolate-producing nation, which means even the cheapest of the chocolate available at the supermarket is of very high quality. I'm also with ChrisZ - I'd rather use good bar chocolate than cheap couberture any day. My daily eating chocolate, however, is actually an inexpensive, high-cocoa solids brand sold for drinking (ie preparation of hot chocolate). 'oi polloi 'ere too, we is we is.

OMG, yes, as a flavouring on pineapple-stuffed drunken chicken!

Patrick - those aren't just shelled peas Soba's using. He's also removed their endocoats, resulting in fresh-shelled split peas..... My fingers ache for you dude.

Hard to say whether it's winter or summer solstice. In my region, it's technically summer right now, but we've got four seasons - two "summers" (dry seasons) and two "winters" (wet seasons). Inti Raymi marks the beginning of the first summer; Inti Ñan is the beginning of the second summer. It has more to do with the time of year that the sun rises from behind Volcán Cayambe (the only volcano to straddle 0 deg) as observed from Quitsatu, a preincan observatory which is also on the equator, than anything to do with actual temperatures. The sun rising in that particular quadrant of the sky (I'm not sure if you've spent any time at the equator, Michaela, but the sun actually wanders our horizons) means that it's time to plant the black and chulpi corns, harvest the first habas and quinua, and generally it's time to cut agave for next year's tzawar mishki because those plants are about to bloom. Also, given the cycle that traditional pig breeding follows, Inti Raymi marks a time when the suckling piglets are just the right size for roasting. I've given up on taking my camera to Inti Raymi - I've lost cameras at the festivities in the past through a combination of having too much fun (and setting the camera down, durrr, where'd I leave it?) and through unscrupulous other participants. ETA - I should probably also mention that at 1 degree south latitude, my daylength varies by a staggering 5 minutes per year. Technically tomorrow will be the "shortest" day we see, but that's not saying very much - it'll be 11 hours and 55 minutes of daylight, and 12 hours 5 minutes of night. The sun will rise tomorrow from directly behind Volcán Tungurahua for those watching from my province.

When I learned hot drinks, I was taught that the difference between a posset and a toddie was that the posset was sweetened with honey, and the toddie with sugar. I may of course have been using incorrect terms all the way through, but I think of the hot curdled milk drink simply as a nightcap.