Panaderia Canadiense

This only really upsets me when the invitee is very late (like, 2-3 hours) and hasn't called me to let me know, and even then it's less upsetness about the food (which I serve when it's ready, and everybody at my dinner parties knows this) but more that I worry about what might have happened to the absent guest. I generally talk to that guest the next day as well, to find out what gave. I don't try to plan for late guests, obviously. I simply serve the food when it's ready - the party is normally more about getting friends together than it is about anything else! There are a couple of times when there's an exception - when I'm planning setpiece food, for example - and in those cases, I'll also talk to the inexcusably tardy guest the next day. Food is absolutely not worth losing friends over.

I had dough left over from deluxe cinnamon buns last night (a local restaurant expressly asked me for the brioche-type buns), and that meant brioche au chocolat for me! Even luckier, I had a bar of milk-chocolate macadamia nut just sitting there not doing a whole lot..... It was also an excellent dry-run for my new silicone brioche moulds - which I can now say I completely love and will be buying more of! They're 6-up "pans" which actually makes my life a whole lot easier. Here's what one looked like last night just before I crammed the whole thing in my mouth and made conspicuous *nom nom nom* noises. Have I mentioned that brioche is probably my favourite bread-type product? This morning I slowed down a bit, gave my brioche 30 seconds in the nuker to liquid up the center, and actually took a photo of an open one. This is what I meant above by "chocolate explosion muffiny brioche." For the curious, I use a dough that's 3:1 ap white wheat : gold pea flour, 2.5 C warm milk with .5 C panela, 1/2 oz of yeast, and 4 tbsp of butter, with three warm rises and a milk-ginger sugar wash both before and after going in the oven. I see no need for eggs; this dough comes out beautifully soft and slack without them, and is very rich tasting despite its relatively low butter content.

Gorgeous food, everybody, particularly the ribs, BBQ chicken, and peach/blueberry pies. Droool..... For me, fairly standard meals in the last week. You guys all make me feel like my day to day food is kind of clicheed "home cooking" stuff! Chicken with Cheese-scalloped Potatoes (and obligatory asparagus), and a mound of fresh-pickled horseradish Panfried Tilapia with Home Fries (and obligatory asparagus), and cauliflower Meatloaf with Mac N Cheese. Turkey Breast with Roasted Paprika Potatoes and steamed carrots Turkey Soup with a fresh Black Bagel (my one concession to the not so ordinary. There's nothing like a hot bagel.) And yesterday, probably to get me out of my ovens (I've been working a bit too hard of late) friends kidnapped me and took me out for dinner (how nice!) so I had the opportunity to indulge in one of the Ecuadorian specialties that I would never make at home: Cazuela de Mariscos. This was one of the best examples of this dish that I've ever eaten - for the curious, CDM is a thick peanut curry fish broth filled with chunks of mussles, clams, squid, octopus, concha, and sometimes lobster. This one, of course, had the whole meal deal. Very yum.

My friend Maria, from whom I purchase honey, has bees, and her hives serve the citrus and plum plantations in the valley 25 minutes downslope of me. Which means that the honey I use is usually a blend of citrus and (in season) plum nectars. Occasionally, my friend Dolores brings me honey; this is eucalyptus and acacia from the forests upslope of me. I prefer the citrus honey for baking, and the eucalyptus for sweetening drinks. When I am very lucky, my friend Alvaro brings me wild honey from the jungles, which is from combined tropical flowers. This is special reserve stock for sucking straight out of the combs.

Delayed meals at dinner parties are a fact of life. Get over it! Unless the do is hosted by a professional (for example, I don't think that what you're describing is ever a problem for ScottyBoy), meals served at Q instead of Z (to use your variables) will almost always occur. I'm with mjx, actually - most dinner parties here, the host/ess doesn't even start prepping until the guests are there, and it's a collaborative thing to produce the food. I have had some of the best meals of my life in these loosely-planned / relaxed atmospheres, when I removed the stick from my butt and just went with the flow. I'm as notorious for it as other people. I can get baking done on time, no problems, but with salt cookery I might hope for 6 pm and serve at 7. However, since I'm aware that if I think it's X it's actually Y, I'll tell guests Y when they ask. What annoys me more, are guests who say "we'll be there at 7" and who don't show up until 10, when the meal has truly gone off the rails and is a complete wreck.

Ishpingo is the flower of the Pastaza Cinnamon tree (Ocotea quixos). Think of it as a darker, more earthy cinnamon flavour; I think you could get away with blending about 1/4 tsp of ground cloves or perhaps allspice into 3/4 tsp of cinnamon to get the bass note while retaining the cinnamon taste, but I've never actually found a true substitute. It's very difficult to even describe the flavour of the spice - cinnamon buns is one of the few applications ishpingo has in sweet cooking; I would normally consider it to belong squarely to salt cookery, since I use it quite a bit with beef and lamb, and goat when I can get it.

You can also dredge slices in curry and stuff them into fish on the grill...

A slightly less heart-stopping version of a classic. Ingredients - Dough 4 C unbleached all-purpose flour 1 C quinua flour * 1 C panela / piloncillo / demerrera / the darkest brown sugar you can find 2 C tepid water 1/2 oz active dry yeast 8 TBSP light extra-virgin olive oil, plus a bit more (see instructions) Ingredients - Filling 1 block (about 6 oz) bittersweet chocolate, grated 6-8 TBSP panela / piloncillos / demerrera etc. 3 TBSP ground cinnamon 1 TBSP ground ishpingo (optional - it's not available outside of Ecuador) A handful of golden raisins (optional, but I really like them) 1/2 C finely-chopped walnuts (optional) Ingredients - Caramel (optional, but very tasty) 1/4 C panela / piloncillo / demerrera etc. 1/2 C light corn syrup 1 TBSP butter, melted Hardware Mixing bowls Measuring cups 10" round, deep pans (or deep-dish pie plates) Measuring tape Sharp knife Method 1. Sift the flours together. 2. In your choice of cup or bowl, mix the water and the sugar together, then add the yeast. Allow to bloom 10-15 minutes (or until you've got a good froth going) 3. Stir the yeast up, then add it to the flour along with the olive oil. Knead until slightly elastic and resilient. This is a fairly slack dough with a texture similar to brioche, and because of the sugar it will never get to the point where it's not slightly sticky. 4. Lightly grease your bowl with a bit more evoo, and slip the dough into it. Set it in a warmish, non-drafty place to rise until slightly more than doubled in bulk. 5. Punch down and divide into two balls (use your scale to make sure they're even. When I do this, they're about 1 lb 8 oz each.) 6. Roll one ball into a rectangle roughly 14" by however long, and about 1/8" thick. 7. Brush the surface of the dough with a bit of evoo, then sprinkle about half of the filling on and spread it around until it's fairly evenly distributed. Sprinkle on the raisins and nuts if you're using them. Leave a margin of about 1/4" at the edges of the dough. 8. Starting on the shorter end of the rectangle, roll up the dough. 9. In a bowl, mix together the ingredients for the caramel. 10. Grease the pans well. Then divide the caramel between the two, spreading it so that it covers the bottom of the pans. 10a. If you're like me, now place 7 walnut halves upside down into the caramel - one in the center, and six around it. This is an optional step, but I'm really fond of pralinized walnuts on top of my buns. 11. Measure the roll, and divide it into 7 sections. Place each section in the pan - one in the center, and six around it. Press them down slightly so that they're touching. 12. Cover the pans and set them aside to proof for about 20-25 minutes, or until poofy. 13. Heat your oven to 350 F / 180 C 14. Bake 30 minutes (this is for my altitude - yours may take longer if you're closer to sea level) or until the tops of the buns are lightly golden. 15. Unmold almost immediately onto your choice of a wire rack or a foam cake base (I use cake bases) - this prevents the caramel from sticking to your pan. * Quinua flour can be hard to source outside of South America. Good substitutes include Amaranth, Millet, and Spelt.

Homemade black-sesame bagel with cream cheese. Kim - if you'd like a pictorial to go with those instructions, I can do that for you today - I'm making pumpernickel bagels. Edited because what showed up the first time was a pic of cinnamon rolls.....

Aliño (a prepared paste of garlic, onions, cilantro, cumin, and other spices). I can make my own, but Doña Clarita does it better.

I suspect that the fat content varies greatly simply because the farmer I buy from has a herd of Guernsey x Brown Swiss cows. They're notorious for producing higher-fat milk than the Holstein / Jersey herds that are standard in Canada. They're also grass-fed year-round, which makes a huge difference in the flavour of the milk and cream. Mmmm, grass-fed Guernsey cream.... I can, and often do, eat that by the spoonful. Coming back to the fat content issue, I did have to rejig many of my recipes for lower amounts of butter largely due to this exact issue (altitude also plays an important part, but not as much as the actual fat content.) I am indeed a professional baker; my screen name is actually the name of my catering bakery. I'll RecipeGullet the olive-oil cinnamon buns for you in a moment; my recipe calls for quinua flour, but that might not be findable in your area: spelt is a reasonably good substitute, and if you can find amaranth flour, that's even better. Speaking of the which - I made a batch of them the other day, and this is what they come out looking like (please ignore the corner of my exopat - my countertop is small and frequently quite crowded).

If this makes any sense, it's more a timbre than a tone that you're looking for. In that respect, a ciabatta and a sandwich loaf are exactly the same.

ooOOOooh, dcarch, those are the type of Globe Artichoke that are grown down here and then usually rudely exported to the US and Europe before I can buy them. The stems are like an extension of the heart! I've got one grannie at the market who brings in three or four for me from each crop (her family farms 10 ha of them for European markets, and she comes to the market with what grows in her kitchen garden and auracana eggs) - I'll have to check on Monday to see if she's got 'em for me.

I heat honey in the double boiler with a tablespoon of brown sugar, then spoon this hot mixture over the cake (and any fresh fruit) while the cake is still warm. It's my standard "glaze" for my yoghurt shortcake. Edit - that should be shortcake, not shortbread.

If you're making the cocoa version, chocolate is an obvious choice. Otherwise, you can't go wrong with sliced fresh fruit as a topping, or with something like strawberries macerated in brandy. Are you baking for vegans, or just for gluten-free? If you're OK with a bit of honey, you can use it as a glaze for fruit.....

Use the ground achiotes, or if you've got a Caribbean grocer, try there (you may also find the achogcha - it's quite popular in the Caribbean). Barring that, if you've got a Lao or Viet grocery, try them. You might not find the achiote, but the achogcha will again become possible (as "stuffing cucumbers") and if you can find bird chilies they're quite similar to aji. This is really funny, actually - if you were in New Jersey, I could send you to an Ecuadorian grocery and you'd probably find everything you needed and a bit more besides.

Also, if you look for the street cart with the longest line of customers, that's a pretty good indication that the food is fresh and safe. And, of course, tasty. Ah, yes. My favourite downtown cart (which, frustratingly, is never in the same spot twice) sells arepa de guaranda, which are big, thick buckwheat pancakes stuffed with queso fresco that's been fried in achiote oil with salt. The "lineup" (well, the arepa scrum) is normally 5-10 people deep, and you sort of fight your way in to buy the 50 cent arepa. Well worth it. One time I caught this cart just as she'd kindled up her fire, and I got the first arepa off the griddle. It was amazing. Then again, we have three rules for eating out: 1. Does it smell good? 2. Is it busy? 3. Is there a cop eating there? Adherence to any two of the rules means that it's safe. All three is a jackpot - the cop is in the rules because police here are creatures of habit, won't eat at places with bad food, nor will they eat at places that are heinously expensive. And bringing us back around to the topic, a food-rule jackpot is what led me to what is now my favourite llapingacho stall in the Mercado Modelo. There is an entire city-block's length of llapingacho sellers in this market, so you're spoiled for choice, and they'll all compete for your custom. The first time Mom and I went up there we were almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of sellers that wanted us to try their llapis (and you can play this to your advantage, since they'll normally offer you a handfull of horneado to get you hooked....) The seller we ended up with was so swamped with people that she didn't even try to call us in; there was a policewoman with her elbows out fighting not to get swept off her seat at the counter. It smelled heavenly, so that's where we ate. We've tried others since, but we keep coming back to Clarita's, simply because (as the crowd knew full well) they're the best.

I have never had a single issue with street food here, not in any of my five years of residency. The three times I've had food poisoning, it's always been from restaurants. Then again, with street carts, you can see exactly what's going on and make an informed decision.

The salt in mine comes from the butter and the QF (since I rarely roast a whole pig to go with 'em; I'm a chori on a stick over charcoal kind of gal), and then after they're cooked I'll salt them to taste. This is a peculiarity of how I learned to cook (my mother undersalts and my father oversalts; I prefer something in the middle, but in the kitchen all is equal - we don't salt very much at all in the pan, and everybody adjusts at the table.) You can, of course, pre-salt (even in the boiling water, which is what I suspect the llapi ladies do) - but do it to taste. As I mentioned above, llapis are less a recipe and more a method. Pilsener-type beer is all that's really needed; Ecuadorian Pilsener isn't even available in bordering towns in Colombia and Peru, so I certainly wouldn't expect it in the US!

Not so much "now you're making them in Ecuador" Jaymes - potatoes originated in this general area (well, from about Ambato to about Cuzco). We've been making them here for centuries.

Another thing I'd like to mention here: if you Google llapingachos, you'll find a huge number of recipes that say they're served with peanut sauce. Well, I live where these things were invented, and I can tell you right now: they're not. Creamy peanut sauce is the accompaniment for the boiled new potatoes served with roast cuy. I'm not sure where this got started (possibly on the coast, and then shame on all those people for thinking that was the tradtional way!), but I'd love to put an end to it. I've had llapis up and down the highlands here, and they've never ever come with peanut anything. (Edit - a doog spellar and grammaticist is me!)

I thought about it a bit, and decided that Llapingachos (llapis for short) are probably better discussed than they are RecipeGulleted, since the recipe is less important than the technique..... These are potato pancakes, often stuffed with queso fresco, and they're the only accompaniment necessary for many pork dishes. Llapingachos seem to be pretty much endemic to Ecuador, and are a specialty of the city in which I live, Ambato, where they form part of the "typical plate" of the city (which includes chunks of fried Ambato chorizo, strips of lechon horneado [suckling pig roasted in a wood oven], slices of avocado, a fried egg, and a mound of quick-pickled beets.) In general, these are the ingredients (which I'm giving proporitonally, obviously you can make more or less): 5-10 lbs of Cecilia or Chola potatoes (yellow-skinned, non-waxy), peeled and cubed 1 lb of butter or fresh pork drippings 1 lb or so of queso fresco Achiote oil Llapis may be either a side dish or a main course, depending on how you approach them and how big you make them. The basic recipe is simple: Cecilia or Chola potatoes (yellow-skinned, non-waxy types) are skinned, boiled, and mashed with your choice of freshly-rendered pork drippings or fresh salted butter. This is set aside to stiffen up and cool (the ladies who make llapis for a living make up entire large wooden trays a day in advance). Ideally, the potato mixture should be stiff enough to form into balls and hold its shape, but soft enough to flatten the base of the ball when dropped onto a griddle. The stuffing is normally queso fresco crumbled with a bit of green onion and cilantro, but may also be straight QF, or may be QF wrapped around a slice of chorizo. It all depends on the streetcart and the llapi lady. I have also had exemplary llapis where the QF was mixed directly in with the potatoes, and other excellent ones that are not stuffed at all. The next step is to heat up your griddle (or your baking tray!) and get it good and greasy with achiote oil (if you don't have this, extract some achiote seeds into your favourite high smokepoint oil. The achiote is absolutely essential.) Now pick up about a handful of mashed potatoes. If you've chosen to mix the QF right into the potato masa, you can drop this onto the griddle gently. If not, pick up a smaller handful of filling, flatten the ball of potato somewhat, and stuff it in, forming the potato back into a ball when you're done, and drop it onto the griddle gently. Using your spatula, dollop a bit of achiote oil over the top of the potato balls. This is a traditional llapingacho stall at the downtown market - you can see what I'm talking about here. And now for the hard part. Leave it alone. Llapingachos are turned exactly once before they're served. 5-8 minutes on, and it's time to flip the llapis - do it gently, and press down just a bit to flatten them out somewhat. Then leave them alone again for 5-8 minutes more (gauge how long by how golden the tops are - if you left the llapis for 7 minutes and they're dark, give them 7 minutes more. If they were just starting to be crunchy and gold, maybe give them a bit more time.) Obviously, these are best when hot.

Charcuterer, will do. I have three recipes for llapis, all of which are fantastic - and it's more a cooking method than it is a recipe anyhow. Off to the RecipeGullet for me!

I'm with the others. 15 lbs isn't for breaking down, 15 lbs is for roasting whole in a wood oven and serving with llapingachos.

And woe unto you if you use a blend of specialty flours. Quinua, without the direct influence of the gas broiler, won't brown at all, even if the bread has become a hockey puck. Barley browns faster than wheat, and rye unevenly. And breads including golden pea or broadbean flours brown very quickly and stay that way..... I'm going to keep tapping.