Panaderia Canadiense

Shoot, just realized. That recipe is adapted for high altitudes - if you're closer to sea level (provided you don't live in a desert), you can use slightly less liquid. Which is to say, if you make the recipe as stated and the masa turns out too gooey to handle, add a bit more masarepa to it until it stiffens up, and next time cut back your milk by about 1/3 to 1/4 cup. Also, thinking on the whole GF issue and shapeable doughs, you might want to check out green plantains (method here), and semiripe to ripe plantains (method here) as an alternative. Those methods both deal with dough for stuffing (ie empanada-type thingies), but with a touch of baking powder they can also be formed into buns and baked (particularly the semiripe plantain dough). Plantain flour should be available in any Asian or Latin grocery. These doughs have the added advantage of being fat-free. I'll also take a boo 'round my recipe collection for Panes de Yuca (manioc and cheese buns), another GF specialty from the Andes.

PC, I would love one! I made some with cornbread that were decent, but don't reheat well. I like to make a batch on the weekend and take them to work during the week. OK. Start by going out to your local Latin American grocery, and look for gold Masarepa. This is a type of finely-ground, pre-cooked cornmeal that's essential to the recipe. If you can't find it, you won't be able to make the blankies. Doñarepa Extra Fina is a very good brand from Colombia that I know is exported to the US. ETA - if you find Doñarepa, you'll actually find a very similar recipe printed on the bag, in both Spanish and English! 1 C Masarepa 1 C Warm milk (or water; milk is better) 1 Tsp Butter pinch of salt 1 Egg About 1/4 lb queso fresco, ricotta, or drained cottage cheese, crumbled. * optional * some finely chopped green onions. -- 1. Put the masarepa in a bowl, and slowly, stirring often, add the warm milk. Once it's completely blended, add the butter and salt. Knead until you've got a soft dough. You can't overwork the masa, so don't worry about that. 2. Let it rest for 5-10 minutes (this softens the cornmeal and makes for a better adhesion of the dough) 3. Add the egg and cheese and knead until well combined. The dough should be soft, but stiff enough to form into shapes. 4. Shape the blankies, and roll the piggies into them. Now, traditionally what you've done is stuffed an arepa with a sausage; if you want to continue to be traditional, you cook these on a lightly oiled griddle of some sort (very traditionally, a hot unglazed clay tablet). You can also fry them in shallow oil until the masa crisps up and turns an appealing golden colour. With the cheese in the dough, these reheat beautifully.

I've also got recipes for steaming rice in them; they work beautifully on the grill with various meats inside them, you can wrap fresh mozza in them (queso de hoja) to impart a smoked flavour; there are literally thousands of uses.

Yes, as in the Cannas you grow in pots on your deck every summer. All Cannas are useable - it's just that Ecuadorians are kind of snobby about it, so we'd tell you that 'Achira' is the best of them (C. indica). However, I've used Canna 'Stuttgardt' and 'Tropicana' with excellent results, and I expect that pretty much anything in the Crozier, Foliage, or Italian group of cultivars would be just as good. The two I mentioned have variegated coloured foliage, which makes for a very decorative result. I'll post a recipe for Quimbolitos, a soft corn or quinua bread steamed in Canna leaves, in the RecipeGullet for you shortly. You can also use the leaves for Maito - upthread I posted a method that shows banana leaves, but which is easily adaptable to Canna.

Knowlege is to say that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. - My friend Steve, with permission.

I make it from whey only, with no additions other than the lime juice, after making high-fat mozzarella - I've never made it any other way, and I'd actually consider starting with whole milk specifically for the ricotta kind of sacriligeous. I was taught that it's re-cheese, and that no other additions should be necessary beyond a clabbering agent. This said, I'd bet you get higher yeilds starting with milk rather than whey.

I'd never heard of the buttermilk trick - I've always just used water with pink rock salt to prevent discolouration and draw out the bitterness. I'll have to try it! My fave is a Thai method that uses the male flowers and pale, cream-coloured bracts poached in coconut milk with green chilis; this is normally served using one of the red bracts as a dish, with the largest prawns one can find. And I agree completely about it being a time-consuming process, but there's something serenly calming about preparing a bud - it's almost like a meditation.

You absolutely can. A good friend of mine uses Musa basjoo and Musa dasycarpa leaves all the time - they're easier to harvest than the leaves off of the taller "edible" bananas.

Or sukiyaki I'd actually consider a yogurt smoothie as an accompaniment to sukiyaki, provided that it was sweet yogurt. And thinking about it, I'd also like to retract my Foie Gras comment. I had some with a balsamic-yogurt reduction sauce the other day which was faboo.

I approach this totally differently! I slice my ginger either into smallish cubes or into 1/8" slices (more often the latter since I got a nakiri), then boil it in a syrup of 3 C panela and 3 C water for each pound of gigner, until the liquid has reduced to the consistency of maple syrup; strain and drain the ginger and sit it overnight in granulated sugar. This is, of course, a much spicier product than the one you're describing, but it's incredibly shelf-stable over great amounts of time, and the syrup is a fantastic byproduct (I use it to make my own ginger beer). I should mention that I'm very lucky to have access to mature gingerroot that hasn't been more than 2 days out of the fields, so even quite old root is still tender.

I'm not sure whether it's been mentioned upthread, but: I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy. -normally attributed to Tom Waits

Darienne - I just checked, and the method is in my foodblog of all places! This post, to be specific. It shows the method for peeling semiripe plantains, but it's the exact same for green ones - cut off the two ends, make a slit down the middle, and roll the plantain out of its skin.

Matoke or Matooke can be cooked in a number of ways. The Liboke (which is the proper name for the plantain and beef stew - Matoke is just the plantains) is made with all-green plantains like the ones in your picture. When dishes call for steamed plantains, that's usually ripe ones - and plantains have a very different ripeness scale from dessert bananas. Plantains are ripe when the skin is at least 50% black - anything yellower/greener will still be very starchy. EDIT - This said, whenever I've made Liboke or its South American relative, Sancocho, I've always enjoyed the results more when I used fairly ripe plantains. There's more dimension to the flavour then - and unless you know exactly how to peel a green plantain, there's less chance of getting bitter saps in the dish. Used green, they're kind of potato-ish; used ripe they're definitely more banana-y in flavour but still provide good body and filler for the stew. If you'd like a pictorial primer on peeling green plantains in order that the bittering sap stays off the final result, I'd be happy to oblige.

Kay, would you like an all-cornmeal recipe for blankies? Rollable, handleable, bakes easily on silpats....

I've seen them around here as well, but anything coated in PTFE gives me the screaming willies. Especially a knife, which I wouldn't be able to resist sharpening eventually. It also strikes me as a sort of gilded lilies thing - I've never had too much of a problem with anything sticking to my stainless and carbon steel knives, and I can't see the point in non-stick coating on a knife....

Something simple here - Colby and Javierino sandwich on honey-bran bread, a sliced Jonny apple, and some Dambo cheese to accompany the apple.

At least some of that calls out for Lazy Bastard Risotto. Make up your favourite mushroom cream sauce and reheat the rice by simmering in said sauce for 10-15 minutes. E presto! Creamy, mushroomy goodness.

I can only speak for the Ecuadorian technique when it comes to asado, but it's not all that different from the Argentine; certainly the smaller parillas are designed similarly. Fill your spit pit fairly high with wood or to about half with charcoal, and let it burn to good coals, then place your meat on top and cook. Asar as a technique isn't something where you fine-tune the heat after it's good and going - most of the outer-surface cooking happens while the coals are still very hot, and then the inner cooks slowly as the coals cool off (which, if you've got a good parilla, won't happen for quite some time).

You can cut oil by up to half using applesauce, but I wouldn't mess too much with the egg proportion - in bundts it's not only there to hold the dough together, it also helps to leaven the dough. Is there any other type of liquid in the dough - ie milk? You can replace 100% of that with applesauce, particularly if you've got a thinner style sauce, but if you do this you need to keep the fat and egg proportions steady (and as a sidenote if you're replacing 1 C of butter with oil, use 3/4 C of oil so that the final product keeps a good crumb - the full cup will make it almost too oily/crumbly in my experience).

I file it in my memory, and when I've got a free second I transfer it to a notebook, like most people here. Mine is A5 paper in a mini-binder, so that I can arrange and add/remove pages as I see fit.

I only do Calamansignac when a friend of mine (who has trees) gives me some of her crop; otherwise Kumquats and Mandalimes are much more common small citrusses than the Calamansi is. BTW, citrus is an Old-World plant and everything here was brought over by the Spanish. On the upside, though, I can get Valencia and Sevilla oranges year-round here.... Actually, it's much more common to find 7 or 8 varieties of limes and lemons, some of which are orange inside, than it is to find a "true" orange.

I cheated, actually. I cut the Calmanasi in half (the way one would slice a grapefruit) then used my handy runcible spoon to remove the meat and connective tissues (which I smooshed up and boiled up with a bit of grapefruit rind and some herbs in the process of making my own citrus bitters), then cut the rind into strips and that's what went into the cognac in a large clear glass jar in the sunshine of my kitchen windowledge for a couple of weeks. Cognac is naturally a bit sweet (or at least the Remy XO I used was) and it complemented the Calmanasi rather well. I tested the jar every other day or so (a teaspoon at a time) until I was happy with the extraction, then I filtered it and squirreled it away in a brown-glass bottle. I had about 1 L of it, and it lasted about three months (by which time it was all gone). Then I took those lovely chunks of cognac'd rind and covered them in the darkest chocolate I had on hand, which was a 78% Amazonian gran cru if memory serves. Edit - I am an atrocious typist today. Fixed typos and grammar problems.

I've never done neutral spirits extraction with calamondins, but I have extracted them into cognac and the result was breathtakingly good. I imagine that in a 'cello presentation you'd end up with something similar to Gran Marnier or other complex orange liqueurs.

Indefinitely seems to be the answer given upthread....

My faves in what I'd consider the Four Categories of Yogurt are the following, but it must be said that I'm a total yogurt slut and I'll eat anything that looks or sounds good. 1. Sweet - Chiveria Entera Vainilla - for fruit salads and smoothies. 7% fat, excellent vanilla flavour, and good balance between thickness and pourability. 2. Pourable Sour - Alpina Natural Tipo II - for baking; this is a slightly thinner sour yogurt. 3. Balkan - Dos Pinos Tipo II - for sour yogurt eating; high fat, really thick, and pleasantly sour with no off aftertastes. Made by a local Lebanese co-op. 4. Drinking - Toni Vivaly Frutas Rojas - this is a drinking yogurt, almost a pre-blended smoothie, with strawberries, capuli, and mora (blackberries). All of these are live cultures (it's illegal to sell dead yogurt here) - and actually when I go to the supermarket there's an entire aisle devoted solely to the various brands and types of yogurts, and it changes depending on which supermarket I'm in and in which province, because there are many small dairies that provide only for their local areas. For example, here in Tungurahua, I can get Pura Crema Trozos de Durazno, which is an insanely high-fat semisweet yogurt with peach chunks in it; this isn't available even in neighbouring provinces. Equally, in Pichincha (where the Alpina dairy reigns supreme), I can get Alpina Yox drinkable yogurts in convenient squeeze tubes.