Panaderia Canadiense

Ecuador, South America - it's a tie between Red Bellied Piraña, Arrowana, Tilapia, and Pargo Lunar (a type of snapper local to our coast). And this will always depend on where in the country I find myself; upper Amazon is best for Piraña, lower Amazon for Arrowana, and coast for Pargo Lunar. In the Sierra, I tend to eat locally farmed rainbow and steelhead trout or, when in Ibarra, Tilapia freshly caught out of Lago Yaguarcocha.

Alongside ripe and freshly split Durian, I think Guava are perhaps in the running for "world's tastiest and at the same time foulest smelling fruit."

Thanks! I'll start with 6 of them, then, and see how much peel that gets me. I also want to candy the peels of at least 2 or 3 of them (because a nibble of candied lemon peel is a guilty pleasure, and these are so perfect that it would be almost a shame not to!) They definitely aren't Meyers - they're too flavourful for that, and Meyers are only rarely grown down here (probably for the very reason that they lack flavour). I'd place bets on them being a Spanish type, perhaps Villafranca, which are also quite large. The flavour is comparable to Sorrento lemons, which are rarely grown here (but which I buy whenever I see them.) I'll give it a shot with 6 of them and see what happens - my friend tells me that as long as at least one lemon pie comes his way per dozen lemons, he's happy to continue picking them and giving them to me. I've also got some limes the size of my fist, one of which will be zested and added as per Katie's instructions.

Quick question, folks. A friend of mine gave me about a dozen of these perfect lemons from his trees (I have no idea of the cultivar). They're about a pound each - for reference, the knife in this photo is 12" long from tip to pommel. The rinds have very thick yellow portions and finer amounts of white, and the fruit itself is crazy juicy (it will become lemon pies for the most part) - but I don't want to waste that lovely peel! I love Limoncello but it's around $50 a bottle here, so I figured I'd give it a shot. The question is this: how many of these would you consider to be equivalent to a dozen "normal" lemons? I'm trying to figure out how many of them to microplane into my vodka - I don't want to overdo it.

I've had the green and white striped ones, which were sold to me as "lotus cakes" - and now I'm seriously craving them. Gee, thanks, GR - I'm going to have to make them now, because we don't even have anything remotely resembling a Vietnamese bakery / store within about half a continent.

Food poisoning - it's what's for dinner! On a more serious note - Darienne, whenever I open a can of anything and it seems funky to me or abnormal, even if it doesn't smell, I turf it. I won't even chance the boiling (although that would probably be just fine, as the CDC website points out) because although I've normally got a cast-iron stomach, I hate having food-borne illnesses so much - there's nothing like spending your birthday in the bathroom retching to make you cautious! I won't venture what exactly was wrong with the chickpeas, but they're a likely culprit as they weren't normal coming out of the can and since Ed wasn't sick but you were. And this all being in the past, you can chalk it up as an important lesson about canned beans and for certain the next time you find jellied chickpeas or whatnot you won't be eating them, yes? At least, not without boiling or pressure cooking them first? (That said, if you've got a pressure cooker, it's no big thing to prepare dried chickpeas, is it?)

ATS-34 and CPM-T440V are good steels to look at - both are stainless, but are harder than "standard" stainless and hold their edges better and for longer. Another thought is to include a steel in your set (handled to match the knives) - it's an invaluable tool in the kitchen and something that beginners should learn to use along with the basic skills of knives themselves. I sharpen about once a month on most of my knives, but I steel them daily before use.

Oh yeah, and the soups! If you're going to start eating meat, there are some really stellar things that can be made with bones/carcasses/leftover bits. Cockaleekie, Scotch Broth (which is best when you use lamb bones leftover from trimming odd lamb stew meat), Hamhock and Bean, the possiblities are endless!

I've got a picture of it being made somewhere in my foodblog, Judiu. Properly done, it's cooked in these huge brass pailas over wood flames - for this reason, I can't say I'm anywhere near a master of the art of making Fritada - that title belongs rightly to the grandmothers and their wood fires along the edges of the Panamerican highway.

I'm another Lessmeatarian, and I eat a lot of fish and some chicken and turkey, and rarely red meats or pork. Everything in this thread is delicious, and I'll give you one more to consider if you live in a large enough center to have an Asian or Latin American grocery store. Maybe try Maito, which I absolutely flat out love. I detailed the process for making it at this thread. The example shows Tilapia filets, which are a nice mild fish and excellent in this style of preparation, but you can do the same thing with pounded chicken breasts or any other mild fish (including whole trout if your leaves are big enough.) You can also cook sliced potatoes, manioc, and/or taro root in the leaf along with the fish, and have a "no plates" meal, which is quite nice. And if you're craving some piggy goodness, you could also try your hand at Ecuadorian-style Fritada (which can be done with other fatty meats, but which IMHO should only and ever be done with pork). Take about 1" square chunks of pork belly, and throw them into a warm pan. Let the fat melt out, and once you've got a reasonable amount of liquid, add a clove of garlic, a chunk of peeled ginger, five or six cloves, a stick of cinnamon, and about half a pound of raw sugar for every pound of pork. Continue cooking until the fat boils and the meat sort of poaches/fries in it. Properly done (and I'm by no means a master) it should be crispy and sweet on the outside and savoury and softly delicious in the middle. This is normally served with a big pile of boullion rice and corn either on or off the cob.

I made Mandalime meringue pie, and it got gobbled up before I could even take a picture! That's what I get for taking my Pi day pie to the community league meeting....

First "real" meal (ie not a takeout pizza) in my new house, on my new plates! Tilapia poached in sweet and sour Reina Claudia sauce with a hint of curry and basil, with turmeric wild mushroom rice and some (ubiquitous in our kitchen) asparagus. 'Twere delish.

I'm hoping against hope that it will finally be DCarch. But that's a stretch....

Mine (Ecuadorian Manjar de Leche) is as follows: 1 L full-fat milk 1 C of the heaviest cream you can get your hands on (I use nata, the Ecuadorian equivalent of double cream) 250g panela/piloncillo or at the very least demerrara or turbinado sugar 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 1 tsp vanilla -- 1. In a heavy saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the milk and cream, then add the soda and vanilla, and stir well. 2. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat and continue to stir until the mixture takes on a golden, toasted colour. 3. Reduce the heat to minimym and continue to stir for about 10 minutes more (or until fairly thick), keeping constant motion. 4. Shock in a cold-water bath for about 5 minutes more, continuing to stir constantly. The manjar should be quite thick at this point, and the lovely caramel smell should pervade the house. 5. Allow to cool to room temperature at its own pace. Store in airtight containers in the fridge.

I'm with Jaymes entirely! This said, I just got the opportunity to buy my first full set of heavy hand-painted Cuenca pottery (I had the lightweight "disposable" ones before, which I sort of love-hated), and although they're totally humble by the standards of this thread, I think they're incredibly sexy tableware. All parts of the set have a very comforting weight to them, and in practice the cobalt blue really sets off the food. ETA - Photos!

Those are tomato sprouts.... Hmmmm..... That would be somebody in the mid-southern US, then.

Let us not forget Toad in the Hole - wherein you cut a circular hole in the middle of a slice of (preferably) rye bread, then butter the bread, flap it onto the griddle, and crack the egg into the hole. Flip when it's solid enough to do so. This is the only way that I can eat an egg on its own. Unfortunately, outside of one or two diners in northern Canada, it's not a common enough thing to order it in North America - last time I tried in a cafe in Toronto, the waitron looked at me like I had asked for some exotic delicacy. I had to explain to the cook what I wanted. Rob, are you also interested in the Latin American egg preparations as well?

I'll pipe in here, as a very tall somebody with improbably small hands (176 cm but gloves only size 6). Blade angle needs to be factored in (as I believe was mentioned above) but if you're encouraging a pinch grip you'll also need to make sure that the choils are dulled - I'm not sure what the standards are in Europe, but here in Latin America almost all knives come with sharp-pointed choils (Japanese standard) that need to be filed down before the knife is put into use, in order to prevent lots of unnecessary bleeding.... You might also think about shaping the choils to accept the proper finger position on the paring and utility knives.

Is this meant to be a "sit down and eat it" app, or is it meant to be more like an hors d'ouevre? If it's a sit and eat it style first course, why not lightly braised Belgian endive with a balsamic vinagrette? It's light and the slight bitterness of the endive will set off the richness of the Stroganoff quite nicely.

Or, if you can find one, a Hobart-made KA classic, like the ancient KW500 that I've got (it's more than 50 years old). Those are real treasures - everything inside mine (I've opened it up to grease it occasionally) is solid metal and it stands up to even very stiff doughs. Like Shalmanese says, look for ones that have been in use, not ones that have sat and rusted. That's how the tanks are separated from the Yugos. When it comes time to replace my old KA, I'll likely get an industrial-model Hobart mixer.

I'm completely envious of that knife, actually - if you're not going to use it, you could send it to me! Before I moved I had one very similar which I purchased as a carving and garnishes knife, but which somehow disappeared between Canada and Ecuador. It's not held in the "normal" way of paring knives - I normally used a grip like the one shown in the photo above, or grasped the back of the blade between my fingers with the handle nestled into the palm of my hand (a technique I still use when carving or making garnishes).

Have you tried enriching your milk with a bit of cream? When I make manjar de leche (same stuff, northern LA name), I've always had much better tasting results by adding between 1/2 and 1 C of very heavy cream to the recipe. Double cream if you can find it (for 1/2 cup) - down here we use Nata, which is the cream off the top of regular cream. It seems to help the thickening, as well as adding a very rich, rounded flavour to the final product.

I think the answer is right in the title of the thread - supermaket buns. Any baked good mass-produced on that scale is going to suffer.

Butter the size of an egg is usually about 1/4 cup, at least in recipes I've adapted from my gran.

And yet other singular/plurals that bug me: Momo, shrimp, squid, moose, and sheep are all their own plurals. No such thing as Momos, shrimps, squids, mooses or meese, or sheeps. And yet I see it all the time. Meh.