Panaderia Canadiense

How messy was the dril with the brush?

That's age, not freshness. Even very fresh old ginger will have a tough rind on it, although that rind might be a bit softer if it's still less than a day out of the soil... I believe that I mentioned that I get my ginger about 12 hours from when it's removed from the fields. The past 20 lbs or so have been very small rhizomes, more like setts than proper chunks of the spice. The last 10 lbs I suspect of being at least partially Mariposas Blancas (Hedychium coronarium), and partially Galangal, since there was a huge disparity in piece size and shape as well as core colour. (Not that I mind the Mariposas; it's a touch sweeter than true ginger and candies marvellously. The Galangal I try to separate out as it can turn an entire batch bitter.)

I really wish that I had a camera to show you what I'm working with. Fresh field ginger isn't large enough to do the knife treatment - I'd lose more than 50% of each piece of rhizome, and that's a wasteage that I'm not comfortable with. I will try the plastic brush in the power drill, though - that sounds as though it will work superbly.

No, but are you candying the result? Don't you find that it's tough(er)? Also, I should mention that I'm not working with the sort of pristinely-washed supermarket ginger that North Americans are used to. I get roots that have come straight out of the field and I'm lucky if they've been washed in even the most cursory of manners.

Yeah, but for 10 pounds?

Hi folks! I've been asked to produce about 10 lbs of candied ginger a month, which I'm fine with, but I need some ideas on how to peel that much ginger. For smaller (say 2-3 lb) batches I'm fine with peeling it the old-fashioned way using a small spoon to rasp off the skin, but 10 lbs would take me a week to do that way and I'd probably end up with crippled claws in place of my hands. Does anybody know of reasonably-priced ginger peeling machines, or have ideas on how I might build such a beast myself (I'm fairly handy mechanically)? My first thought was an expanded-metal drum of some sort that I could tumble the ginger in, but I'm unsure whether that would work. Thanks in advance!

My first thought was stackable Melamine ware for those occasions, and invest in some nice cutlery. I agree with previous posters - plastic forks are an abomination at a sit-down meal. They're only fit for food on the go, and even then only barely. (I carry a full personal set of metal utensils in my purse.... ) ETA - I should mention that I'd consider buying a complete setting for 16 in high-quality Melamine, so that you've got a full non-mismatched set for these larger occasions. I'm guilty of cobbling together settings from various and sundry settings, and it irks me to no end that I can't lay the table to match. That's just me being OCD, though.

Margaret, with the small amounts of spice that are present in this cake, you don't lose any of the apple flavour. If anything, the blend of cinnamon with the hint of nutmeg accents it. I've tried probably about 20 or 25 different applesauce cake recipes, and great-great-gran's always comes out on top, with no needed boost for the apples. Darienne also mentioned that the apples her sauce is based on are Spies and Macs, which tend to (particularly the Spies) retain a wonderful apple flavour in sauce applications. The only apple better than a Spie for this cake is the type of aromatic Pippin grown in the tropics (which is what I use, and it does come down to personal preference.)

Here you go. This is great-great gran's recipe, and the only liquid in it is the applesauce (which accounts for its full apply flavour as well as its moisture.) This scale of the recipe makes either two small cakes (about 18 cm) for layering or one 27 cm diameter honker. 1.5 C sweet butter, no other 1.5 C brown sugar / panela 1.5 C applesauce 3 eggs 3 C AP flour 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp baking powder 0.5 tsp sea salt 3 tsp cinnamon 0.75 tsp nutmeg 1.5 tsp ginger 0.75 C raisins 0.75 C chopped walnuts -- Preheat your oven to medium (350 F / 180 C) 1. Cream together butter and sugar; once fluffy, add applesauce and beat to mix. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. 2. Combine flour, leavens, salt, and spices. Sift into wet. 3. Stir until just combined. The batter should be fairly stiff. 4. Fold in nuts and raisins. 5. Drop into a prepared (waxed/greased/floured) cake pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until an inserted pick comes out clean - your times may be longer due to lower altitudes. I like to ice this with thick Manjar de Leche, and if you've made two cakes for layering the filling is definitely Manjar with some extra chopped walnuts sprinkled on top.

I can give you my applesauce cake recipe, which does really retain the flavour of the apples and which is hypermoist and yummy.... (ooh, especially if you cover it in manjar de leche by way of icing, it's like eating caramel apples. How do we not have a drooling smilie?) It's a fave at the bakery, and I can't keep enough applesauce in the freezer. You could also try incorporating it into ice cream - what comes to mind is applesauce with a mild hit of cinnamon and perhaps a touch of clove, and a caramel ribbon.

Third'd (or whatever'd) for the planning. I do catering for groups of up to 200, and it all comes down to having everything misée and prepared before you start going for it. Prepping ahead will save your arse when it comes to the day of cookening, particularly if you've got an underequipped kitchen to work in. Third'd also for thinking about logistics - self/buffet service is probably the easiest way to get hot food into 26 mouths - big events, unless you've got loads of help in your kitchen, are not the time to think about picture-perfect plating. It sounds like you're going this alone, so I'd focus more on spectacular taste than great presentation. I'd also suggest looking at Latin American cafecito menus, which are generally for 20-30 people and use a minimum of protein with abundant inexpensive starches and proteiny grains like lentils. For 26 students, I'd be tempted to get the chicken thighs (or the whole chickens, if you can get into Costco), marinate them for at least overnight in Aliño (finely chopped red onions, garlic, cilantro, and cumin, with a bit of oil) or Adobo (pepper paste with achiote and a smidge of tomato), then roast 'em in the oven. If you go the whole chickens route, you've got the wings and carcassy bits for stock, to which you simply add potatoes and squash or white beans to make a tasty locro (spicing to taste) - this can be held in the fridge overnight and reheated day of, provided you've got fridge space. If not, then just make the stock ahead and simmer the veg into it day of. Lentils and/or pinto beans are an excellent side dish, particularly served in their own gravy (menestra, anyone?), and a heap of rice to go with that rounds out the meal. Soup first, then main and salad, then dessert if you've got budget left over for it. The easiest and cheapest dessert for large volumes is probably flan or jello (sad to say), but cut fruit is also a good idea. If you follow the LatAm style of menu, this needs only to be a small helping to sweeten and clear the palate. I'm not sure how expensive veggies are at this point in the season in Wisconsin, but if you can get a deal on lettuce or other leafy greens, salad is a great idea for large volumes, and very easy to prepare to boot. Then you just need a bucket / jug of dressing on the side. Sorry for the novel, and best of luck! Let us know how it turns out.

We're having winter instead of summer here in Ecuador, which means fabulous weather for tomatoes and lettuces but terrible for pretty much everything else I wanted to grow this cycle. I had Romanesco planned (which needs more sun to head up than it would get - winters here are rainy and cool to cold), and most of my more tropical starts (Chayote, Camote, Natal Plums, Barbados Cherry) and practically all of the edible flowers are simply giving up the ghost. I'll have to wait for the rains to end again before I can give them another shot. At least my Hildegaard's roses are blooming well - I'll have good rosewater for Turkish Delights. On the other hand, I'm hoping to harvest the country's first 10,000 foot altitude bananas in the upcoming months, and this is perfect weather to stimulate the apricot tree into a second bloom period (yum, apricots!).

For me, ick. Definitely ick. And I know it's because my Gran used to boil them into quasi-unidentifiable moosh in the inimitable way Scottish Grans have of putting otherwise good veg through the blander.... Perhaps it's time to give them another chance (parsnips are very common here, sold as "white carrots"), but I'm having a hard time getting over the foul pastes of yore.

OK, coming at this from a botanical background, all eggplants are hermaphroditic, and there's never any such thing as a male fruit, eggplant or not. Fruits are, by definition, female reproductive organs when it comes to plants (if you want the technical thing, they're actually the plant's swollen ovaries). Some people however do refer to "male" eggplants as those that are longer, and "female" eggplants as the rounder types. I'm not sure how that got started, and it's completely botanically spurious, which irks me. When it comes to using eggplants, c00kies is exactly right - younger fruits will have fewer mature seeds in them, which lowers their bitterness considerably. But if you're already slicing your eggplants thinly, why not salt and press them? Then, regardless of the age of the fruit when it was harvested, it will always be tender and relatively sweet (the salt pulls out and neutralizes the nicotinic alkaloids that make the flesh taste bitter). The white-skinned cultivars tend to be less bitter to begin with than the purple ones, but that's a personal observation and your palate may differ.

When you try again, try simply salting the cabbage heavily to bring out the water. It strikes me that you had FAR too much water this time - normally I have to add less than a cup of liquid to my krauts. Where are you, if I may ask?

Brandy snap dough is normally flexible enough to form once cooked, but like Chris I'd be looking at a cookie that could be baked in hemispheres and then joined after filling (I'd be looking at boiled sugar as the glue, so that it's all but invisible). You'll end up with far less wastage that way. Brandy Snaps (from a very old edition of the NYTimes cookbook, and my fave recipe for them): .25 cup light corn syrup .25 cup molasses .5 cup butter 1 cup sifted ap flour .66 cup granulated (white) sugar 1 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp brandy 1. Preheat oven to slow (300 F) 2. Heat syrup and molasses to boiling. Remove from heat and add butter (stir). 3. Sift together flour, sugar, and ginger. Add gradually, while stirring, to molasses mixture. Mix well. Add brandy. (Stir) 4. Drop by teaspoonfulls three inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes. 5. Remove from oven, loosen one cookie at a time, and form as desired (the book says to roll them into tubes over the handle of a wooden spoon). 6. Serve filled with whipped cream or pudding.

C. Sapidus? Oh, please let it be C. Sapidus.....

Speaking from the tropics (and I do make Kraut), it takes 2 days in stoneware crocks placed in the shadiest (and hence coolest) part of the kitchen; if I'm feeling very good about my timing, I can also do the fermentation in the cool corner of my back bathroom (which is only for show, not for use). In the summertime when I'm craving a nice sauerkraut, however, I bury the crocks in the shadiest part of the garden - otherwise they ferment far too quickly and I end up with an icky mass of cabbage in my nice crock... Summertime in buried crocks it takes between overnight to 24 hours (depending on whether the days top out at 30 or 45 C).

DCarch: 1. I'd like to know that also. 2. It must be a regional thing. When I buy a turkey here, I get the feet.

I can only give you the rationale for higher altitudes, where the faster action of the acid + soda combo causes the rise to occur too quickly, and hence the final product to collapse. Baking powder is slower acting, and thus better for applications such as this where a leaven that happened too early in the cooking process (or even in the beating process) could destroy the outcome. If it worked for you and was tasty, I'd leave it be.

In my family, Tuna Casserole is normally a "lazy bastard" dish, owing to how much the oven can heat the house (when it's 35 C outside, we are exclusively stovetop cooks). Lazy Bastard Tuna Casserole is made on the stovetop in the largest cast-iron saucepan, in the following way: sweat some Spanish onions in a bit of sunflower oil, then toss in finely diced green beans, green and red peppers, asparagus in chunks if it's in the fridge, peas, celery, any other appealing veg that might be in the fridge, and as many mushrooms as I think I can get away with. A bit of fresh herbs (oregano and parsely, at this point) and a dash of cumin, then a splash of water and on goes the lid so that the veggies sort of poach. Meanwhile, mushroom-water and milk beschamel with a quinua roux and a pinch of nutmeg, and usually a generous handfull of Parmesan or some similar very hard cheese. Sometimes the market has Angofastura or (even better) Manchego, and those will always beat Parm hands down. The beschamel goes into the cast iron once the veggies are no longer crunchy, then allowed to thicken back up. A can of drained chunk white tuna goes in at the end with the finely shredded fresh basil, so as not to over-tuna the dish. When I've got fresh tuna steaks, I'll often make this "casserole" as a sauce for them, then just sear them in lemon butter. Mom swears that this should be made to go over macaroni, but I'm an adherent to the egg-noodles camp. When she makes it, the stuff in the saucepan is poured over the noodles; when I'm the cook, the noodles go into the saucepan and the whole thing is dished from there.

Down here, it's the Microwave Oven and its partner, the Frozen "Convenience" Dinner. Most people here will choose a frozen precooked dinner (we need a *shuddering* smilie) over a traditional 3-course stovetop meal, and it represents a huge loss of technique and also of recipes. There are now people here who think that Cannas in the garden are purely for ornament - they don't know that the leaves are what humitas and quimbolitos are supposed to be wrapped in, and that's why grannie planted them in the first place.

For me, it depends on the city in which I find myself. In Quito, it's the following klatch, at all of which there are master chefs of their respective cuisines who are almost complete unknowns. We go to these places for their food, and have come to know the chefs simply because we kept coming back. Taberna Gitana, for paella and traditional Spanish cooking. Chef Juan Portillo has been crowned Latin America's King of Paella, and virtually nobody knows who he is or that he's got a restaurant. When we dine there, we can normally simply say "feed us, please" and he selects truly wonderful menus and then comes out and sips wine and chats with us while we eat. It's an experience. Sher i Punjab, for Punjabi dishes. There's a team of 4 chefs here. El Arabe, for Syrian dishes. The chef here is Salama, and he used to cook for Saudi royals. Crudo y Cocinado, for Ecuadorian tipico. The chef's name is Rothman; he's an Ecuadorian. In Ambato, Ali's, for all things beef. The chef is Ali Bakhtiari, originally from Persia, and he's a wizard on the grills. Costa Brava, for all things seafood. In Baños La Tasca, for tapas. Chef Pepe Lara is an artist.

Minas, if dried dill has no flavour, where are you getting your dried dill?!?!? I grow my own and sundry it for applications where fresh dill would be overpowering, and it's still very flavourful. I agree with MJX - you'll have to experiment and see. Fresh oregano, for example, can be quite a bit weaker of flavour than dried, and powdered herbs are different again. Basil is something that I believe should always be used fresh, but I keep dried in the cupboard as well for those rare times when the flavour of dried (which is sweeter and less ammoniac) is necessary in a dish (there are a couple of curries that need dried basil). And I'm also confused at how anybody could have fresh basil going bad in the fridge. I put it in almost everything!

We juice it when it's in season, and make vanilla yogurt shakes with it (very tasty). You're also bang-on about sorbets using the juice and small pieces of the fruit. However it doesn't cook well. You just end up with vaguely pearish mush. A friend of mine has a tree that overproduces and he's often at my door with baskets full of fruit. However, if I don't miss my guess entirely, Achacha is now being grown in Australia?