Panaderia Canadiense

Heidi - unfortunately my camera went "blooey" on New Year's day, and will be in the shop until the 25th. I might have some photos of the bounty from Christmas, though, which was when we started to harvest the Reinas. I don't have nearly enough freezer space to do the whole frozen slices thing, unfortunately. However I have put up two jars of Umeshu, and I'll be adding some of the plums to my chutney tomorrow when I get my case of mangoes. I've been juicing them like crazy, and I gave a bunch away at the Epiphany parade as well.

Kay - yes there is. Rice flour is the whole grain, milled. Rice starch is only the fecula, derived from either soaking or cooking the grain and then dried and collected. Rice starch is normally much much finer than rice flour. As for the no-gluten roux, I've had excellent results with a 50-50 mixture of golden pea and quinua flours of at least 000 mesh, as well as plantain flour 50/50 with tapioca flour. Neither of these is grainy in the least, and both have engaging flavours (the pea/quinua is nutty, while the plantain/tapioca has a tropical flavour that marries well with cream).

Join the club. We have t-shirts. I'll admit to partially defatting when Mom is going to eat the final product, and that's out of respect for her lack of gallbladder. But that's it. A good soup should have those little globules of fat floating up there on it. --- I'll also, while we're here, admit to using packaged mushroom cream sauces with milk, because sometimes I just can't be bothered to rehydrate the suellius and do the whole roux + cream thing.

I always thought that the first "r" in turmeric was next to silent (semivocal) and I pronounce it as too{r}meric. Funny, though, I pronounce the "r" in the Spanish equivalent (curcuma) fully. Edited because something funky happened with the symbol I used for the semivocal r.

I'd check that before making the assumption. However, if it does turn out that they're all from US milk, the difference will be fat contents.

Fat contents, most likely, and flavour. Each country grazes its cattle differently and has a different attitude about at what point cream is cream rather than milk. If I recall correctly, the Honduran cream will be the heaviest of the three.

Any sharp cheese, but particularly Amalattea, in thick slabs spread generously with mango chutney. Le yum. Also, grilled shredded medium to sharp cheeses with sauerkraut and little chunks of chorizo. It's a gas factory, but so so tasty.

I've heard about the health benefits of black vinegar, supposedly an old Japanese health tonic. I'd be interested in hearing more about apple cider health folklore if you have a link. For me, I'm going to try to master terrines and pates. And take better food pics. This link is fairly comprehensive.

Mjx - I'm well past having blossoms, unfortunately, but if it does this next year I'll definitely take that advice. Nikki - now I know exactly what I'm doing with the small ones. I think I neglected to mention upthread, but about 90% of the plums I'm harvesting are the size of my fist more or less, which is huge for a plum here.

I'll admit to having in my freezer bags of pre-pulped frozen fruit for making juice. Sometimes I just can't be arsed to strain the seeds out of fresh Mora or Naranjilla juices, and the pre-pulped stuff is seedless....

Can that be done with plums? Do you have a recipe?!?!?

Oh shoot, other new years! In that case, the tradition around my house is to make Momos and curried daal and potatoes, and then feed it to the entire barrio (they love it). On Western new year's day, though, we do as I said above.

Hi folks! I have a Reina Claudia variety greengage plum tree in my front yard, which for the past two years has struggled to give me even a pound of fruit in a year. Severe pruning and a particularly wet spring this year have given me a more than bumper crop - the tree is so loaded that it's in danger of branches breaking. I harvested about 15 lbs of ripe and semiripe plums today (they literally fell out of the tree into my hands), and it appears that I'll be able to do this daily for about a month before the tree is empty. Now, I'm completely familiar and comfy with the various uses for Mirabel, Damask, and Damson type plums (red to black, which are my other plum trees), but I'm at a loss with the Reina Claudias. What should I be doing with them? I can only eat so many out of hand before I get completely sick of them, and I've been giving big bags to the neighbours since they started to ripen about two weeks ago. Help!!!

In my family, it's whatever one has in the fridge. This year, that meant mushroom caps stuffed with chicken sausage, pureed potatoes, cream cheese, and topped with mozzarella, with a side of more chicken sausage fried up with some caramelized onions, and a bagel. After one fights one's way through the fug of exhaustion and possible hangover, that is. Breakfast is normally whatever can be scrounged, often the eve dinner's leftovers.

The boiling action of making the chai seems to help extract the nutmeg flavour; I've tried rasping it a bit before throwing it in and it overloads the other flavours (apart from the ginger, which it amplifies). Hence, I've been tending to just throw it in whole lately, so that it adds a hint of nutmeg at the end of the flavour complex. To make this properly, you bring lightly salted water to a boil and then throw in the loose tea and spices and boil for at least 5 minutes, although Ngawang always swore that it was better if you let it boil slowly for half an hour. Then add cream until it's a medium milk chocolate colour, and sugar it to taste. Simmer another 5 minutes to marry the spice to the fat and fully dissolve the sugar, then serve hot. Ngawang uses about a cup of sugar when he makes chai; I prefer only about a tablespoon in the whole pot. My friend Lobsang adds salted butter at the cream point, and omits sugar entirely; he's Tibetan and will generally then take the tea and use it to roll up small balls of tsampa (roasted barley flour) for snacking. I'm partial to this on cold days, but I normally use sweet butter and salt the tea to taste. (Machica is the Ecuadorian highland equivalent of tsampa, as I was thrilled to discover when served buttery hot chocolate and a bowl of it visiting some highland Quichua friends a couple of years ago - the tradition is almost exactly the same. I'm now never without machica in the house.)

Apart from the Lapsang, galangal, and black cardamon, a small amount of dried gingerroot, green cardamon pods, three star anises (broken into teeth), a healthy stick of cinnamon, about 10 whole cloves, black peppercorns, allspices, and a whole nutmeg (which lives in the chai pot for the entire week of chai drinking, and is then rasped into its own special jar, because it takes on the other flavours a bit). That's my friend Ngawang's recipe; he's from a small town close to the Bhutanese border.

Mugs with their lips down (on my very clean wooden aparador shelves, so I'm not worried there) because they stack better that way. Stemware is suspended by its feet, and glasses are lips-down as well.

I'd say that square-foot gardening techniques and some forms of permaculture would qualify as modernist. Personally, when it comes to growing food I'm an 18th century kind of gal, though.

Lapsang Souchong tea is the basis of all good Nepali chais, as is black cardamon and a teensy piece of galangal root (which would definitely give that smokey flavour that's eluding you).

Add me to the "no Pam, not ever in the kitchen" camp. The only thing Pam is good for is to reduce the friction coefficient of inner tubes prior to sliding down icy hills - you go about 25% faster and quite a bit further than without it. I use sunflower oil with a light dusting of confectioner's sugar in complicated molds, and it works beautifully for me. On the flat I use Silpats, and in metal tins I either butter (when bread is to be baked) or use a parchment/wax paper liner (when fruit breads are involved).

I can't pick just one. I won't cook in a kitchen that doesn't have real butter, fresh limes, some form of aji peppers, cumin, and fresh oregano either in it or available to it. EVOO almost makes the list, but not quite, because butter is more versatile.

I delve into my little book of Ecuadorian recipes when I'm at a loss out of my own head or tried-n-true stuff. That, and I make a lot of "lazy bastard" dishes that require very little thinking or planning to pull off well. Last night's dinner was one such, a lazy bastard tuna casserole made on the stovetop in my big cast-iron pan.

Are you terribly attached to western-style recipes and flavour combos? If not, I've got some South American veal dishes that are knock-your-socks-off good and that I can almost guarantee your guests will never have seen before.

I've been having a great time with a Toddy of the following: 1 oz ginger syrup 2 oz Ron Estelar Aguardiente Reposado (a rhum agricole type product, 3 years in oak barrels at 0 latitude) 4-5 oz hot water a small lime, squozen in a dash of coarsely-ground cinnamon This is fabulous, and beats molasses or panela toddies by a long shot because of the heat inherent in the ginger. The one night where I grabbed the "end of the bag mix" of spices (typically contains varying amounts of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ishpingo, and allspice) it tasted like a gingerbread house.

I'd also check the type of bananas. Many people who have averse reactions to Gran Nain and Cavendish bananas will be just fine with Nino, Orito, Saba, Orinoco, and in fact almost any non-commercial type - they have very different flavour components. If I recall anything of Island cuisine, it's that it's heavier on the plantain than it is on the banana, and since you say you've got no issue with plantain, I doubt you'll have any problems at all. Bananas when they appear tend to be fairly in your face about it (fried banana on a stick, anyone?)