Panaderia Canadiense

OK, if you're looking for cakes that do well in hotel pans, I've got a few different ones. The real standout, IMHO, is Death by Chocolate Zucchini Cake, which is always uniformly moist throughout and which has a lovely rich flavour. I'll take a look through my massive catering binder and pull out the best recipes I've got, then Gullet them for you.

Another thing that comes to mind is fruit suspended in gelatine - two or three colours if you're feeling fancy. This can be made ahead in huge pans and then simply cubed and served with a bit of fresh fruit and whipped cream or ice cream for a lovely dessert.

Gotta be the Volquetero for me. This is a specialty from the Amazon town of Puyo, where I lived for a time and where I became addicted to it. Volquetero is basically a starch salad, but done correctly it's delicious. For 2 people (or me, when I'm hungry): 1/2 Cup (generous) of drained cooked and lightly salted chochos (Lupini beans.) Fresh is best. 1/2 Cup (generous) of freshly popped popcorn 1/2 Cup (generous) of the thinnest-cut chifles you can find or make (green plantain chips; fresh is best if you can do it) 1/2 Cup (generous) of tostado (dry yellow Caraguay-type corn, kettle-roasted with a bit of oil and garlic. No idea if this is available in the US; you can substitute anything salty and crunchy with a garlic flavour.) About 1/2 a small red onion, cut into thin slices About 1-2 medium tomatoes, fresh, cubed The juice of 4-5 small limes and one large orange (I use a bitter orange or green mandarin; you're looking for a tart flavour rather than a sweet one) A dash of aji (hot sauce) Cilantro A personal-size (small) tin of tuna fish, preferably in oil 1. Begin by mixing the onions, tomato, citrus juice, aji and cilantro together in a separate bowl, and set aside to quick-pickle. This stuff is called Encebollado, and is essential to most Ecuadorian cold salads. 2. Put your heap of chochos in the bowl in which you will serve the salad. Next, layer in the chifles, tostado, and finally the popcorn. 3. Add as much Encebollado as you like. In comedores, this will be the full amount you made earlier. I like less, usually. 4. Open the tuna, drain out about half of the oil, and then drizzle the remainder over the salad, then flake the fish out on the very top. 5. Eat immediately. There are a number of variations on this; my favourite is to add finely shredded carrot to the Encebollado and reduce the onion by about half. Others serve this with any cold legume in place of the chochos.

If you found your FT to be soggy, the first thing to do is to reduce the soaking time - try 15 seconds each side for starters. That way you'll get absorption of the custard mix but not so much that when you cook the toasts it will remain blah and gooey in the middle. I normally use about 1/2 to 3/4" slices and give them 10-15 seconds each side (not that I count anymore; FT is one of my very fave breakfasts and I've been making it for ages) in a custard bath that's more heavily weighted towards heavy cream than egg (the 40% mentioned above sounds about right) with fresh-grated nutmeg and ishpingo (cinnamon flowers) in the bath.

If you use a nice, slow oven and pre-marinade your brisket in something barbecue-y like tamarind and tomato sauce with beer, it should be very easy to get a BBQ-style result, especially if you finish it with the torch as suggested above.

Black and White cake - inside is my fave hypermoist chocolate zucchini cake recipe with added Macadamia nuts; outside is white chocolate ganache with white chocochips and coconut. The ganache kind of freaked me out a bit initially, since it was yellow going on, but it set up well.

You could try hot-dogs and cold salads...

I'm a huge fan of stuffing trout with peaches or apricots and sprinkling with cloves and allspice before grilling it. I think it depends heavily on the fish in question and also the fruit pairing.

Agreed! Although in properly made hot chocolate, the cheese at the bottom runs a close second for best bits....

I am still pining for 5-Star Bars. Nothing else even gets close to 'em.

Scoop, you should know that cuy is normally served with peanut-sauce potatoes, not rice....

I drink most of my coffee Pintado (black with just a little sploosh of whole milk or cream); I think it's a flavour thing, since at least with the beans I use the dairy brings out a lovely roasted-chocolate-caramel flavour in the coffee that I don't perceive without the cream. Mom drinks her coffee Cortado, with about 30% milk and 70% coffee (more or less). Neither of us takes sugar. I also think that how you add the milk/cream and how much has a huge influence on the final flavour of the coffee. Cafe Con Leche, for example, is usually just a little bit of coffee in a whole lot of hot milk or light cream. Better hereabouts as Cafe Esencia, which uses a concentrated tincture of coffee, usually also hot. Then you blend the hot tincture and hot milk until you've got a colour that seems about right. When I'm out, my choices are normally hot milk and Nescafe (ick!) or Esencia, and I always opt for the latter.

I can't really speak to the chemistry of it, but.... In the case of Cachacas and Aguardientes, sugar is normally used to lessen the burn, and in the case of Aguardiente, sugar and heat (Canelazo) leads to a drink that may be about 80-proof but has the flavour of fruit juice.

I have been remiss in down/uploading and posting dinners.... Chicken soup and quinua-cheese biscuits A curried lamb and noodles thing, which occurred when it was time to clean out the fridge. It was surprisingly good. Panfried tilapia in cracker crust with cheesy scalloped potatoes and asparagus (gosh, I love asparagus) Last night's lasagne and (distantly) a simple chard and lettuce salad. The lasagne was one of the best in recent months.

Not disdain on my part; I simply don't see the logic in it. And my olive oil comes from Peru.

I always imagined them to be sort of like Bad Batz Maru.... Which would mean that they only sweat when they're nervous.

Which is exactly why I did point out in my first post that my results won't be typical for US residents. I'm now beginning to regret joining this thread.

The Cerveceria Nacional has an import monopoly on all malts, malt extracts, and hops in all forms. I can probably get one or the other illegally, but then it becomes prohibitively expensive and if I'm caught there are penalties ranging from rather stiff fines to jail time, and since I'm a resident outsider I could also get kicked out of the country. Hence, I grow my own hops (from seed, no less) and I malt my own grain from locally-sourced barley. Those manners of getting at beermaking are perfectly licit.

And that goes back to the point that I made waaay back in my first post in this thread - I live in Ecuador, where such things are quite a bit less expensive. I am particularly lucky to live on the site of the old Incan Royal Gardens and within 25 km of an active volcano, so I have insanely good soil to begin with. I also have the advantage of a 12-month growing season. I have, point of fact, compared my Chontos to DOP San Marzanos, and the Chontos won hands down. I think freshness is the issue again, but also at stake is the manner in which the Chontos become sauce. I tend to lightly roast them whole over charcoal before using them to make paste, so there's a flavour there that's missing from the San Marzanos, which I can't really treat in the same manner due to their already processed nature.

Sounds like a cookoff in the making....

Sure, the tomato was brought to Europe in the 16th century. And it didn't really gain favor in Italy until much later. But I think it's been long enough that we can stop calling it an import. So what if the tomato is an adopted child in the food culture of Italy? It's still family. Right, plus there has been centuries of breeding, grafting and cultivars - plus the terroir claimed for the DOP. There's no need to be jingoistic about the tomato. I wasn't being jingoistic about the tomato, I was merely pointing out, in my own (admittedly oblique) way that it's kind of silly to be worrying about country of origin for the ingredients. If I have perfectly good Chonto Santa Cruz heirloom paste tomatoes growing in my garden, I'm hardly going to go out and purchase a can of Italian DOP tomatoes (as has been discussed) simply to make the dish more authentic. That's silly, in my book. The Chontos, which I have been babying, are going to taste better, and that's my primary concern with any dish. Equally, I won't buy imported Mozza when I can get really excellent cheese made fresh this morning from the cheesemaker up the street.

I'll have to say that I sorely miss the brews from the Alley Kat brewery in Edmonton, Alberta; particularly their Old Deuteronomy Barleywine, Full Moon IPA, and the Aprikat lager (an apricot beer, very refreshing.) The only thing really available in Ecuador is the national beer, Pilsener (the brand and the type), as the alternative, Club, is absolutely ghastly. If I'm willing to drop $3 a bottle, I can sometimes get Heinie or Corona, and for slightly less some truly awful Peruvian skook. Hence, my current favourite beer is whatever my friend Gareth is brewing at the moment. After my hops bloom, it will be whatever I choose to brew, most likely a chocolate stout. It's all a crapshoot, really, because I malt and oast my own grains, and I'd like to have a shot at doing black caramel malt sometime soon. I will say that I do miss the ales....

Exactly, Norm. At that point, I'd also be challenging the tomato as an Italian plant, since it's an import.

For Tibet and to a lesser extent Nepal and Bhutan, the best book out there is Tibetan Cooking, which gives you the cultural and religious history of the dishes along with recipes and methods of preparation.

Hold on. This sounds like you're trying to replicate a commercial pizza at home, something that you didn't mention up at the beginning of the thread! Of course it's going to be expensive for you. I'm with Norm. If you want a commercial-style pizza, go out and buy one, and save yourself the angst. You've already mentioned that you have an itty-bitty kitchen, and you're never going to have the room for the proper oven, let alone the bulk-quantity purchasing power that brings those ingredients down to reasonable prices. And yes, fresh tomatoes are a completely different beastie but the pizza produced with them is also a completely different beastie. And a better one, in my humble opinion. Perhaps if you let go of the dream of a perfect commercial pizza at home, you'll realize this.