Panaderia Canadiense

There are a number of Ecuadorian things with names that lose in translation; one of my faves is a pile of lightly poached lupines with chifles (plantain chips), tostado, popcorn, and finely sliced onion and tomato with tuna fish on top. It's called a Volquetero, which translates as "Dump-trucker." Another great one is Chugchucara, which is generous chunks of back bacon fried until crispy in their own fat with panela and spices. That comes out as "Holy crap, an earthquake!" when you translate it.

You absolutely taste the plantain - there are 2 cups of plantain mush in that cake! I use a variety of plantain that isn't really all that available in North America, locally called Lime Plantain, which is a bit sweeter than the big Dominicana types.

C.Sapidus would be my guess too. Dang it, now I want gyozaaaaaaa.

dcarch, I think what might be happening here isn't that the rice actually keeps the salt "dry" (which, I agree with you, is pretty spurious given salt's reputation as a dessiccant) but rather that its action in the salt cellar helps to keep the salt loose and as such we perceive the salt to be "dry" simply because it isn't clumpy... Just my 2 cents. When I lived in the Amazon, the common practice was to keep popcorn kernels in the salt to keep it loose.

Have you tried infusing your gin or vodka with rose or lavender, rather than using syrups? That would get you the taste you want without any of the sweetness (which, IMHO, ruins a Martini faster than just about anything else).

Coconut-Plantian torte glazed in honey with fresh strawberries and kiwis....

I'd like to put in a kind word for properly made Tostado (dry roasted corn kernels with tons of garlic and salt, yummo) and for Cevichocos, a dish of heavily salted lupini beans in an oniony-tomatoey-limey-salty sauce, hopefully with shredded carrots on top. Both are common roadside snacks here.

There's a traditional Ambato saying that I quite like, which translates as: "Chocolate without cheese is love without kisses" (Chocolate sin queso es amor sin besos)

It must be related to where you're shopping. I can make a very nice 12" pizza for about $5 worth of ingredients... Then again, I live in the produce capital of my country, I buy high-quality unbleached soft wheat and durum flours in 25 lb sacks and gluten in 30 lb sacks, olive oil by the case, and I know local cheesemakers from whom I source my (very fresh) mozza.

My fave is another of Douglas Adams' - "All time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. Drink up, the world's about to end." - Ford Prefect to Arthur Dent, HHG2G After that, I'm quite fond of an unattributed quote: "Any self-respecting cat will bury a ripe guava."

Carambolas make a lovely juice, from which you can go towards ice creams or sorbets (or just drink 'em) - they're in season down here at the moment and they're practically being given away at the market, something like 50+ for a dollar. I've never tried baking, which I assume would work, but I have grilled slices coated in panela before and that was quite tasty - it preserved the crunch and sort of caramelized the panela.

Mine's a 10 year old little tin of Wasabi powder, probably. It's one of the only spices I brought with when I moved down here.

I'd be freezing it in batch-sized bags. I already do that with applesauce and squash puree (other recipe components that often come in incredibly large volumes from the market - I have yet to find a squash here that weighs less than 20 lbs) and so it's no skin off my nose to pre-measure the zucch shredlets before freezing them.

Not to barge in on Panaderia but Nanaimo Bars are pretty widespread in Canada; here's a link to a recipe No worries! Nanaimo bars are, of course, one of the quintisentially Canadian desserts. Of course, being from Vancouver yourself you can actually go to Nanaimo and have the originals..... Incidentally, I PM'd Lior with the recipe I used for the pictured bars (and if anybody else wants it, just let me know) and probably I should have said something here as well.

Ambato, Ecuador. I shop weekly for most things, and buy milk almost daily from the lovely little greengrocer / bakery / store just up the block. My rationale? In Ambato, Monday is market day. So much so that people get time off work and there is no school so that everybody can do their shopping. I live about 10 blocks from one of the world's largest farmers' markets, which swells immensely on Mondays with produce from all over the country, most of which was harvested on Sunday specifically for the big day. Since it's so much a part of the culture and rhythm of the city, who am I to push the river?

A couple of types of salt bread and a hypermoist death-by-chocolate cake.

A hot rum toddy or brandy nightcap will also work wonders if you've done the unwinding thing suggested above. One or the other of those will knock you flat on your butt for a goodly while without any ugly side-effects.

Weeping is not an issue - it's in the recipes it's in precisely to provide moisture and texture. Sweet!

OK, so I've got a dilemma. It was cheaper at the market today to buy a case of zucchs for $3.50 (about 20 large zucchinis) than it was to pay $1 each for the same size ones on an individual basis. Now, for my pocketbook, that's a wonderful thing. However, I'm left with a surfeit of zucchini! The question is: does it freeze well? It's a main ingredient at my bakery, but I also know that there's no way in Hades that I'll be able to use all of what I've got before it starts going funky. If I can grate and freeze it in vac-pac baggies with few weird effects, I'd much prefer to do that (not to mention that it would cut production time on the things that use it in half easily). Any thoughts?

A tomatillo-based Bloody Mary with green Tabasco is obviously a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. This said - have you tried quartering the tomatillos, then brining them overnight in about 5% salt solution, and quick-pickling them in sherry or balsamic vinegar with lime juice? I'm quite fond of them done that way on salads.

I'd venture to say that Cavendish, Seda, and Gran Naine bananas (ie the types exported by the Big Three banana companies) are the fruit of the devil, but other types are perfectly tasty. Bananas Foster made with Saba or Orinoco bananas is a fantastic dessert, and using very ripe plantain types elevates it to a whole other level.

Mini shortcakes. I'll confess that I'm actually making these things to test out the new molds ahead of the restaurant opening I've got on the 19th, and I'd love your feedback on the plating....

I use basil flowers in vinagrettes, mostly - if you chop them so that they're down to one ring of florets per unit and then pop them in at the oil stage of the vinagrette, they end up nicely preserved when they come out. They're also stronger in flavour than the leaves, which means that even if you only have a few they're more than worth their weight.

You can always go with something like Le Dîner - this will be acceptable to both your Francophone and Anglophone customers and is a nice play on ''Diner''....

I'll speak for Latin America - nobody refrigerates their eggs here, unless they've got already cooked leftovers. But in-shell raw eggs in the fridge? Never. Eggs come from the market in convenient recycled-board flats of 25-30 (depending on size) and those just sit in their designated spot on the counter. I have a fairly large fridge, but eggs are not found inside it - I use the egg trays to store small limes instead. I do, however, keep my butter in the fridge. At the temperatures my kitchen reaches when I'm working in it (ambient 25-30 C plus oven heat), I'd have large pats of melted guck on my counter. Then again, even the large producers of eggs sell them pretty much as quickly as they come out of the chickens, and in the places where I buy eggs I'm quite sure they're less than 1 week out of the hens; I occasionally find bits of chickity-doo on my eggshells but simply wash them well right before I crack them, so no worries. HOWEVER - most Canadians also refrigerate their eggs and butter. It's not an exclusively United-Statesian thing. On the Canuck front, my grandparents used to keep their butter in a hollow in the snowdrift out the kitchen door all winter to conserve space in the kitchen and to keep it as fresh as possible; I think that might be one of the roots of keeping the butter at least in the fridge. Of course, that was butter that Grandma made direct from the unpasteurized skimmings from their two Guernsey cows, so there may have been a bacterial issue as well in keeping it cool. Somebody upthread also asked about the difference between a cold and room-temp egg in baking applications. If, for example, you're making French-style buttercream icings or any type of Meringues or Suspiros (whipped egg white things) or egg-white cakes, they do perform very differently. Cold eggs don't come up to a nice froth the way that room-temperature ones do, and the result is a lower cake (in the case of whipped egg-white leavens), a flat meringue or suspiro, and less than perfectly fluffy buttercream. However, in things like cookies where the egg is adding more its adhesive properties to the dough, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference.