Panaderia Canadiense

Heck, I use Manjar (a full-fat cow's milk version popular in Ecuador) to glaze and fill my apple-spice cakes, and the recipe I use takes about 2 hours even with the shock bath. I'd never use or eat the stuff if it took 10 hours to make! I'd make Arequipe more often, but the goat man (and his string of 7 nannies) only visits my neighbourhood infrequently, and he's always out of milk on Mondays at the market because I refuse to wake up at 5 am to make it there before he's milked out. I think it's awesome how Spanish has different words for each variety of this sweet.....

With full goat's milk, it's also advisable to put about a quarter cup of butter in with the milk, if you're not using cow's milk as well. This will kick the richness up a little and give you the rounder flavour you had in Peru. There, Arequipe is made with about 1 lb of sugar (panela raspadura) for every quart of milk.

Here in Ecaudor, I've eaten crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers (very good, cooked in dry pans over wood fire, with lime and a bit of garlic), as well as Chontacuro (huge chonta beetle grubs, which are roasted on skewers over charcoal and taste like macadamia nuts), Tarantulas (fried or roasted), Lemon Ants (raw), and my personal favourite, hot-air popped termites (like the best peanuts I'd ever had). I've also eaten mealyworms, chocolate-dipped crickets, bees preserved in brickle, and a number of other bugs as well. I've never had any problem with it - they're just protein. It's no weirder than eating cows or shrimp or chickens. We need to get over the whole ick factor, because it's standing in the way of some pretty good eats!

Taxo also = Passionfruit, and so does Granadilla..... My personal fave is Helado de Taxo, which is made with equal parts of Taxo juice and cream, then frozen into popsicles. Soooo good...... I've always found Maracuya to be a bit strong and almost offensive in flavour unless it's combined with other fruits (like strawberry: so good that way!) - but then again I'm spoiled by the other varieties of passionfruit ice cream available to me. I'm also the only person I've ever met who will admit to loving lavender flavoured ice creams.

Here in Ecuador, we go in for coconut milk, pineapple, and watermelon juices (just hork the stuff in the blender with the coconut milk, then strain out most of the pulp. Amazingly refreshing.) On the food end, the hotter the place is the spicier its aji sauces are - because if you get out in a breeze, the more you sweat the cooler you get. Cold chochos (lupini beans) in a lime, onion, and tomato sauce are also quite cooling. Where I live is in the highlands, but when the sun's out it goes up past 100 F very easily, and we all have our coping mechanisms!

Almost all the time when I'm at a restaurant with actual menus. And generally I'll end up with the "lighter" of the two options almost every single time. Now, I'm as flummoxed as you are as to how this happens, since I'm tall, blonde, obviously female, and pale as fresh cheese and my dining partners are generally shorter and dark and unquestionably male. Last week is a great example - I ordered a pair of grilled spiny lobsters with drawn butter and seafood cream sauce, and he ordered a light fillet of Wahoo seared in olive oil with spices. Yeah, I was lookin' at a hunk of fish. Same at dessert - I ended up with the fruit platter and he got the chocolate cake. And I ended up with his Mimosa and he got my Scotch on the rocks! Definitely not a temporal or locational thing for me either; it's happened in both hemispheres for more than a decade. It's worse here in Ecuador, though, where there are extreme gender stereotypes. I've been chastized in the park for smoking my ladylike little cigars, too.

Not heating the Tequila is probably why you got that lovely soft result. Heating will remove a great deal of the spirit of the alcohol, leaving behind only the flavoured water - which, naturally, will freeze better than the full-spirited version. Let me know what you think of Helado de Aguacate - personally, it's one of my favourite flavours.

I've had excellent results with soaking 24 hours on the counter in a 10% brine solution, then jarring with cilantro seeds and small shallots under mild white vinegar and hot-sealing. They're ready in about 5 days this way.

Shelby, I wonder if you couldn't grow a few nasturtium plants at your place? They are usually really easy to grow from seed. Mind you, they can be aphid magnets when I grow them in coastal BC, and they tend to reseed so if you don't want them anymore, you have to work a bit to remove them. But the flowers are so expensive in the markets, and they really are tasty and so colourful. They also make a lovely vinegar - you don't need many flowers - just immerse them in white wine/champagne/cider/rice vinegar. They only take a few weeks and you get a beautiful colored vinegar with a peppery taste that goes well with salads, etc. I'll have to look them up and see how they do in the hot Kansas sun. I have plenty of places I could plant them for sure! I wonder if you could do them in pots? Thanks for the idea! Soba, your fish looks like it just hopped out of the sea! So fresh! Shelby, you can absolutely grow Nasturtiums in pots - they do better when they're just a bit rootbound. They're native plants for me down here at the equator, and if they can take my sunshine, they can definitely take yours. Make sure they're in full sun (it's how they grow here), and you're golden. Bear in mind, too, that if you grow your own you'll also have the option to eat the leaves and the seed pods..... Soba, the strawberries are crying out to be used on top of fast baked/stovetop bread goods. I know you've got zero counter space, but there's no reason that you can't whip up a quick griddle cake or cornmeal shortbread (these recipes take one bowl plus your range, and no big messy anythings or power tools)..... Those would be a great second breakfast. EDIT - a good spellar is me!

I generally ask the server to go back and ask the chefs if they'd like a drink, and if so, what they'd prefer. If so, it's on me (and I've bought good champagne for the kitchen under this rule). Otherwise, I send a directed tip with a hand-written note. However, in my favourite restaurant (Taberno Gitano in Quito), Chef Portillo actually comes out and talks to me near the end of the meal. (He does this with all clients, even when the restaurant is full - 10 tables) I then have the option of sharing the excellent wine with him while we discuss dessert options.

It was Kids in the Hall, with Dave Foley as the Peppier. Ah, wasted youth... I, personally, hate the giant peppermill. There's the aesthetics angle, and then there's the assumption that I want pepper, and the other assumption that the dish in question is not properly seasoned. Yeesh. Time to put the giant peppermills out to pasture, or better yet, collect them all and set up some kind of modern-art-giant-peppermill-forest installation.

In what way are they deceptive? In the US, labeling of ice cream is defined by milkfat content. It's not a very high standard--ten percent is the minimum. Obviously, the usual sources of milkfat are cream and milk, but others are allowed. Breyer's regular ice cream, which Ms. Poutine poo-poos, qualifies. They list the ingredients of the natural vanilla as "Milk, Cream, Sugar, Natural Tara Gum, Natural Vanilla Flavor." (Note the tara gum was added by Unilever). Admittedly, they make a variety of dessert items and "low-fat" products that do not qualify, and are labeled appropriately--they are not allowed to be called ice cream. I wasn't talking specifically about ice cream, though - we don't import that so I haven't seen a North American ice cream label in almost 5 years. I was merely using it as a local example, because our food agency is very strict about the labeling of dairy products, and in particular with ice cream the standard is very high for it (75% cream and only cream, anyone?). What gets me more are the US-imported products, particularly chocolate bars. Here, to be called a chocolate bar, there has to be at least 50% cocoa solids in the chocolate component of the thing. However, in bars like Snickers (to pull an import brand out of the air), chocolate is so far down the list as to be almost an afterthought. Yet these things are still labeled as chocolate bars. I use this as an example, because an equivalent candy bar from, say, Uruguay, is labeled as a candy bar with chocolate-flavoured coating when there's less than 50% cocoa solids in it. I also see a lot of "new and improved" import products where the improvement was to shave a couple ounces off of the weight or reduce the package size, "Low Fat" things that are incredibly high in sugars instead, and I caught something (I can't recall quite what, maybe granola) that claimed to be "wheat free" and then on the back in tiny little print were the ingredients of the "puffed rice" that was, substantially, wheat flour. Then there are things like cranberry juice labeled as "Zero Trans Fats" which isn't exactly deceptive packaging, but irks the heck out of me - of course fruit juice isn't going to have trans fats in it!

I was just talking to a Tibetan friend, and he says in Tibet it's salt and e-ma (sichuan pepper).

A slice of apple pie.

Don't get me wrong, we've still even got TANG on the shelves here (in tropical "flavours"!) but the overall culture is to leave it to gather dust and make the juice fresh. And that TANG is clearly labeled as a chemical soup to produce a fruit-ish flavoured instant beverage.

Wow, you all make me so glad I don't have a television.... On the rare occasions when I have a chance to see cooking shows (often while waiting to have my visa renewed), I'd have to nominate Canal 4's "Cocinando Con Maria" - first of all, I'd have to get over the fact that she's cooking almost exclusively with Nestle pre-packaged ingredients, and then I'd have to overlook the low-cut evening dress she's wearing while frying things (!), and after that I'd have to ignore that she's corrupting traditional recipes. Gnnnnn.

Huh. Here in Ecuador, what you see on the label is exactly what you get. If the cake is topped with non-dairy edible oil products, it has to say it, in fairly large letters, on the packaging. Equally, you can't say "ice cream" without the first ingredient in the stuff being cream, not milk - there's another term for that. The only time we see deceptive labeling is on products imported from the US.

What are you having for elevensies?

If I recall correctly, black pepper originated in the old-world tropics (India, I think), while chilis are new-world tropics things.... I can't think of any of the countries where it grows natively that it's been fully replaced by chilis - they augment the heat, but they're not the only source. Meanwhile, in the original homes of the chili, it continues to reign supreme as the hot spice.

Absolutely use the banana leaves in the crockpot! No sticking, no muss, no fuss, and you also get the delicious smokey flavour from the leaves. Just be sure to oil the walls of the crock before you line it, and you're good to go. I'd line the bottom and walls, then top with a final piece of leaf - but that's just me. A note about frozen banana leaves, too - I haven't used them in a while (I have my own plants now), but when I was using them regularly I found that bringing them to room temperature slowly then immersing the leaves in warm (not boiling) water made them more pliable and easier to use.

In Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, we say "Sal y Aji al gusto" - salt and hot chili peppers to taste. Powdered or prepared aji is the heat of choice in all Andean recipes - those calling for black pepper are substituting it for other things. Neither Spanish, Kichua, nor Shuar have a proper name for black pepper - all peppers that are not aji or uchu (spicy) are pimiento (also uchu). I've seen black pepper referred to as pimiento negro, pimiento de sal, pimiento de India, and a number of other things. We also call allspices pimiento de olor (stinky peppers).

Silicone spatulas of all sizes, and silicone cake moulds. Completely changed it for me - I love the stuff now, and I used to be so leery of using it.....

Why not? There must be a Pope of Rum around here somewhere who can grant us absolution for our supermarket sins....

Wild bean cocoa won't have a consistent cocoa butter content across batches, and so it is naturally a bit of a pain to temper. I've had reasonable success with double-tempering - bring it as close to temper as you can on the first go, then chill it down, re-melt, and temper again. This seems to homogenize the fats a bit better, and you'll find that it handles better on the second go-round. This is how I handle wild cocoa from here in Ecuador (Amazon-grown, mostly).

There's also a distinctive flavour that the banana leaf gives the fish, which can't be obtained any other way. Same goes for dumplings (I'm thinking of Vietnamese Banh Gio) that are normally steamed in banana leaf - without it, there's something missing. On a tangentially related note, does anybody else here eat banana flowers?