Panaderia Canadiense

Chris, do you read Spanish? If so, there is a wealth out there for Caribbean cooking (particularly the ABC's and Dominican Republic.) I won't reccomend until I know, though. For a really good Northern US cookbook, look for Staebler's Food that Really Schmecks, which is a fantastic guide to Mennonite cooking.

Will do. I've got an order of a dozen chocolate oaties for tomorrow, and since my smallest-scale recipe makes 3 doz I'll have cookies to play with. (Chocolate oaties are the cookies that appear with the mug of Ovaltine. It's not coffee folks, and that's how it's meant to look.) I'll post back with the results! Thank you all for the critiques and teriffic ideas.

OK Stan, here goes. Normal farmers can (and do indeed) sell to supermarkets, albeit normally through middlemen (who inflate the prices - there's a whole silly economy to selling your food on a national level here, which ticks me off and which I won't rant about here). However, the farmer's market system here works a bit differently than it does in North America.... It's my understanding and experience (based on Canada) that in order to sell your produce in a North American farmer's market you have to buy a slot in the market, and there are also restrictions on your produce. Not so here - the market I shop at is a free-for-all where literally anybody with produce can come and sell it for whatever price they think they can get - those $1 tomatoes will be slightly different volumes from farmer to farmer. I've actually sold overflow plums from my front-yard trees at the market where I shop, and I occasionally sell cookies there as well. The reasons for the price difference is that the farmers at the market have only gas to transport their goods as overhead, whereas the supermarkets are paying rents, utilities, employees, social security, and on and on and on. This is naturally passed on to the consumers. Equally, that pound of strawberries I bought at the market? They gave it to me in a 1/2 penny plastic bag. At the supermarket, it's packaged to within an inch of its life. Equally, any packaged product sold in a supermarket here must pass Sanitary Registry inspections, which cost about $50 for each product (ie if I want to sell packaged strawberries and packaged uvillas, I pay $100, and so on). This is well out of the reach of a quichua grandmother who's selling the things she grows in her garden, or her eggs, at the farmer's market - she's dealing in small volumes. As are most farmers - that's where the middlemen come in. They buy out entire crops from small farms, then resell the aggregate harvest to the markets at a premium. Hence the price can triple before it hits the consumer. Considering this, it's hardly surprising that most of the population frequents the farmer's markets! The big one where I shop is also where most of the restaurants buy their produce.

Chris, going back to the original topic can those of us in other countries weigh in? I buy almost all of my produce at the Mondays-only local farmer's market that's held about 10 blocks from my house. It is one of the largest in the country, as the city where I live is the halfway point for shipping to anywhere else in the country. Food there consistently comes in well below the local supermarkets, even the discount chains (where the food is often so sorry looking that nobody would ever consider buying it.) It's also miles fresher, travels less, and I'm paying the farmers and/or their relatives directly. Here are a few of the indicators. (I'll mention that there are two things that I do buy at the supermarket - mushrooms and asparagus, which are produced by large farms and don't appear in the farmer's market.) 1 lb of strawberries: market - $1.00. supermart - $4.50 10 lbs of 'Atahualpa' potatoes: market - $2.50 to $3.00 supermart - $5.50 and upwards a flat of 30 large brown eggs: market $2.50, supermart $3.20 and up 1 lb of honey: market $5.00, supermart about $10 (I can't buy a whole pound at once there) a nice big head of romanesco: market $0.60 - 0.75, supermart $2.00 5 lbs of tomatoes: market $1.00, supermart $3.00 and the big one: Market - one raceme of "baby" Orito bananas, weighing in at about 50 lbs, $1.00 Supermart - little baggies of ten individual bananas of the same, $1.00 per pound. I can't even buy a full hand at the supermart. I could go into more detail, but you get the drift.

Makes: 1 cake, 9" round Time: about 1 hour from start to finish. Ingredients * 3/4 Cups finely-ground gold cornmeal, precooked if you can find it. * 1 1/2 Cups vanilla yogurt (or the same amount of sweet yogurt with 1 tsp of vanilla extract mixed in) * 5 TBSP panela raspadura or other brown/raw sugar * the zest of one lemon * 1 TBSP fresh-squozen lemon juice * 4 TBSP sunflower oil * 2 eggs * 1/2 Cup quinua flour * 1/2 Cup white wheat flour * 1 TSP baking powder Method 1. Mix the cornmeal with the sugar, then blend in the yogurt and lemon juice. Allow the mixture to rest for at least 15 minutes (it should get quite thick) 2. Mix together the flours, zest, and baking powder, and set aside. 3. Grease and/or line your pan. I use a 9" silicone mold in the shape of a sunflower (which means I skip the lining), but any 9" pan will work. 3a. Preheat your oven to 425 F. 4. Now that the cornmeal mixture is rested, add the oil and eggs and beat until homogenous (I use a fork). 5. Add the flours and whip until just mixed, then pour into the pan. Pop that into the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. If you're using silicone, let it rest out of the oven for 5 minutes and then unmold. Otherwise, let it cool more before attempting to remove it from the pan. Once the cake is fully cool, glaze it using the following: 1/4 Cup honey 2 TBSP panela raspadura or other brown/raw sugar 1 TBSP butter This mixture should be melted in a bain-marie until the butter has clarified and the sugar fully dissolves in the honey. It makes a golden-coloured glaze that accents the cake well and adds a bit of extra sweetness without being too heavy. Just before serving, top with macerated fruit - the photo shows strawberries that were set in Spanish port brandy with honey. Whipped cream adds a nice touch as well.

In the case of traditional Canadian and Scots-style fruitcakes, which call for double-greasing and which also have truly absurdly long cooking times (my recipe calls for 3 hours at 375!) the first greasing keeps the lining (usually parchment or wax paper) stuck to the pan initially, and later on in the baking process it keeps the lining from sticking to the pan. Greasing the inside keeps the parchment off the finished cake, and even so you have to peel it while it's still fairly warm or it just vaccums on there. I tried one of the recipes calling for double-greasing with only the splotches between the pan and the liner, and I wept when it came time to turn it out - the paper had burned on to the pan with the carmelized sugars from the batter.

There are also light, fresh approaches to "shortcake" type things that can be topped with the macerated fruits mentioned above. I have an excellent recipe for a lemon cornmeal shortcake which I'll stick in the RecipeGullet in a moment. Even though you say you're not much of a baker, it's such an easy and stress-free cake that I teach it to young kids wanting to learn baking basics....

For me, rolled fondant icing. It scared the pants off me until I bit the bullet and made my first batch - now I don't use anything else to decorate specialty cakes.

It's the difference between a fruit that was ripened primarily on the tree (the beautiful, sweet, and juicy one) and one that was picked green and force-ripened in a gas chamber (the ugh-mo, mealy one). You can tell which is which by training your nose (the tree-ripened fruit will have a more complex and usually a stronger smell), and by gently squeezing the fruit. A mealy fruit will have more give to it, kind of like a very ripe avocado, while a juicy fruit will feel firm with just a little give. I have no idea how to explain that better, it's something you learn very early on in Northern Canada when selecting cases of fruit for compotes.

A large volume of Zhumir Original Aguardiente - I'm going to get a turkey very very drunk....

The most popular one I make is with tiny chunks of cocoa nib and fresh-roasted coffee bean....

I've actually got one of those, Patty! (insert me slapping my head....) Jeesh, and I'm a professional scenic designer with a major in lighting as well. (insert second head slap....) I should know better - but then again I should also probably not try to plate cookies at midnight after baking a dozen shortcakes.....

Coconut-curry rice with mushrooms, blonde mangrove shrimp with red peppers in a paprika-aji-rum reduction, seared marlin steaks in garlic herb butter, and fresh steamed rattlesnake beans and ruby red chard. Not the greatest photo (I was quite hungry by the time dinner rolled 'round, and cold marlin is terrible), but a fantastic meal!

I'm very hard on Superior Chocolate bars from La Universal, which are meant to be for preparing hot chocolate. I can gnarble my way through the big, 2-bar 240g packs in an hour or so if I'm not really thinking about it....

Yes please! I'm working with fairly limited equipment, and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Wow, y'all are totally savoury breakfast types.... Here's my brekkie today, a 7-fruit salad with granola and vanilla yogurt.

Strawberry Shortcake here as well - but it looks like I've got a different take on it than JSMeeker.... I'd be very interested in swapping recipes for that one....

Starting with the pods, open 'em up and shuck out the beans. Boil these with a bit of salt, then quench them in cold water to loosen the husks, and peel the husks off. After that, what you do with them is up to you - they can go in salsas, salads, or be eaten as a side dish tossed in a bit of herb butter (very tasty). Generally, that's how all broad beans are prepared. The husks over the actual endocarp tend to be bitter, and so they're generally removed after the beans have been boiled, but it's a personal taste thing. If you harvest Fava beans really really young, the bitterness hasn't had time to develop in the husks and they can be eaten as is. The experience I have with tree-type beans like the Guaje is primarily for dessert fruits (Guabo, Machetero, etc) and on those the husks are the edible part.... However, as they're referenced for being sort of garlic-y, I'd treat them as I would regular broad beans. Edit - a good spellar is me!

OK, I'd call those Haba Plano (Flat Broadbean) if I was buying them in the market here, but beyond that I couldn't really help you with local naming. The best salsa recipe I've had that incorporates Habas like the ones you show is as follows (and I'm estimating amounts here - $1 for you and $1 for me won't buy the same amounts). This is an Ecuadorian recipe from Loja province, and it makes the most fantastic salsa ever for pork and chicken. 1 lb of broad beans, shelled 1 lb of tomatillos, husked 1/2 lb of uvillas (cape gooseberries), husked 1/2 lb of white beans (frejol blanco), husked a full handfull of rosemary 2 shallots, minced 1 small Ambassador type mago (these are fibreless golden mangoes about the size of a baseball) 2 aji peppers (Aji Amarillo if possible, if not use Aji Macho), minced or chopped fairly finely. Boil the beans together with a pinch of salt, then cool them under cold water to loosen the skins, and husk them. Throw these in the blender along with the tomatillos and uvillas, the shallots, and the juice of the mango (mush it between your palms, then open a small hole in the skin and squeeze). Blend until fairly creamy. Now add the rosemary and blend again. Remove from the blender and stir in the minced Aji, and allow to rest for at least 1 hour. If you want chunks, you can also chop a few of the tomatillos and uvillas coarsely and add them along with the aji at the end.

What colour/shape/size were the pods, then? Were they fuzzy or smooth? Without knowing that, and also without the interior colour of the beans, they could be almost anything - especially given the numerous varieties of broad bean-type-things available in Latin America.

White beans inside, or green? If they're white, then it makes more sense that he was saying they're for salsas - those would be Chochos (I don't know the Mexican term for them), which are actually Lupine beans. Chochos are boiled and then skinned and blendered into salsas to reduce heat and add body.

Well, Guajillo are a type of chili..... The broad bean you're describing sounds like what we call Habas, which makes them roughly equivalent to a Fava or Lima bean. I can only speak for Ecaudor, but they're generally shelled, boiled or steamed, then skinned and served with a bit of butter and salt along with mote as the side to Chugchucara or other artery-clogging piggy goodness. I'm sure, however, if you looked for Haba or Fava bean recipes you'd be inundated.

OK, here's the first stab at it - critique, please!

Apart from the old standbys - Joy (1952 edition) and NY Times (1954 edition), I have: Fanny Farmer (1960) Food that Really Schmecks (The Mennonite cooking bible!) The 1922 Purity Cookbook (love this one) Cooking in the Clouds (which I'm currently working on revamping and re-issuing, along with the Damas of Ecuador - this is a compendium of traditional Ecuadorian and Altitude-Friendly recipes) Bread. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Chocolate Tibetan Cooking and five large binders full of handwritten recipes from at least 100 different chef/caterer friends. That's it. I should probably expand, but really, the best food on my table has come from seat-of-the-pants experimentation....

One lovely loud ticking analog clock on the wall by the fridge. That's it. I have a small timer I use for the oven, though.