JohnT

You are perfectly correct - same happened here. The municipality then started using thick plastic ones but they were also stolen and sold to the scrap plastic recycling businesses and quickly turned into plastic bags. The problem with the casting companies here, is that they will not keep this sort of thing. They only make in bulk to order and will not cast any extras as the lids are imprinted with the municipality name. Any scrap dealer found with one is playing monopoly - no fine, go directly to jail. To obtain one is vertically impossible now and thus I am looking for a nice thick steel off-cut. I have been in touch with a ship builder who says they will cut and make a round disk for me next time they get a large enough ship in their dry dock for repairs. It will just cost me the scrap price. Winter is fast approaching and that is the time for some nasty shipping accidents requiring repairs - I wait in anticipation!

Do yourself a favour and Google "Mongolian Barbecue" and you will find many photographs of big round grilling disks that can be used for your purpose - you just do not need one as big as the norm, just 2 to 2.5 feet in diameter would be fine for your needs. Then place it over a gas (LPG) boiler/burner and you are "cooking" - you control the heat by adjusting the flame.

Vijay, this was done in the 70's when I was a student studying with a large national hotel chain - there are no photographs around of that part of my life. At the moment I am still looking for a manhole drain cover to replicate the "hot plate". Unless you remove one from the roadway, they are not easy to come by nowadays.

@Vijay, do not waste money on a bigger frying pan - rather get a flat circular disk of ½ inch steel and about 2 foot in diameter and place it on top of a gas boiler plate. You will be able to "fry" around 6 or more of your breads at a time. Many years ago I had a similar problem and needed a large circular plate for cooking a similar flat bread. I spoke to the hotel engineer, asking where I could get a large pan. He came up with a solution in that he took a round cast iron man-hole cover and milled the one side flat in his workshop. Worked like a charm. It was 30 inches in diameter. You will find many other uses for such an item! A couple weeks ago I asked a friend who has the engineering equipment to make me a similar disk for making flat breads and now we are searching for a manhole drain cover for him to mill flat. They are VERY heavy but have a fantastic even heat over the entire surface.

This curry vegetable recipe serves 10 to 12 - it contains French or green beans, no dried beans. VEGETABLE CURRY Ingredients: 2 small cauliflower, divided into florets 4 medium zucchini, diced 4 medium carrots, diced 4 sticks celery, chopped 450g green beans, sliced 2 green peppers, cut into small chunks 4 medium onions, chopped 8 tablespoons vegetable oil 4 Granny Smith apples, cored and chopped 30ml turmeric 6 tablespoons curry powder (medium) 2 tablespoons flour 2 400g cans chopped tomatoes with juice 10ml ground coriander 15ml salt Method: Fry the prepared vegetables in the oil for about 4 minutes then remove all the vegetables from the pan with a slotted spoon and keep in a separate bowl. Add the apples to the pan and cook gently for 5 minutes. Add the turmeric, flour and curry powder and continue to cook for about 3 more minutes. Add the coriander, salt, tomatoes with their juice and the vegetables and continue to cook, on a low heat, for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked, stirring every now and then - they should still be crisp! Add a bit of water if the sauce becomes too thick.

Many years ago I was in Rio de Janeiro with a friend and stopped in at a feeding hall for the homeless. The menu was "Black Bean Stew", which some Brazilians claim as their national dish, followed by a dessert of jelly (jello) and custard. We were asked if we would like a meal and stayed for the most delicious meal. It contained pork chunks, black beans and diced vegetables. Do a Google search for "Feijoada", it is an ideal low cost meal, full of nutrition and flavour. The meal cost us just a few cents but we donated US $ 10 each to the feeding hall - it may not sound like a lot of money now, but it was in those days.

A bit on the side of @kayb's use of white bread in a meatloaf - this one is a South African Cape Malay recipe: BULK BOBOTIE Yield: 1 x 23cm x 33cm x 5cm baking pan - 12 portions Ingredients: 3 onions, diced 90g butter 1.5 kg lean mince 2 thick slices white bread 375g full cream milk 3 large eggs 22.5ml medium curry powder 37.5ml sugar 15ml salt 3.5ml pepper 10ml turmeric 45ml white wine vinegar 120g seedless raisins 8 lemon leaves 60ml chutney Serve with yellow or white rice Method: Preheat the oven to 180°C (160° convection oven). Peel and dice the onions then fry lightly in the melted butter until soft. Add the mince and fry with the onion until crumbled and just browning. Soak the bread in the milk and squeeze out the milk, retaining it. Mash the bread. Mix in all the ingredients except half the remaining milk, half the eggs and the lemon leaves. Spoon the mixture into the greased pan, roll up the leaves and insert them into the mixture. Bake for 30 minutes. Beat the milk and remaining eggs together and pour over the meat and bake for a further 30 minutes or until cooked. Serve with rice and chutney.

I may be a bit late in offering comment with this product, but there is no actual Karoo Farm Style Apricot Sauce - it is just a marketing name. The Karoo is a semi-desert region in the South African interior in which the main farming is of sheep for both wool and for meat. The sheep eat mainly small bushes known as salt-bush, which gives the meat a district flavour compared to sheep farmed in coastal regions. To counteract the distinct flavour, the farmers in the region often use apricots within their cooked lamb, especially when cooking lamb in kabab form, where dried apricots are fed onto the skewer after each chunk of lamb. Smooth apricot jam (jelly in the US) is also often used to baste a leg of lamb as it is roasted and sometimes just dried apricots thrown into the bottom of the roast pan to break down in the juices from the meat. So, it just appears that some adventurous manufacturer has now brought out a packaged sauce to try and replicate the use of apricots in cooking! I doubt it will sell very well in South Africa and must admit I have never seen it on the shelves of supermarkets in my area. It's far easier (and cheaper) to throw a handful of dried apricots into the pan of your roast as they turn into mush and thus automatically become part of the sauce of the roast when they are with the juices. One South African dish is curry, brought to the country with the Indian labour forces in the early 1800's. As curry dishes became known and slowly migrated into the interior regions, the population did not like just plain spicy curry, so started making curry with lamb and mutton and throwing quantities of dried apricots into the pot to "sweeten" the curry. This then became Karoo Curry and now in recent times, as mutton is no longer popular compared to lamb, it is now called Karoo Lamb Curry - a very popular dish in the Karoo regions of the country and also my personal preference when making a lamb curry, even though I am located on the coast.

@Jim D. I think you answered your own question in your post! Vanilla essence is imitation vanilla – in other words, not real!

What is said in your quote is, in my experience, true - high heat destroys natural vanilla. I found this out when using natural vanilla in baked goods about five years ago. When I started baking cakes and baked desserts, I used my own extraction of natural vanilla, which is really strong stuff. Clients used to query why I did not use vanilla in my baked goods, when I knew I had really "over dosed" the cake with natural vanilla. I then did a few experiments and found that once the product had cooled after baking, the vanilla flavour and aroma had disappeared. I did the same baking with vanilla essence and had no further complaints. However, when using natural vanilla in products that are only warmed or not baked at a high heat, the natural vanilla is still strong. I bake Malva puddings and the sauce is boiled for a couple of minutes before removing from the heat. Then cream (a large quantity) is added and then natural vanilla - the vanilla flavour and aroma is still strong. If I add the vanilla to the sauce before the cream, the heat kills the vanilla. If I use vanilla essence, it makes no difference when I add it - the taste and aroma remains. Same with my Melktert - if I use natural vanilla, the taste and aroma are not present after baking but not so when using vanilla essence. I was once told that some nartjie peel added and infused into a product helps the taste and aroma of natural vanilla not to be destroyed. I have done this and basically feel it is an old wives tail as only the slight nartjie aroma comes through and not the natural vanilla. I seldom bake cookies and only for the house when I do, and always use the essence. I go through about 1.5 litres of vanilla essence a month and only about 250ml of my natural vanilla extract over the same period, which is only used for high end products that are not subjected to high heat. My vanilla beans come from Madagascar or Tanzania and are pretty high quality. I have never tried Mexican vanilla beans or the beans from Polynesia, nor have I ever tried the powder (actually, I have never come across the powder in South Africa).

Geez, scary woman! Packing a 9mm whilst moving into her new house - and dropped the turkey with one shot to the head! Hell, beware if you ever buy chocolates from this woman and do not like them. Remember the "dropped it with one shot to the head" bit and do not complain! Ha, I find this extreamly funny - it would make an excellent YouTube video! Anyway @ChocoMom hope you survive the move and build on your preserved/canned foods - they do sound interesting!

Yes, I am aware of that. However, the reason for the use of the foil tartlet pans is that the shells are pressed out in them mechanically and I do not have a press to do it. So, I will do what I always do when I want a few tartlets - use my hands and give them a "rustic" look . It must be remembered that this is just an experiment as I have never come across a "butter tart" before.

Thanks for the recipe Kerry. I made a very large batch of pâté sucrée this afternoon and it is resting overnight. I am experimenting with a couple tarts (pies) tomorrow and will do a small batch of your mothers recipe. I am presuming the recipe will make at least 6 medium muffin tin size tartlets? Seeing I have never heard of a butter tart before, this is going to be a bit touch-and-go making them. John.

@Kerry Beal that article is so funny! Above is your post from May 2006 where you have a link to your mothers recipe. It goes nowhere! Mind posting the recipe?

Next time they hint at wanting a recipe, make a joke of it - say: "You want another prized, secret recipe? No problem, but I will then have to kill you!" Then just ignor them and carry on doing what you are doing. They should soon get the message. If they persist, just repeat the line and then tell them that you would prefer not to have to permanently iliminate them from society. The above is humour — but it works! Do not give your recipes away unless it is to somebody the other side of the world who you know will not open up in opposition to you in your neighbourhood. You and your recipes are your business and livelihood. You may as well just give your bank account to them!

Sorry, my 02:00 am brain should have been a bit more specific. Normally artisan bakers just give a fancy foreign name to something that is just a plain old loaf. This appears to be more an US "thing" than most other places in the world - they think it sounds better than just calling it "white bread", "brown bread" or "house loaf" etc. Here in South Africa they skip the BS and call it a "Farmhouse white loaf" - the term "Farmhouse" indicating it is large or just "Artisnal White loaf". So, what I am trying to say is that using the name "Pane di Casa" does not indicate anything other than a simple loaf of bread. I must admit that the "normal" price you quoted is scary! This equates to R75.00 in our local currency - my, or any other artisnal bakers bread, would not sell at that price or even half that quoted price, irrelevant of how good it looked or tasted.

I think "Pane di Casa" simply means "House Bread" in Italian.

The above photo does look familiar as the Swiss PC I was trained under used to make a similar "apple log" by baking a brioche loaf, removing from the pan and slicing it from the top to about 15mm from the bottom, layering apple slices that had been soaked in a brown sugar, cinnamon, brandy mix, in the slices and baking again in the pan for an extra 10 to 15 minutes. It was then drizzled with a glaze. Sven would then curse and moan for an hour or more as the Argentinian tourists would pitch at the buffet and load their plates with a bit of everything - pork, beef, chicken, vegetables, ice cream, brûlée, apple log - all on the same plate and top it off with a good glug of custard or cream. Quite a disgusting final result to a carefully prepared buffet! This was in the 70's - I hope those tourists learnt some etiquette since.

Yes, it helps maintain the moisture and re-introduces it to the crisp crust, which will equalise and produce a soft bread throughout. The same applies to a Portuguese Roll, which forms a hardened crust which softens if stored in a plastic bag or sealed container - if left in a display basket or bin in a shop (or your home), the bread will remain crisp on the crust and get worse as it stalles.

Make your baguettes as normal but whilst still "just" warm after baking, put them in a plastic box with sealable lid or plastic bag with a clothes peg to seal it. They will be soft when they have cooled and easy to cut and layer with the filling of your choice. I suspect the Subway baguettes will contain a good amount of chemical induces softness and preservatives for "longevity" of the bread, but not necessarily the consumer! I have previously seen "fresh" baguettes being delivered to JFK (if my memory serves me) airport - all delivered in sealed plastic boxes and about 10 to a box. They were then sticking them in their hot oven for about 2 minutes and sold as "freshly baked".

@Ess as far as I am aware, caster sugar and fine sugar are the same. Also, there is no such thing as all-purpose flour in South Africa. Our "cake flour" is as close as you will come to AP flour and the protein is most probably around the same as you would get in Canada, around 10.2%. This is most likely why the recipe has slightly more corn flour than the one quoted by helenjp.

My paternal grandmother was of Scottish decent and as youngsters, she often used to bake shortbread when we visited her on Sundays. It was always delicious and the best shortbread my brother and I had tasted. This actually means very little as we, as kids, had not actually sampled any other shortbread besides that baked by my grandmother! But, as a kid, I remember it to really be delicious. This was in the late fifties and early sixties. Now, many years later and trying a number of different recipes over the years, I have my own recipe which works very well for me and I classify as "okay +" - in other words, not what I remember as being the best, but still reasonably good for what I use it for - Millionaires Shortbread. Your post has had me thinking and I now have gone back to have a look at some of my shortbread recipes from my studies and others that I have gathered over the years. And then I came across a handwritten recipe in my fathers writing that I really cannot remember receiving - he passed away in the 70's. The recipe says "Mothers Scottish shortbread recipe", which I take as being my grandmothers shortbread she used to bake for us. If it is or not, I have no idea, but it is old as it is still in ounces and we change to the metric system in the mid 60's. I have not tried it, as far as I know, but here is the recipe. Shortbread 8oz cake flour 4oz cornflour 6oz butter (all butter here was salted in the 50's and 60's) 4oz caster sugar Sift the dry ingredients onto a pastry board or stone. Place the butter into the centre and gradually mix the dry ingredients into this by hand. Knead until stif but not oily. Press to a thickness of approximately ½ inch into a lightly greased cake tin then un-mould onto an ungreased baking sheet. Carefully crimp the edge between the thumb and forefinger, mark and prick evenly with a fork. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for about 1 hour. Note: a wooden rectangle mould specially designed for shortbread may be used to produce shortbread fingers. The mould must be floured and the pressed dough carefully removed by tapping the mould gently. Mark, prick and bake as normal. Dust the shortbread with more caster sugar soon after removing from the oven. I do have others from my training as a PC, but we never really made shortbread or my memory is really failing me. I also have a recipe from a British course I did, which is also slightly different, but one I also cannot remember making. These are also from the 60's.

A salt grinder?

Just a quick question to the OP - how thick is your dough layer once "pressed into a tray"?

Shortbread needs 100% butter to work properly. The following is a recipe I use when making the shortbread layer for millionaire shortbread, and works for me without a problem. Shortbread: 187g butter 157g caster sugar 210g cake flour 45ml cornflour 3ml salt For the shortbread: Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, cornflour and salt together and mix into the butter and sugar mixture until a stiff dough has formed. Press into a greased and lined 20 x 24cm rectangular Swiss roll tin. Prick with a fork and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (160°C for convection oven) for 10 minutes then reduce the temperature to 160°C (140°C for convection oven) and bake for a further 10 minutes.