eG Foodblog: Panaderia Canadiense - Salt Cod, Squash, and Sweets: Semana Santa in the Sierra

[liuzhou]

8 hours ago, Panaderia Canadiense said:

I went to the markets and with my fractured Españglais, and much to the amusement of the ladies selling the fruit, started asking "what's this? How do I eat it? How many for $1?"  I'd then buy however many that was, and eat/cook/process as instructed.  Vendors and farmers are extremely good-humoured and helpful when you're obviously curious and eager to learn.

 

That is pretty much how I learned Chinese and Chinese eating. I'd add "How to cook it?" I agree, "vendors and farmers are extremely good-humoured and helpful when you're obviously curious and eager to learn.". As long as I didn't ask them stupid questions at their busiest times.

Now I've been shopping in the same market for 17 years and they almost feel like family.

Loving your blog.

[Wayne]

Wow. What a fantastic market and great photos.

 

[Darienne]

I am with Tere.  I think I need to go and lie down now after that exhaustive tour.  Wonderful!  We are definitely coming. 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Darienne (log)

[Panaderia Canadiense]

2 hours ago, kbjesq said:

Regarding the bananas, exactly what qualities were you seeking and in what way did the variety that you purchased differ from your intended purchase? Around here, we generally only have a choice between *standard* Dole-style bananas, tiny baby bananas and generic plantains (yes, I know that plantains are not bananas) at least in markets.

This seems strange since bananas grow easily here, albeit the most common variety in people's yards is the *decorative* variety - they grow beautiful leaves but never produce fruit! We also have loads of coconut trees but no one can eat the fruit, since they are all sprayed heavily with pesticides in an attempt to eradicate something called "white flies"    smh

 

Oh dear, bananas/plantains….  I live in a banana republic, and I'm an acknowledged expert on getting them to grow outside of their comfort zones; here at 3,000 meters above sea level, it's supposed to be "impossible" but I've got a number of big, healthy plants, one of which looks to be ready to fruit in a leaf or two…  Technically, everything we eat are plantains (even the ones we call bananas) but it's a semantic distinction at best.  Plantains *are* bananas, and vice-versa, the both of them being Musa x paradisiaca, the descendants of either Musa acuminata or Musa balbisiana in varying degrees.  In general, we call fruit that has more acuminata in it a banana, and more balbisiana in it a plantain, but even that's not consistent and in other languages what you think is a plantain might just be a guineo....  (rant over)

 

I was looking for Rosados, a AAA Cavendish type cultivar with a bright red skin when ripe, and a creamy yellow-pink flesh that tastes like mild vanilla custard with a hint of banana-ness to it.  Each finger is about 25-30cm long.  There were a couple of hands of this at the market yesterday, down in Coastal Fruit, but they were badly bruised (yuck!) and slightly overripe (double yuck!) so we passed them over.  

 

Incidentally, you rarely see Rosados outside of the countries where they're grown because they've got horrible post-harvest qualities - they ripen very quickly, bruise very easily, and are prone to bunch collapse while ripening (where the fingers just start falling off the raceme).  It makes exporting them a nightmare.  However, you're in Florida - there are at least 5 growers I know of who have plants; in the States this cultivar goes under the name "Jamaican Red."

 

If you want to further muddy the waters of banana/plantain naming, Ecuadorians refer to these as "Plátano Rosado" and insist they're a cooking banana.  It is true that they make the crunchiest and sweetest maduro frito, but I'm still going to be a barbarian and eat them raw because they're better-tasting, in my opinion, than any other banana out there.

 

What we bought instead were Oritos, as AA Sucrier type cultivar.  These are 10-15cm long, perfectly cylindrical, bright and almost shiny yellow when ripe, and the skins cling tenaciously to the fruit flesh.  Oritos have firm-textured, extremely sweet flesh and a pronounced banana flavour with hints of cream.  They ripen very, very slowly, which makes them a good choice if you are only a few people eating from one hand of bananas - by next Sunday, if we still have bananas left, they won't have passed into that nasty brown-spotted stage where they're over-sweet and cloying to eat.

 

Oritos are also a rarely-exported cultivar - what you see stateside as "baby bananas" is usually an AAB variety called Manzano which has more of an apple flavour and better post-harvest characteristics than Orito (which is prone to splitting and throws such large racemes that the bottom two or three hands get crushed even if the fruit is picked green.)  Oritos also don't respond well to gas-ripening; it robs them of the sweetness for which they're known.  What we buy here is ripened on the plant to ensure maximum sugar content.

 

Interestingly enough, I've actually visited Dole plantations here.  They're growing Dwarf Cavendish AAA, exclusively, in huge monocultures.  These are, in my opinion, almost the worst bananas flavour and texture-wise, in existence (they tie with Gran Nain, the Chiquita banana).  Given the choice, I'll eat funky-looking black-skinned ripe plantains before I'll eat something Dole or Chiquita has grown.

 

Incidentally, I have a whitefly problem as well in my garden - not just with my bananas, but also my lime tree and my plums.  I keep them under control with Neem oil, a non-persistent organic pesticide that clogs their spiracles and inhibits reproduction, but doesn't harm any insect it doesn't come in direct contact with (so I'm not bothering my bees or sawflies one bit, just the whitefly and scale.)  I wish other producers would get on board with this - it's way less expensive than the commercial pesticides and quite a bit more effective since the bugs can't evolve a resistance to being suffocated.

 

And, if you're interested in plantains and the variety we've got available to us, here's a legend from one of the banana-selling areas yesterday.  Not pictured are Plátano Limeño, which one vendor said she had but which I didn't actually see.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

 

That is pretty much how I learned Chinese and Chinese eating. I'd add "How to cook it?" I agree, "vendors and farmers are extremely good-humoured and helpful when you're obviously curious and eager to learn.". As long as I didn't ask them stupid questions at their busiest times.

Now I've been shopping in the same market for 17 years and they almost feel like family.

Loving your blog.

 

I think the single funniest one was the avocados.  Now, I wasn't a complete tropical fruit moron when I moved down here, but I'd only ever seen Haas variety avocados - small ones with black, deeply wrinkled skins.  The first time I saw the alligator pear variety, which are huge as softballs and smooth and pale green with black flecks, I didn't recognize it as an avocado.  So I asked "what's this?" and instead of the usual patient advice I was greeted with a torrent of laughter, because everyone knows what an avocado looks like, what rock did you grow up under, chica?

 

I totally agree, once you know your vendors at your local market, they definitely start to feel like family.  I've been coming to the Mayorista for 7 years, and I've had sellers invite me home for dinner and generally treat me as a close friend.

[rotuts]

PC :  lucky you.

 

continued Big Thanks for the blog.

 

P.S.:  only got 6 " of snow, and its fairly light.  not the usual 'cement' spring snow which is a Bear.

 

Ill have visions of your Market as I shovel out.

Edited March 21, 2016 by rotuts (log)

[Anna N]

@Panaderia Canadiense

 

Thank you very much for discussing the variety of bananas available to you.  One of the things I find lacking, even at the Farmers' Markets, is any indication of the variety of the produce we have available.  Apples, oranges and pears usually indicate variety but almost nothing else.  Bananas are bananas, pineapples are pineapples, potatoes are largely described by their colour.  

[Panaderia Canadiense]

2 minutes ago, Anna N said:

@Panaderia Canadiense

 

Thank you very much for discussing the variety of bananas available to you.  One of the things I find lacking, even at the Farmers' Markets, is any indication of the variety of the produce we have available.  Apples, oranges and pears usually indicate variety but almost nothing else.  Bananas are bananas, pineapples are pineapples, potatoes are largely described by their colour.  

 

Wow, I didn't even get into potatoes this time because we didn't need to buy them….  On any given day at the markets here, there are between 5 and 12 varieties of potato, and if you don't know the name what you're looking for you ask for them by referencing the final use.  For example, if I wanted to make Llapingachos, a type of potato pancake, I'd ask for "papas de llapingacho" - because they're a very specific variety, and you'd never use "papas de locro" (soup potatoes) for them.  Papas de Ensalada are also quite different than papas para el horno, and different again from papas para freir….  I generally buy something called Papa Chola, which is a good multipurpose potato (and I ask for them by name), red skins with yellow polkadots around the eyes, and firm, slightly waxy white flesh.

[rotuts]

on the potato :

 

do they have what we call  Russets ?   Ive been under the impression that these types  ( starchy  not waxy ) do not grow in warmer climates 

[kbjesq]

1 minute ago, Anna N said:

@Panaderia Canadiense

 

Thank you very much for discussing the variety of bananas available to you.  One of the things I find lacking, even at the Farmers' Markets, is any indication of the variety of the produce we have available.  Apples, oranges and pears usually indicate variety but almost nothing else.  Bananas are bananas, pineapples are pineapples, potatoes are largely described by their colour.  

I completely agree with @Anna N -  and thank you for the detailed tutorial on bananas &  plantains!  Interestingly, what you call "alligator pear" avocados are called "Florida avocados" here in Florida. And people here only eat them if Haas avocados are unavailable, as "Florida avocados" are declared to be tasteless and otherwise inferior by those who claim expertise in this subject. Personally, avocados are the only fruit that I won't eat, the texture makes me gag. Well, also mamay and ripe papaya, but that may be because I've not had good ones. I'm still open-minded! LOL 

[Panaderia Canadiense]

1 hour ago, rotuts said:

on the potato :

 

do they have what we call  Russets ?   Ive been under the impression that these types  ( starchy  not waxy ) do not grow in warmer climates 

 

Define warmer climates….  Up in potato-growing country, the average temperature is 10 C and some areas get frost at night.  When people think "Ecuador" they probably picture a country that's entirely tropical, and that's a mistake.  Our highlands are as chilly as some parts of northern Canada, even if they don't see snow as often.

 

We've got the tremendously starchy Papa Criolla, which is used for mash; it's red-skinned with pale gold flesh, and we've got some fairly starchy purple and red-heart potatoes as well.  Then there's Papa Chaucha, the llapingacho potato, which has pale pink skin and crumbly white flesh.

 

1 hour ago, kbjesq said:

…. Interestingly, what you call "alligator pear" avocados are called "Florida avocados" here in Florida. And people here only eat them if Haas avocados are unavailable, as "Florida avocados" are declared to be tasteless and otherwise inferior by those who claim expertise in this subject. Personally, avocados are the only fruit that I won't eat, the texture makes me gag. Well, also mamay and ripe papaya, but that may be because I've not had good ones. I'm still open-minded! LOL 

 

They're not my favourites either - I prefer the gnarly green-skinned types that come from Pelileo and Patate, and the tiny, creamy Haas from my friend's trees in El Pingüe.  The Alligator types are a bit watery for my tastes.

 

You don't like Mamey?  Too creamy?  Or have you only eaten over-ripe ones?  Because to me they're kind of like pumpkin pie filling texture when they're perfectly ripe.  They're utterly nasty otherwise.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

A bit of catch-up now, including last night's dinner.  As you can imagine, shopping at the Mayorista is a fairly exhausting proposal, so Sunday dinners are normally quick, easy to put together affairs.  This Sunday was no exception.  So, after a quick snack and a game or three of backgammon with Mom we got started on it.

 

We had some pernil bones from earlier in the week (pernil is a type of slow-roasted country-style ham that's very popular in Ambato), so the obvious choice was to make soup!

 

Borscht, to be precise.

 

Accompanying it, simple high-altitude yoghurt and cheese biscuits.

 

At this point I'm going to digress a bit about cheese.

 

A lot of North Americans who visit Ecuador complain loudly and at great length about how the country doesn't understand cheese, and lament the lack of aged cheddars. To them I say only one thing: this is not North America!  Ecuador actually has a huge tradition of excellent cheeses, most of which are extremely young by North American or European standards.  However, there are also very good aged cheeses provided you know what to look for.  I used Andino Madurado con Hierbas, a semiripened cheese that's about 6 months old and has a flavour and texture reminiscent of fine gouda (the actual goudas are much older and sharper).  I'll take you to the cheese shop later in the week.

[rotuts]

thank you for labeling the various 'sheds' in an earlier pic

 

just think  one for just eggs, red onions, etc etc

[Anna N]

@Panaderia Canadiense

 

The cheeses – –  goat? Sheep? Cow?  Or all of these?  

[Deryn]

^{I am in total awe - and I echo the statements of just about everyone reading this blog - so I am not going to repeat them all. I will just add my thanks for going to all this trouble to educate all of us, and tantalize us with all the facets of your amazing life in Ambato. I am just so pleased to be along on this amazing journey, chez Panaderia.}

^{I particularly like the idea of establishing an eGullet retirement home near you!  This morning, as I listen to the ice pellets pound my roof, and see the glistening layers of freezing rain on my windows, I am thinking I will soon list both my NC and NS properties and sell off everything I own (well, maybe I will bring the IP and the TMX, but, I doubt the freeze-dryer would fit in my suitcase - though I think it definitely would come in handy there - if the electrical systems can support any of these 'gadgets'?).  Please book me a room with a window near the kitchen!}

 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Deryn (log)

[Panaderia Canadiense]

And now, another day, another Ovaltine!  When, late on Sunday evening, I run out of milk, I fall back on cartons of UHT that I keep in the cupboard for just such an emergency.  Tiendas (small corner stores) are open in my barrio at a wide range of hours, but Sunday at 10pm is not within that range.

 

This morning, typical of Mondays, I have to decorate and deliver a 9-piece cake to Café Chocolatte, one of Ambato's best coffeehouses.  Today, this means making Italian Meringue Buttercream, because the café has ordered a mandarine-chiffon cake, and I don't have mandarine icing for it!  ICBM (I know that's not the correct shortening of IMBC, but I made a written typo once and it stuck - we call this stuff Intercontinental Ballistic Meringue now) is actually very easy to produce, although it seems daunting to most home chefs.

 

Now, a word about butter.  I'm blessed - there's a dairy in Nono, up in Pichincha province, that produces a lightly cultured sweet butter that comes in around 86% milkfat.  It's an absolute luxury, since most of the butter produced here, while cultured and falling in a similar fat-content range, is highly salted and thus completely unsuitable for icings and most cakes.

 

I will be using those yolks, left over from both the cake and the icing, later today in a coconut custard.

 

From this point on, all it takes is patience.

 

Well, patience and about a pound of sweet butter.

 

Well, patience, the butter, and mandarine orange extract.  A local company, Libio Cornejo, produces natural fruit flavours for the dairy industry, by centrifuging pressed fruit.  These are what I use in my icings and in some of my cakes.  If Libio doesn't offer a fruit flavour, I don't either - artificial "extracts" aren't on the menu.

 

Now it's time to cut the cake to size.  Since the café only wants 9 pieces, I'll be left with a bit of overage - my smallest functional version of the recipe makes a 16-piece cake.

 

Finished icing, with mini-mandarine slices by way of decoration.

 

The final thing, boxed up and ready to deliver.

 

The final destination.  This café often hosts morning meetings for the various office buildings in the area, and my cakes have become a feature of those meetings.  So much so, now, that whoever is in charge of the meeting will often put in an order with the café for specific flavours (hence the mandarine chiffon today - Monday is typically a chocolate cake day.)  Chocolatte is one of the best cafés in the city.

 

The more astute of you may have noticed that back up at the cake, I've only showed you 15 slices.  That's quite true: the final slice is my breakfast.  You know, for quality-control purposes.  I've made a number of different chiffon cakes over my career, but mandarine was a new one, and I don't like to promote anything that I haven't eaten myself.  It was delicious.

[Shelby]

YES PLEASE!  I love mandarine oranges.  Sadly, I've only had the ones that come out of a can.  Beautiful cake.

[kbjesq]

42 minutes ago, Panaderia Canadiense said:

 

 

You don't like Mamey?  Too creamy?  Or have you only eaten over-ripe ones?  Because to me they're kind of like pumpkin pie filling texture when they're perfectly ripe.  They're utterly nasty otherwise.

I guess that I've only had overripe mamey, because they were definitely disgusting! LOL  I'm available to try again, however.  

[Panaderia Canadiense]

7 minutes ago, Anna N said:

@Panaderia Canadiense

 

The cheeses – –  goat? Sheep? Cow?  Or all of these?  

 

All of the above, and once a year around Pawkar Raymi, there's Llama cheese as well.  Unless you're a fan of ridiculously strong, hard highland cheeses like Tibetan Hard Chhurpi, it's a bit aromatic for most tastes.

 

Most of the cheeses here are cow's milk, but there's a growing artisan community doing really excellent Boursin and some astoundingly good goat's milk Brie.  Sheep's milk cheeses tend towards hard Peccorino Romano styles, although we've also got a softer, super funky one with a cheddared curd whose name escapes me at the moment.  I want to say it's Pategras; I do recall that it comes in grass-green wax.

 

Andina is a cow's milk cheese, and depending on its age and how the curd is treated it's closest to gouda or asiago.

 

8 minutes ago, Deryn said:

^{I particularly like the idea of establishing an eGullet retirement home near you!  This morning, as I listen to the ice pellets pound my roof, and see the glistening layers of freezing rain on my windows, I am thinking I will soon list both my NC and NS properties and sell off everything I own (well, maybe I will bring the IP and the TMX, but, I doubt the freeze-dryer would fit in my suitcase - though I think it definitely would come in handy there - if the electrical systems can support any of these 'gadgets'?).}

 

 

Ecuador is on 110/220 V at 60A, just like North America (we also use North American standard u-ground triple and twist-lock-220 plugins, so you don't need adapters to travel here), and I'd venture that I actually suffer fewer brownouts in a year than folks up in NS.  You can always ship your freeze-dryer in a nice box, as checked baggage….

[Panaderia Canadiense]

7 minutes ago, Shelby said:

YES PLEASE!  I love mandarine oranges.  Sadly, I've only had the ones that come out of a can.  Beautiful cake.

 

That needs to be remedied.  Like, yesterday.  A fresh, ripe mandarine orange right off the tree is one of life's great pleasures.  There are orchards about an hour and a half from me that are so fecund that they can't harvest the fruit fast enough.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Well, while I was posting about cheeses and electrical power, my friend Juan-Carlos dropped by.  Juanito is the Ambato distributor for an Ecuadorian company that flash-freezes swordfish and marlin steaks for export to the US market.  However, how he operates is uniquely Ecuadorian: when was the last time you bought billfish steaks out of a cooler in the back of somebody's car?

 

He was having a sale, $4 for each pound bag, so I bought two.  The mystery of what's for dinner tonight has now been at least partially solved!

 

Those of you in New York or close-by might be interested in this: those bags of swordfish steaks go to an importer in Flushing.  B. Boeki Inc of 32-15 Downing Street (917-515-9797), to be precise.  I expect they're a great deal more expensive than $4 a bag when they get there, though….

[Tere]

Love the banana tutorial. Sainsbury's currently offer fairtrade banana and small fairtrade banana

[Panaderia Canadiense]

3 minutes ago, Tere said:

Love the banana tutorial. Sainsbury's currently offer fairtrade banana and small fairtrade banana

 

Which company?  Sainsbury's house brand, BanCor, DanyBanana, Corbana?  (If you can tell me this, I'll be able to tell you what you're eating and which country it came from.  Ecuador is one of the world's largest exporters of fair-trade food; we set the model for the other small republics.)

Edited March 21, 2016 by Panaderia Canadiense (log)

[Tere]

8 minutes ago, Panaderia Canadiense said:

 

Which company?  Sainsbury's house brand, BanCor, DanyBanana, Corbana?  (If you can tell me this, I'll be able to tell you what you're eating and which country it came from.  Ecuador is one of the world's largest exporters of fair-trade food; we set the model for the other small republics.)

 

I missed off organic fairtrade banana *cough*. They are all house branded and sadly they don't mention the company at all. I can see the odd fair trade sticker on the banana pictures but nothing that's obviously Chiquita, for example.

 

The loose large ones can come from Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Windward Islands, or Panama. The bagged up ones don't even give you that amount of info! The small ones are grown in Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ghana, or Windward Islands. The organic ones are grown in Dominican Republic or Peru.

 

I think I am demonstrating that to the UK consumer a banana is a banana is a banana really. Probably a tasteless one grown for easy transport.

[Darienne]

A question about the carambola.  I've eaten them in Ontario and in Utah and found them in both places not really to be worth the eating.  Bland.  Pretty tasteless.  But then I suspect that buying them from your market might be a different experience? 

 

Ed wants to know what currency you use and how it compares to any other which you might want to suggest.