A fig roll for my Jewish Vikings

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I found the breakfastboys in the hall this morning doing battle with a toy guitar and a plastic sword.'It's OK, mummy, we're fighting because we're Jewish Vikings' they informed me, before parrying off down the hallway and round the corner. My roots are in the West Highlands and the North East of Scotland, and my name suggests my roots are quite likely to be with the Vikings. In fact, if you saw the oldest breakfastboy you'd probably put money on it. Apparently though, just about everyone with vaguely Scandinavian looks likes to think they are a Viking, and people are always terribly disappointed when their DNA tests inform them that they are in fact not Vikings at all. So, who knows. Meanwhile, MrB's gang on his mum's side are Eastern European Jews. So, for my little Jewish Vikings, I decided to make some Challah with a twist (don't worry, it's not herring, not even soused herring) - my first attempt at a plaited bread. Also my first attempt at Challah.

Challah (or Chollah, or Hallah) is a celebration bread, and that seemed apt, as it was International Women's Day, so what better way to celebrate MrB's female line than a loaf of sweet honeyed and egged bread to tear apart and share. The plaits represent love, with all those entwined arms, so it's also perfect to eat with your loved ones. Say on Mothers' Day. Say.

So, to the twist. I saw this recipe in Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. You may know her blog about cooking in her New York kitchen, and now her cookbook is out in the UK. I've already made a couple of things from it and so far, they've all been hits.The black bean ragout smelled gorgeous all day as it was cooking in the slow cooker. I presented it to the breakfastboys with some trepidation - you know, vegetables, black, etc etc, but the eldest at least wolfed it down and even smallest BB managed a few mouthfuls.

Anyway, this is a challah whose ropes are filled with a paste made from figs and oranges. Not being Jewish myself, I have no qualms about messing with the traditional challah, and I love any kind of fruity bread. The orangy figginess is a real winner here. The link above will take you to the recipe on the blog. I was a bit anxious about the plaiting, but it wasn't nearly as hard as it looked in the pictures, and the fact that I managed to tear a couple of the ropes a bit didn't lead to major disaster either.

Although figs are most definitnely not a Viking kinda fruit (although apparently they got as far south as North Africa in their roamings, so perhaps they were partial to a fig or two), the act of rolling the paste into the bread dough put me in mind of those fig roll biscuits that we ate as kids. Yum. I managed to squash it a bit by turning it upside down in the oven at the end to make sure the bottom was cooked, so the plaits are not as impressive as they were when it went into the oven. But I'm still pleased with the result. It smells divine and tastes great too.

The figgy paste could be used in lots of other things I think - buns and possibly biscuits of some sort - the recollection of fig roll biscuits makes me wonder about some sort of figgy shortbready thing. Will have to put my thinking cap on.

Deb Perelman says that any leftovers make great French toast, but I'm thinking that a suitably Viking (or at least British) take on that might be to use the leftovers to make a bread and butter pudding. What do you think? Orangy, figgy, bread and butter pud with a nice creamy custard, perhaps with a hint of orange too. What's not to like there? That will of course, require us to not eat the whole lot before I get to that point, so don't hold your breath. I'll be back with a recipe if I get that far...

Bagels - wholly holey homemade bread, part 2

Well, would you believe, making bagels, it turns out, is a. quite easy and b. a roaring success.

First up, the recipe. I consulted various books and websites on this one, and they were all pretty much in accordance with each other on quantities and methods. By the by, I'd like to recommend Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food.  If you are the sort of person, as I am,  who enjoys cookery books as bedtime reading (you know who you are - you have Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and Nigella's How to Eat on your bedside table, don't you?), then I really recommend this. Claudia Roden is such an evocative writer, and this is a really comprehensive cookery book, but has all sorts of fascinating snippets about the dishes and the traditions associated with them. In the end, I didn't actually use her recipe, which includes an egg, as this is not traditional (as she admits), and I wanted to start with a more basic traditional recipe. But I do recommend it as a good read.

As to quantities, I didn't want a huge batch, as bagels are really best freshly baked (though also very good toasted for a day or so afterwards), so I used 500g bread flour as a starting point. This makes about 10 bagels.

Basic bagels
500g strong white bread flour
5g easy-bake yeast (more or less - a gram or so here and there won't make too much difference to the finished product so don't worry too much)
about 1tbs salt (I tend to use rather less salt than most bread recipes suggest because of the fact that I'm feeding children)
2 tbs/about 20g sugar  (I used caster sugar)
50 ml vegetable/olive oil
250 ml lukewarm water

To finish: 
either 2 tbs malt extract or 1 egg, beaten (see method below for details)
poppy seeds and/or sesame seeds (optional)

Method:
1. My first confession here - I used a breadmaker to make the dough. I don't often use mine for baking bread, because I'm not mad about the big square shape of the loaves it makes, but they are great for making dough - just bung everything in and leave it for a couple of hours to mix and prove. Then skip to stage 3 below. However, if you don't have a machine, never fear - a mixer with a dough hook, or indeed your bare hands will do just fine! If you're using a breadmaker, just follow the maker's instructions for dough - on my Panasonic machine, you put in the ingredients yeast-first, though I believe some machines work differently. The setting on mine is 'basic - dough'. 

 If you're not using a machine, you'll need to knead the dough (ie using all the ingredients in the first section above) for a good 10 mins or longer - you want a nice smooth dough.

TIP: my Kenwood Chef has a metal bowl, and when I'm making yeast doughs in it, I always give it a wash in hot water before I start so that the bowl is nice and warm when I put in the ingredients - this gives the dough a good start.

2. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave to prove for an hour or so - it should double in size.

3. Knock back the dough and give it another quick knead. Then divide the dough into about 10 pieces. My kitchen elves helped with this next part: roll out each piece into a fat sausage and then wet one end and join the ends together to make a ring, squashing the ends down to seal them. I then spent a little time tweaking to get them looking nice(ish). Place the bagels on an oiled tray. Cover the tray with a cloth/clean tea towel and leave to prove again for about 30 minutes, until doubled in size again. Alternatively, you can form the bagels into little buns to prove and then carefully make a hole in them and leave them for another 10 minutes before the next stage. In retrospect, this would probably make a more 'perfect' bagel.

4. While the bagels are proving, heat the oven to 220C and bring a large pan of water to the boil. Now the malt extract - this suggestion is from Nigella Lawson's recipe in Domestic Goddess). If you have malt extract, add a couple of tbs to the cooking water - this will give the bagels a nice authentic-looking glaze. You can also use sugar or honey in the boiling water, or glaze them with beaten egg once they have been boiled instead. Malt extract just makes me feel all motherly, like Kanga in Winnie the Pooh. You can buy it in most chemist's shops if you can't find it at the supermarket.

5. Once the bagels have puffed up, add them to the boiling water in small batches of 2 or 3 and boil hard for a minute on each side, then transfer back to the oiled baking sheet (you may want to re-oil the trays to prevent sticking). Sprinkle with sesame seeds or poppy seeds if you want them.

6. Bake for about 15-20 mins until golden brown on top. Here's the finished article. They don't look like perfect round bagels, but they are nice and shiny on top, and they have at least got a hole in the middle!

Best eaten fresh, but also good toasted. We had ours for lunch with smoked salmon and cream cheese, but you could also make the dough the night before, prove slowly overnight in the fridge and then proceed with forming, poaching and baking in the morning. Or make like a real baker and get up really early.

The verdict? Well, freshly baked bread always goes down well, but these were a big hit. The boys told me 'not bad for a first attempt mum' (praise indeed), but then both demanded seconds, and MrB, the ultimate bagel judge...also came back for more. Oh, and he scarfed the cheesecake too.

Bagels - wholly holey homemade bread (part 1)

Mr B is Jewish. Not practising, more a Woody Allen sort of Jewish that largely seems to involve going to the doctor because he thinks he's got something, being told that he hasn't got it, then telling me that just because he didn't have it when he was at the doctor's being told he didn't have it, that doesn't mean he hasn't got it now.

Now, this poses problems for me (not Jewish) whenever I go anywhere near anything like chicken soup or cheesecake. Firstborn turns 7 this week and has demanded cheesecake instead of birthday cake, so I'm getting my kitchen implements ready in self-defence, and even though I shall follow Nigella Lawson's London Cheesecake recipe to the letter, I have already been told that Philadelphia cheese is not the right sort of cheese at all, to which I respond 'Phooey. Don't eat it then'. He will of course be unable to resist, and all will be well. Considering.

When it comes to bagels, I have *until now* drawn the line at making my own, and we often take a trip to the Jewish deli in Giffnock, the most marvellously named shop in all Glasgow, to get our bagel fix. It's called 'Hello Deli'. I come over all Barbra Streisand when I see it and burst into a spontaneous chorus of 'Don't Rain on My Parade'. If your only experience of bagels is of those branded multi-packs that you can buy in the supermarket, you really should hunt down some proper freshly cooked ones. They really are a different animal.

Being non-Jewish, and growing up in the English countryside in the 70s/80s, I'd never tasted a bagel until I reached adulthood, but since then, I have stored up many happy bagel-related memories. I think the first bagel I ever ate was lox and bagels from an NY diner, with a bottomless cup of coffee - my goodness, that was unthinkable in Britain in 1986! "A wha'? What do you mean 'as many refills as you want'? Are you mad?" How times have changed. New York bagels are supposedly the best - something to do with the water - though I imagine New Yorkers are also extremely good at bigging up their bagels. That was always going to be a hard act to follow, and so it proved to be. I had a job for a few years in a language school in London whose owner was Jewish, and she used to buy us bagels for lunch every day. Unfortunately, she left the filling of these to her Danish au-pair, who was extremely heavy-handed with the salt, to the point where they became almost inedible, and were referred to by the staff as 'The Dead Sea Bagels'. They must have been so buoyant that they could have doubled as lifebelts for drowning mice in an emergency...erm... mouse-drowning situation.

My other London bagel memory is of queuing up for hot bagels from the Brick Lane Beigel Bakery in Spitalfields after a night of clubbing (creeeeaaaak - none of that nowadays). See here for a great blog post and lots of lovely photos of this magnificent London institution. A good freshly-cooked bagel in the middle of a cold winter's night is a thing to bring tears of joy to your eyes. I absolutely command that any visitor to London should go there. It is splendid. In fact, I'm getting all nostalgic for London now. I'll be on Rightmove any minute.

Bagels, because of their circular shape, represent the continuity of life, which seems particularly appropriate at the moment, and not just because it's Remembrance Sunday today. Not only do we have a birthday in the house this week, which always takes me back to lying in the hospital in the middle of the night with my newborn boy, but we seem to be surrounded by death this year. We've lost two close relatives in the past 6 months, and more  going on besides. Time then to be thankful for what we have and appreciate the simple things in life. To which end, today I am making my first ever bagels. Mr B will despair, but after a 50-mile bike ride this morning, I dare say he'll manage to force one down.

Part two (with pics and recipe) once they're done!