Capital Bagels

There are many wonderful benefits to living in our nation’s capital: free museums, cherry blossoms in the spring, two restaurants by Michel Richard.

But some days it feels like all of those pluses are offset by some of Washington’s big minuses: the constant presence of pompous politicians, the influx of protesters wreaking havoc for the sake of wreaking havoc, and — a personal peeve of mine — the lack of anything resembling what those of us who grew up in New York, New Jersey or Philadelphia call “bagels.”

Let it be known: doughnut-shaped bread does not a bagel make. This fact seems to have escaped most of the chains and grocery stores in the District. You may be able to fool a few folks with your “French Toast Bagels,” but not this girl.

To be fair, I have found one bagel shop in the District of Columbia that makes a decent bagel, but it’s closing next year to make room for a new restaurant. So like I said, I got nothin’. And to all of those who refer me to bagel shops in Maryland and Virginia, I say thank you, but I really don’t feel like trekking across state lines for a bagel and some schmear.

So what is a girl to do? Make her own bagels? Well, as it turns out, yes. I had seen a recipe in Sherry Yard’s “Desserts by the Yard” for New York bagels, which requires little more than whirring the dough in a food processor, letting it rest overnight and boiling and baking the bagels the next morning. That sounded perfectly doable on a Friday night, in preparation for fresh bagels Saturday morning.

Were the bagels Bronx-worthy? Mmmm…not quite, but close. And they were certainly better than the imposters being sold as bagels in these parts. In the future, I think I would add malt syrup instead of the brown sugar I had on hand, which would give them more of that characteristic bagel flavor.

But details, details… Bottom line — with minimal prep and little cleanup, I had fresh, hot, crusty bagels an hour after I’d woken up Saturday morning, about the same amount of time it would have taken me to get dressed, drive out to Bethesda, buy some bagels and get back home.

So now that I can make fuss-free bagels on my own, it looks like I can cross that off my “Washington peeves” list. Now, if only I could do something about those politicians…

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Seasonally Appropriate

Yes, I know: The phrase “seasonally appropriate” evokes images of Miss Manners telling you not to wear white after Labor Day. But this banana bread is a seasonally appropriate recipe if I ever saw one.

January tends to be “make up for December” month. A bunch of people who feel really bad about celebrating Santa with a little to much zeal make a whole bunch of promises they probably won’t keep. Suddenly that second helping of roast beef and extra slice of banana cream pie seem a little overindulgent (come on, we’ve all been there…and if you say you haven’t, you’re just lying).

So for starters, this banana bread would be fair game on most “resolutions” lists. It uses molasses in place of some of the sugar, along with whole wheat flour and oats for some added fiber.

And here’s the kicker: with some spices thrown in, the bread has a subtle gingerbread-like flavor that works perfectly this time of year. The holidays may be over, but winter is just getting started. I wouldn’t call this my “go to” banana bread recipe, but somehow it just tastes right this time of year.

So there you have it: healthy and wintery. Does it get more “seasonally appropriate” than that? I’m sure Miss Manners would approve.

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In With the Old…

The motto this time of year seems to be, “Out with the old, in with the new.” Fair enough, but there are some “old things” worth holding on to, if you ask me. I mean, I think we’re all pretty pleased that the leisure suit died in the 1970s, never to return. But other innovations are timeless, no matter when they first appeared.

I feel that way about recipes. Sure, there are some recipes so trendy, so gimmicky, and so overdone that after a year or two, the public smacks a huge “Out” stamp on it and christens a new dish as being “In” (helloooo molten chocolate cake…). It’s not that those dishes aren’t good; it’s just that they somehow seem to identify so strongly with the zeitgeist of a certain era that people see them as “passé.”

But there are other recipes that, no matter when they first appeared, are just good. Tarte Tatin dates back to 1889, but I would still stab someone with my fork for that last, caramelized bite. And I don’t even know who made the first chocolate layer cake and when, but I do know that the best old-fashioned chocolate cake recipe I’ve ever made appeared in Gourmet in 1999.

In my family, we have lots of those recipes, from various decades and sources. This chocolate mousse charlotte is one of them. My mother first made it in 1981, when it appeared in the October issue of Bon Appetit. That’s right. October — 1981. And since then, she and I, our aunts, friends and neighbors have all made it countless times. Why? Because it’s good. Really good.

Admittedly, in an earlier era, I had a much easier time finding soft ladyfingers, which made this an easy go-to dessert. Were French ladyfingers a trend of the past? Maybe. These days, I’ve found that I need to make the ladyfingers myself, making this less “no-fuss,” but no less delicious.

So as we move into 2008, I will gladly watch the world dispose of certain things (can we please, please be finished with Paris Hilton?). But I’ll always hold this recipe dear, no matter what year it is.

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No Knead 2.0

Edited to add: Okay, I didn’t realize Cook’s Illustrated *also* dubbed their version of no-knead “No Knead 2.0.” Whoops! FYI, this post does not describe the CI recipe, but rather the one printed in the Washington Post.

By now, most home cooks are familiar with “No Knead Bread,” at least in name or concept if not in practice. Mark Bittman’s 2006 article on Jim Lahey’s novel technique sent curious bakers and novice knead-a-phobes running to their kitchens to master the art of crusty, delicious, homemade bread, sans fuss.

I may be the only enthusiastic baker in America who has yet to try Mr. Lahey’s technique. I know, I know, what have I been doing, right? Well first I didn’t have the right pot…then I did…and then life sort of got in the way.

But then a few weeks back, two different articles appeared — one in the New York Times, one in the Washington Post — that attempted to best the original No Knead recipe, making the process even simpler, even “no kneadier.” Luisa at Wednesday Chef had iffy results with the Times recipe, so I ditched that one.

But Nancy Baggett’s recipe in the Post looked promising. Whereas the latest Times recipe claimed “No Knead” results could be accomplished in half the time, Baggett’s recipe didn’t cut the time much at all, but it cut out the need to touch the dough entirely. Even Jim Lahey’s recipe required a little futzing, just gently shaping the dough before the final rise. But the Post recipe required no kneading at all — none. I think she should have called it, “No Knead, for Reals.”

Does that make it more clinical and sterile? Yes. Admittedly, sometimes I really like kneading dough. Rough week at work? Family giving you a hard time? Take it out on the dough. I also consider it a workout, justifying the copious quantities of bread I will soon eat.

But sometimes, you just want delicious bread without the cleanup. Although I’ve never made Lahey’s recipe (I will, I will, I promise!), his method does require a special pot and just a touch more “cleanup” than Baggett’s recipe. That said, Baggett’s method yields a rectangular loaf, not the rustic boule shape that makes the original No Knead Bread so beautiful. The Post recipe yields more of a sandwich bread or loaf for morning toast than something you’d make for guests.

So, compelled by my guilt for not trying this method the first time around, I gave Baggett’s whole wheat loaf a try for breakfast this weekend. The verdict? Very, very tasty, and I’ve been enjoying the loaf for breakfast all week. The texture is soft and the exterior has a wonderful crunch. Sadly I cannot compare it to the Lahey bread (the shame!), but I suspect it’s a very different type of bread prepared using a similar method.

Next time I have a dinner party, I will give Lahey’s method a try. And I have a delicious, old-fashioned, knead-to-your-heart’s-content bread recipe I will be sharing soon. But for an average morning after a tiring work week, this recipe does the trick.

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Gianduia to Ya

Do you like Nutella? Oh, good. You’re human.

I can honestly say that, with the exception of people with nut allergies, I have never met a person who dislikes Nutella. Sure, not everyone loses his or her mind over its chocolatey hazelnut goodness, but I can’t think of a single person who has tasted it and said, “Ew.”

I, for one, do go crazy for the stuff, and my boyfriend loves Nutella even more than I do. In fact, when I need a jar of it for baking, I’ve considered hiding it from him. He’s a big boy, but even the mighty Odysseus had trouble resisting the Sirens… And as it turns out, the man responsible for this addictive spread that my boyfriend and I adore may be none other than Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte.

Chocolate hazelnut paste, historically called gianduia and today marketed as Nutella, dates back to the mid-1800s in Piedmont, when chocolate had become a rare commodity in Europe. Napoleon had imposed a continental block in 1806, which made it impossible to import chocolate from South America and made local chocolate extremely expensive. So a man named Michele Prochet came up with the idea to make chocolate go further by adding chopped hazelnuts, grinding the hazelnuts into the cocoa to form a paste. The confection was officially given a name in 1865 at a carnival in Turin, taking the name of Gianduia after a carnival character representing the archetypal Piedmontese.

And, man, something about that combination of chocolate and hazelnuts is completely irresistible. Mr. Prochet, I lust after your creation.

Consequently, I’ve been on a quest to find a dessert that tastes like a big slice of Nutella. With an entire jar of Nutella and almost a cup of hazelnut butter, this Gianduia Mousse Cake nearly does it. The cake is d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. But I still want a more pronounced hazelnut flavor, so next time I will probably add some Frangelico to the cake and use hazelnut oil when making the hazelnut butter.

So merci, Monsieur Bonaparte. Without your obstructions, who knows when we would have perfected the chocolate hazelnut confection that makes this dessert possible.

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Pumpkin Bread Revisited

I will never forget the first time I baked pumpkin bread. I was in 6th grade, and my teacher Ms. Pasceri announced that the day before Thanksgiving, the class would be baking pumpkin bread together. She told everyone to bring in a clean leftover coffee canister and said she would take care of the rest.

When the day came, she broke us into groups of three, handed us the recipe and the ingredients and walked us through the process step by step, helping us carry our batter-filled coffee canisters to the classroom oven.

I had baked before that day, but I think that was the first day I realized that baking, food, meant a lot more to me than most of the other kids in the class. My partners haphazardly threw the ingredients into the bowl and thought it was funny to mush the ingredients together or throw them at one another. I didn’t want to be a square or a tattle-tale, but all I could think was, “This is food we’re dealing with here! Don’t make a joke of it — don’t you want to see how it comes out?? It will be delicious!”

And it was delicious, despite the mushing and throwing and indifference of my buddies. It was warm and sweet and spicy. I couldn’t wait to bring my canister home to share with my parents and brother.

In the many years that have passed since that 6th grade project, I’ve baked many pumpkin breads, all delicious but none seeming to taste quite as good as that first batch. I’ve since lost Ms. Pasceri’s recipe, but I’m sure it’s the same as any standard pumpkin bread recipe. What made it special wasn’t necessarily the bread itself, but the fact that I’d learned to make something new, something I could say “I made.”

This time of year, I invariably start craving some fresh, home-baked pumpkin bread, and in the spirit of my recent push to eat “light” ahead of Thanksgiving, I found a great recipe in Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Light Desserts. The cake is light, tender and perfectly spiced, and one bite takes me back to a Wednesday in November all those years ago.

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