Recipe Number Two: New York Bagels.

Today was the day that I made bagels, from scratch, for the first time.

After much hemming and hawing, I settled on the recipe at cdkitchen online. It seemed to be not overly complicated, but not overly simplified either. I substituted brown sugar for the malt powder, since I couldn't find any at our local store. I think you can get it from places like Whole Foods, and I'll keep an eye open for it, but it didn't seem like the end of the world that I didn't have it.

I also used the egg wash, as suggested by one of the reviewers. I went completely plain, no toppings, just so I could test out the basic recipe first and then start experimenting after that, depending on the outcome.

The outcome? Pretty good!

They came out a little dark, but that was mostly because of the egg wash I think - they weren't burnt, and I don't think I would have wanted to cook them for any less (I did the minimum suggested time - 17 minutes). They also all lost their holes - there were still indentations at the top, but when I cut through, it was all solid. I don't really know how that happened - they seemed ok when I put them in the oven. I guess I need to just widen them out a bit right before I put them in.

At first when I cut them open they kind of looked like they were going to taste like every other bread item I've ever baked. (For some reason, no matter what bread recipe I use, it always ends up tasting exactly the same.) But the taste test proved that not quite the case - it definitely tasted like a bagel. Maybe not really really bagelly, but still a real bagel. And the crisp crust from the egg wash on the outside was very nice - a definite improvement over the store bought kind.

All in all, I'd say it was a success, taste-wise, and we'll see how they are tomorrow, toasted. I was amazed at how not-work-intensive they were - probably about 90 minutes from start to finish, if that, and a lot of that was just waiting time while they were rest or rising or baking. The boiling was a bit weird, since it's the first time I've ever boiled bread or dough or anything like that, but it took no time at all. The only thing that took any effort whatsoever was the mixing and kneading. The mixing wasn't bad because I used my electric mixer with a dough hook and the kneading is enjoyable. Not bad at all, and with a bread machine I'm sure they'll be a piece of cake. Bagel.

Taste scores

Mark: 8

Jessica: 7 (I think I can get it closer to bagel nirvana)

Ease of preparation: 7

Do it again? Yes, definitely but with improvements: try to keep the hole, try toppings and/or possibly blueberries, even if it means I get harangued by bagel purists. I may also try this other New York bagel recipe. It is pretty different from all of the other recipes I looked at, and does crazy stuff like use potato water, so it may just be the thing to make a super duper New York bagel rather than just a kind of normal bagel. We'll see. And I will try to find the malt syrup/powder, just in case it actually does make a difference.

Recommend? Yes, definitely. I now firmly believe that everyone should make bagels from scratch, at least once!

Bagels.

I've been thinking about my next new recipe and I've got the crazy idea to make bagels from scratch. I always complain about how you can't get good bagels over here, especially outside of London, so I thought I'd give it a try. I've always thought that bagels were probably impossible to make - you have to boil and bake, for crying out loud - but I've done a little research and I think it just might be possible. 

Although the first shock was that there IS NO BAGEL RECIPE IN THE JOY OF COOKING. I couldn't believe it. The Joy of Cooking tells you how to make anything and everything. But it wasn't there. It's just not in it.

So I looked online, and there are some recipes and some commentary, and indeed some videos on YouTube, though I haven't actually watched any of them. I'm going to try one of the New York bagel recipes. Everyone talks about wanting to try an egg bagel recipe, but I'm not sure I want to go there just yet, and I'm not really sure what the difference would be anyway.

I might try it this weekend, depending on whether or not I can find malt powder, which seems to be important. One of the reasons I thought about trying to produce my own bagels was so I could have a blueberry bagel, which you really genuinely can't find outside of London, unless you order them online, which is very pricey (and you have to order in lots of 72 bagels!!!). But as I was researching, I ran across a blog post from a native New Yorker about how everyone outside of New York is eating faux bagels or "bagels" (which is the way New Yorkers seem to refer to these monstrosities when writing about them online) and that things like blueberries and sundried tomatoes are just ridiculous. So although my alternate preferred topping of "everything" is acceptable by New York standards, I think this time I'll probably stick with a plain bagel recipe before I branch out.

I'll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with something to chew on from the aforementioned blog post, about blueberry bagels in particular:

"A bagel, you see, isn't meant to be a muffin with delusions of donuthood."

Recipe Number One: Beef Adobo.

For this one, since it came from a book, I won't post it here, but if it sounds good and you want to try it out, let me know and I can email it to you, or put it on Spark.

Beef Adobo

Category: Crockpot main dish

Prep time: about 20 minutes

Cooking time: 8-10 hours on low

No picture due to the brown-ness of the dish - thought it might look unappetising when it was actually quite good!

The recipe involves cubed beef with sliced onions in a sauce involving garlic, beef stock (I used a cube), soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and bay leaves. It doesn't have any vegetables involved, so it's best served with a salad or vegetables on the side. We ate it with brown rice as well. I actually forgot to add the green onions that you're supposed to serve on top, didn't even bother with the julienne carrots (I just can't make those happen, no matter how I try), and narrowly missed adding the lime juice, which goes on at the end, so an already simple and unfussy recipe can become even more so if you just want to use what's in the house.

We really enjoyed it - it's not too heavy, and was really yummy. A definite keeper - a nice way to begin!

(Scores are on a ten-point scale, ten being the best and one being the worst.)

Taste scores

Mark: 8

Jessica: 8

Ease of preparation: 8 (had to brown the meat, so it wasn't just a chuck-it-in-the-crock-pot, but pretty easy still).

Do it again? For sure!

Resolution.

I wasn't going to make any New Year's resolutions this year, since like a lot (most?) of people's mine would kind of fade away after a month...or sooner. So I'm not quite sure how it happened, but some time on Friday a resolution popped into my head without my realizing until it was too late and it was formed. But it's kind of a nice resolution, and I think I might actually stick to it, especially since I negotiated it downwards with myself, once I realized what was happening.

After all that preamble, it's not very exciting, but I've decided to try two new recipes a month. They don't have to be healthy, but they can be, they don't have to be a specific type (e.g. "for dinner" or "crockpot recipes") or satisfy any other criteria; they just have to be new. And two a month seems pretty achievable - even considering my current laziness quotient and the ebb and flow of my interest in kitchen.

And since I've learned via julietpink that goals are assisted by the process of public declaration-group monitoring, I'm saying it out loud, and committing to tracking the recipes on this blog. 

So today is the first day, and the first recipe is in process is happening today - in the crockpot, to be exact, bubbling away as we speak. It's Beef Adobo and I'll let you all know how it goes. I was also planning on actually posting the recipes as I go in case any one wanted to try it out, but then I started thinking about copyright infringement (since it is unlikely that I'll be making up any of these new recipes from scratch, so they're all going to be from published books, I imagine, except for the ones from the Internet, which I can of course link to) so now I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do.  I also can't decide if I should post the recipe BEFORE I try it, so if anyone wants to play along they can, or if I should post it after I try it, so I can say how good or bad it was and save other people the trouble. 

So of course, as you can see, I'm spending more of my time debating the minutiae of the objective I've set for myself than I am actually doing it...which should not surprise anyone. But it is there, happening, in the kitchen, so I've at least achieved the first step out of 24, before talking it to death.

My Christmas quickie.

Both Jenny and Julie have done theirs already, so here is a link to some Christmas photos that Mark uploaded this evening.

Online album at Picasa

(I think that should work for everyone - let me know if it doesn't).

A couple are duplicates that are out there already, but it's a start. I'll blog more in the coming days. We got home safe and sound and thankfully had smooth flights (go KLM!) but I'm pooped and just trying to stay up for another hour or two so we can try to get on the right schedule again...so stay tuned and I'll try to get more posts up soon...including the results of the Wii Octathalon!

Frosty the Snow-Pirate.

We did a Secret Santa at work recently. We had a limit of £1 (I know, they aren't big spenders at work!), so I had to get creative. The guy I got, Craig, is a big fan of pirates, and always celebrates International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19, in case you're wondering). 

Since I couldn't spend any money, I used a snowman ornament that we already had, and did some customization. I forgot to take a "Before" picture, but here are some "After" pictures. 

Here's a close up of the cutlass. Yes, it's more of a dagger than a cutlass, but nobody's perfect.

Here he is, on location:

And yes, I'm very pleased with myself.

30th Birthday: Surprise number three: Cornwall!

On Thursday the 13th, I opened some presents. Birthdays are great.

We spent the day in and around Bristol, and at lunch I found out the third surprise - a trip to Cornwall for a long weekend. Hooray!

Cornwall is a county at the far Southwestern tip of England. We stayed in St. Ives, known for its artistic community, which is about three and a half hours from Clevedon. Mark had rented a house for the weekend - here is the street we were on, just above the harbor:

It was a nice house and well located. When we weren't out and about, we hung out there, playing a game that Mark and I introduced Mom and Dad to, called Carcassonne. It may be making an appearance at Christmas, so here is a preview:

We spent the first day walking around St Ives, which has some nice views. 

And further proof that Dad I tend to photograph the same things - here's Dad's:

and here's mine:

We visited the Tate St Ives. We actually didn't tour the galleries, but we did visit the balcony cafe area, which has a really lovely view. Here is a picture of Dad taking a picture from there:

And here is the picture he took:

The next day we drove around and saw some stuff that's around St. Ives. We visited St. Michael's Mount - the British version of the abbey on the hill that Mark and I recently visited in France (known there as Mont St Michel - those crazy French!).

Apparently they filmed Twelfth Night here - for which they painted this fake map on the side of a building, which is still there. I took a picture in case Julie and Tony had seen the film when studying interpretations of Shakespeare:

It's a nice place, though smaller than the French one. The buildings were closed because it was out of season, but we walked around the open bit. Like the one in France, it's built out a ways from the land, so when the tide comes in, the causeway is covered and it becomes an island.

We also saw some wildlife:

We visited Land's End, the Westernmost tip of the island. They weren't selling down vests and fleece jackets there, though they did want to charge us to take our picture with the famous signpost that points to New York and John O'Groats (the northernmost point of the island). So we just took our picture with it anyway, just not quite standing next to it. (Mark is grumpy in that picture because he is still mad that they were charging people to take their picture next to it.)

Here we are at the actual end of the land. Mom was having a cup of tea in a warm place at this point.

Here is Dad contemplating Land's End.

Here is me having fun with my tripod. I love my Gorillapod and I used it a lot!

We also went to Sennen Cove, which is nicer than Land's End, but very close by, and a good place for surfing.

The next day, we started heading north again, stopping at Tintagel, the fabeled birthplace, or conception place, or something, of King Arthur. Whether Arthur was born there or not, a castle did exist there, and there are still some ruins. Here I'm standing where they thought the bathroom had been:

And this is the view from there. They may have lived a long time ago, but they definitely already knew about "location, location, location!" To give you a sense of scale, Mom is the red dot in this picture - you may have to load the full-sized one to see her!

We also stopped in Lynmouth, a nice village on the north coast of Devon. We had a proper Devon Cream Tea, which is basically scones, strawberry jam and Devonshire cream, a kind of cross between heavy cream and butter. Yum!

Then we stopped at the Hunter's Inn for the night - a lodge on the north Devon coast that we took Dad to the last time he was here. It's really cozy and right on the coast, with a nice walk to Heddon's Mouth, the place where a river (not sure which) joins the sea.

See if you can spot Mark in this picture:

We drove back up to Bristol the next day. The last day we visited the Fleet Air Arm Museum, a museum devoted to the Royal Navy's aircraft. 

They also have one of the Concordes that was built for testing:

And they have a fake cockpit to sit in:

They also have a fake aircraft carrier you can "tour". Here is mom realizing that there wasn't any glass between her in the mannequin:

And here is what happens when you don't have any glass between the visitors and the mannequins:

The next day, we drove Mom and Dad to Heathrow and they flew home (not on the Concorde). We had a really great time, and I'm so glad they could come!

There are some more pictures of the whole trip at our Google Albums page. Mark put these up a little while ago, so they're some of the best ones - which I tried not to repeat here!