Slate's got my (bagel's) back.

Still not about the toaster, which is still coming, and will totally be worth it, but...

I had one of those "hey, that's me" moments while reading Slate today. I was flipping through their headline articles and came across an article about the cost effectiveness about home baking. It's quite a good article, and quite interesting - the author, Jennifer Reese, actually did a fairly comprehensive cost comparison of six different foods she regularly eats. But the best bit is this:

Bagels
There's so much mystique surrounding bagels (water vs. egg? How should you shape them? etc.), I doubted my attempts to bake them would amount to much. But aside from shaping the dough into tidy rings, which I find unaccountably impossible, bagels are one of the quickest, easiest breads you can make. I tried five different recipes, from Jewish cooking guru Joan Nathan's to the fabled Montreal bagels, which are heavier and sweeter. But the one I fell for, and have now baked a half-dozen times, is from Bernard Clayton's New Book of Breads. These are "Jo Goldenberg's bagels," named for a restaurant-deli in Paris (figures) where they were once sold. You can start these chewy, flavorful bagels at 8 on a Sunday morning and serve them to brunch guests at 11. They will be awestruck.

Cheaper than store-bought? Dramatically. If you break down the cost of Clayton's recipe, it works out to 23 cents per bagel. Moreover, if you use bulk yeast, which you should if you do much baking, the price drops to 15 cents. By comparison, one of Thomas' so-called "bagels" is 45 cents. A fresh bagel from Noah's in San Francisco: 75 cents. At H&H Bagels in New York City: $1.20!

Better than store-bought? These are by far the best bagels I've ever eaten.

Make or buy? Make.

I have two main thoughts about this.

Number one, I have actual acknowledgement that it is impossible to get smooth rings, which no one ever mentions in recipes. I've never been able to do it, so I've felt somewhat inadequate in that I've never been able to do it. So at least someone has come out and said it. Phew.

Number two, she's totally backing up my feeling that bagels are way easier to make than commonly thought and are way better than buying. 

So don't just take my word for it - take Jennifer Reese's too. 

(I've now even added it as a "thing to go" when we all get together! Yay, I'm now officially obsessed. Woo hoo!)

Rats.

I was planning to do a proper post today - but got wrapped up with other things (including cooking my first ever ham) and now bedtime is rapidly approaching and I don't feel like blogging. But I said I was going to post something today, so I felt like I had to say something.

But I did at least move towards being able to blog about our toaster - I recorded a video during the toasting of my english muffin this morning, and Mark has uploaded the file, so I'm one step closer to being able to spread the word on toaster technology. Soon. Ish.

Recipe number six: Cauliflower tortellini cheese.

Another really easy one - it's definitely a theme I have going when it comes to cooking in the middle of the week. This may look a bit familiar, since it uses a lot of the same ingredients as recipe number five. I'm assuming that the fresh stuffed pasta and sauce are as common over in the US as they are here - they're really easy to pick up, which makes this dish even easier to make.

Preheat the broiler.

Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Add 1 large head of cauliflower, trimmed and cut into small florets.

Cook for 3 minutes and then add a pack (300g/11 ounce) package of fresh cheese tortellini (or other stuffed pasta). Cook for a further 3-5 minutes - whenever the cauliflower is tender.

Drain well, reserving 100ml/1/3 cup of the cooking liquid, and tip into a large gratin dish.

Heat 500g/2 cups(??) of cheese pasta sauce in a pan.

Add a pack of fresh baby spinach leaves and the reserved cooking liquid and stir until the spinach wilts.

Pour the sauce over the pasta and cauliflower and scatter with about 1 cup of halved cherry tomatoes.

Tear/grate about 150g/1 cup of mozzarella cheese and scatter over the top.

Broil for 5 minutes or until golden and bubbling.

Taste scores

Mark: 7

Jessica: 8

Ease of preparation: 10

Do it again? Yes.

Recommend? Yes, and I think I like this one better than recipe five - it's really similar, but the cauliflower - pasta mix is interesting, and yummy. Not exactly healthy, since it's heavy on the cheese, but the spinach helps...

Recipe number five: Cheese and tuna pasta bake.

This one is not very exciting, but it's quick and easy, which is something we like! I've adjusted it a bit from the original version - we've had it twice and the second time I added more tomato and cheese, which I think made it better - the approximate measurements from the second time are below.

Preheat oven to 375.

Cook 3 cups of fusilli pasta (or whatever noodle you like).

Meanwhile, heat 1 TB olive oil in a pan. Add 2 finely chopped red onions, and saute until soft.

Add a bag of spinach (300 grams - I have no idea what this is in cups or ounces!) and cook until wilted.

Drain the cooked pasta and add to the onion and spinach.

Stir in 2 cans of chopped tomatoes and two cans of tuna chunks. Season with salt and pepper.

Transfer the mixture to an oven proof dish. Top with about 8 ounces of mozzarella cheese (grated or sliced, depending on what kind of mozzarella you use).

Sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

Bake about 20 minutes until piping hot and bread crumbs have browned.

Taste scores

Mark: 6

Jessica: 6 (like I said, not very exciting!)

Ease of preparation: 10 (the only thing easier is picking up the phone and ordering pizza).

Do it again? Yes, and we already have...

Recommend? I would - but be warned, it isn't bland, but it's only a couple of steps away...

Recipe number four: Spanish-style chicken.

This was from a little while ago, but I wanted to catch up, and not lose track of the new recipes I'm trying as part of my New Year's challenge. I think I cut this out of a magazine, possibly one from a supermarket - I'm not sure. I have a blank book that I paste random recipes into, and this is just one of those. I made a couple of amendments, and I've also converted the metric to normal using my favorite online converstion site (which even has conversions for butter, which is just amazing!)

Spanish-style chicken

Serves 6

Whole chicken, about 1.6kg/3.5 lbs

50g/3.5 TB butter, softened

1/2 TB paprika

Large pinch saffron

6 tomatoes, quartered

4 chorizo sausages, skinned and sliced (this is a bit flexible - it says four, I bought two packages - each package had one chorizo that was maybe a foot long, but curved around in a horseshoe shape, maybe an inch in diameter? that's a really rough memory!)

2 cans butter beans, drained

6 garlic cloves, peeled

fresh flat leaf parsley (I think I forgot this when I did it)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Mix paprika and saffron into the butter with salt and pepper and rub all over the chicken skin (it seems like a lot of butter at this point, but it is worth it!). Place chicken in a roasting pan and put in the oven for 1 hour and 25 minutes (for a 1.6kg bird - adjust accordingly depending on size of chicken)

3. About 40 minutes before the chicken is meant to be done (so for a 1.6kg bird, this is about 45 minutes into the cooking time), take the chicken out of the pan and set aside, while you add the tomatoes, chorizo, butter beans and garlic cloves to the roasting pan. Place the chicken on top and baste well.

4. Continue to roast for the remaining time, basting occasionally.

5. At the end of the cooking time and when the chicken is finished, remove from the oven and let the chicken rest for about 10 minutes. Mash the tomatoes slightly into the sauce. Sprinkle with parsley (if using). Carve the chicken and serve with the chorizo-bean-tomato sauce.

It's pretty straightforward, and most of the time involved is the roasting time for the chicken. I can see how it can be adapted to make it even easier - using chicken breasts, for example, but I guess you'd just have to make sure that the tomatoes and chorizo had time to cook. The chorizo goes all crunchy and it's just really nice with the beans and tomatoes. It didn't seem too fatty to me, but it is pretty rich!

Taste scores

Mark: 7 (Mark says it was tasty but there are other things he likes better)

Jessica:  8

Ease of preparation: 8 (having to skin the chorizo is the only thing that keeps this from scoring a ten - I don't know if you could get away with not skinning at all...) 

Do it again? Yes

Recommend? I think so - if it isn't too rich for people...

Recipe number three: Everything bagels.

Continuing both my New Year's resolution to try out 24 new recipes this year and my obsession with making bagels from scratch, I tried out a different bagel recipe, specifically for everything bagels.

I had previously made blueberry bagels, but since all I did was add dried blueberries to the original recipe I used for making bagels, it didn't really count as part of my 24. But this was a brand new recipe, taken from bakespace.com.

Everything Bagels Recipe

This was not the smoothest baking experience I have had. Nothing went wrong, but it wasn't as easy and straightforward as the previous bagel recipe. Part of the reason may have come from the fact that I doubled the recipe on the site (who wants to go to all the trouble of baking from scratch for only four measly bagels?). Mostly it was just I kept adding and adding flour and the dough still stayed tacky. I mixed for so long and added so much that it started climbing up the dough hook, so I took it out and kneaded and kneaded, adding flour all the time and it still remained a bit sticky.

I eventually gave up and continued with the recipe, and as a result after rising the first and second times, the bagels were all floppy and soft. It made it hard to boil them, since they kept slipping and sliding off of the spatula I used to get them out of the water, and they stretched all over the place. I got through it, and added all the toppings and got them in the oven.

They turned out fine, except I forgot to do the egg wash before adding the toppings, so basically every time you moved the bagel, or even looked at it, bits would fall off, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. By the time you sliced it, put it in the toaster, took it out of the toaster and put it on a plate, you had about one sesame seed and a slight taste of onion left.

The garlic and onion pieces also went a bit black, so I'm going to cook them further down in the oven next time.

I am getting much, much better at ensuring that the hole remains - it just takes opening up a bit after they've risen each time, before you boil them.

So lessons were learned, and I probably won't use that recipe again. But they still tasted quite nice, which is, of course, the main thing.

Taste scores

Mark: no score yet - our toaster broke before he had the chance to try one

Jessica: 7 (I just love everything bagels)

Ease of preparation: 3

Do it again? Probably not.

Recommend? I still believe everyone should try making bagels, just not this recipe.

Vallentines' day in the snow.

On Valentine's Day, we went for a hike in the Breacon Beacon mountains, in Wales. It's not that far away from Clevedon (this hike was about an hour and 15 minutes from our flat).

It's one of those places that we always enjoy going to and when we get there say, "this really isn't that far. Why don't we do this more often?"

(To which the answer is, "we are lazy, lazy people.")

It had been a couple of weeks since the big snowstorm of '09, and the altitude isn't that high, but there was still a lot of snow - much more than I expected. It was fun, then kind of cold and wet then not fun, then really really not fun, then I ate a Snickers and it was fun again.

This was at the beginning of the hike, before we hit the real snow:



A scenic sheep:


A scenic Mark:


Mark checking the map:


Early on, the decision was made to go cross country, to cut off some of the distance. This meant much more snow, and pre-Snickers, this made for a grumpy Jessica, who went very very slowly (here you can see that I'm just barely edging ahead of the tree in the race to the top):


It was at this point that the snow hit the fan, the Snickers was deployed and then within about 30 seconds all was right with the world again, which you can tell from the fact that I'm smiling in the rest of the photos we took that day.

From these three photos, I think you can see how deep the snow was in some places:




We reached the top by hiking up a much steeper incline than this photo makes it seem:




And then it was time to start going back down again - this time following the path - which we think was under the snow somewhere.


There was a really neat dam in this valley, which you can kind of see through the low-lying clouds in this photo:



I kind of forgot how much effort walking in snow requires. Mark went ahead and I used the snow holes he made, but it was pretty exhausting and my knees kind of hurt for a couple of days afterwards...but I'm sure my heart appreciated it!