Homemade Bagels!

Homemade seed-and-salt bagel with cream cheese, lox, lemon, and red onion.

Bagels remind me of waking up hungover in college. Being from California, what I wanted in my hungoverness was a nice greasy burrito, but that was obviously not happening in Binghamton. All my friends, though, woke up wanting bagels. And this was more doable--there was a pretty decent place at the bottom on the hill. Which would even deliver, were you feeling particularly lazy. So I have many happy memories of eating bagels and recounting the previous night. From then on, whenever I was in NY I made sure to eat as many great bagels as I could. I particularly grew to love the egg-and-cheese bagel--the perfect breakfast food, which I wish would expand to the rest of the  country.
My husband is from Brooklyn, so he loves when I make pizza and bagels more than any other baked good. Even bad bagels (I've made a few totally unsuccessful batches), he scarfs, groaning about how much he loves bagels. I decided to make these this weekend to celebrate the return of Home Weekends, as opposed to Ski Weekends. We planted our garden, strung up lights over the deck, and had our first weekend out of the mountains. As much as I love powder in Summit Country, I also love doing nothing in my backyard in Denver, especially in shorts.
If you want a good bagel in Denver, you're going to need to make it yourself. The only bagels in town are the Thomas' brand in the plastic bag at Safeway.
I used a recipe I found on the New York Times. But I seriously could NOT find the malt powder the recipe called for. So I just skipped it, subbing in a little more sugar with the blooming yeast (about 2 tablespoons).
This is a pretty easy recipe. Just takes patience with the rising times.

From New York Times:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 5 cups bread flour
• 2 teaspoons salt, plus more for boiling
• 1 tablespoon diastatic malt powder
• 1/4 cup poppy seeds, optional
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds, optional

PREPARATION

1.

Put the yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer. Add 1 2/3 cups lukewarm water and allow the yeast to activate, about 5 minutes. Add flour, salt and malt powder and mix at low speed for 5 minutes using the paddle attachment. Cover the dough and allow to rise at room temperature for about 2 hours.

2.

Punch the dough down and shape into a rough rectangle about 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick, and about 2 times longer than it is wide. If you are having trouble forming the dough, stretch it, wait for the gluten to relax and reform.

3.

Cut the dough into 10 pieces of about 3 ounces each. Roll each into an 8-inch-long snakelike shape, tapering the dough at each end. Circle the dough around your hand, pinching the ends together and rolling under your palm once or twice to seal. Put the bagels on a Silpat or other nonstick baking sheet on top of a jellyroll pan. Cover well with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 10 hours, or up to 24 hours.

4.

Heat the oven to 425 degrees. If you have a baking stone or brick you use for baking, put it on a rack near the bottom of the oven; it will retain heat and produce a crisper bagel. Bring a large pot of water to boil, throw a handful of salt into the boiling water and remove the bagels from the refrigerator.

5.

Using your hands, carefully place just enough bagels into the pot to cover the surface of the water, making sure that there are no bagels resting on top of one another. Let them float on one side for about 30 seconds before flipping them to the other side for another 30 seconds or so. Remove the bagels and drain well on a cooling rack.

6.

Pour poppy or sesame seeds into a bowl wider than the bagels. Working very quickly, remove the bagels one by one and dip them into the topping. Place them back on the Silpat-covered baking sheet, topping side down.

7.

Bake on the second to highest shelf of the oven for about 7 minutes. Then flip the bagels and continue baking for about 8 minutes, or until they are golden brown.

YIELD

10 bagels

Raw bagels after rising in the fridge all night.

Boiling raw bagels. 

Delicious, toasty finished bagels.

Bagels, cream cheese, onions, lox, lemons.

We had a fantastic brunch--bagels and lox, plus a cheese-and-onion fritatta courtesy of my brother, and mimosas. The bagels, though nowhere near New York-quality / flavor, were delicious.
I love summer. And I am very excited to experiment with new bagel flavors and techniques.
Enjoy!

Glorious Glazed Pork Shoulder

I realize that the picture of this incredible roast looks awful--a charred and melted black monster. But--this was absolutely, utterly FABULOUS despite being ugly.  Spoon-tender roasted salty-sweet pork under a thick, crisp bark of crackling skin. I cooked this long and low and slow--from about 10 am till 5pm. For most of that time, I wasn't home--I just left it in the oven. The results of this are FANTASTIC. This would be an excellent dish for a dinner party--but I just made it for the two of us. A week of great eating lies ahead.
I bought this roast a few weeks ago--it was a happy accident. You almost never see pork shoulder for sale with the skin still on. I asked once at Oliver's, and they said you could order them ahead of time, but it wasn't something they normally did. Then, one magical day, there I am in the shitty Albertsons meat section on Alameda and BAM--what do I see but skin-on pork shoulders! I bought two and stashed them in the freezer until I had time to do them up right.

A rare find!

The ingredients---pork, apple cider vinegar, fennel seeds, brown sugar.

Ingredients: 
1 Tablespoon fennel seeds, crushed or chopped

3 TB cup kosher salt 

1/2 cup sugar 

1 7–8-lb bone-in pork shoulder (Boston butt or picnic. If you can find it with skin, use that--if not, skinless is fine. 

1/2cup apple cider vinegar 

1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar

What to do: 

1. Crush or chop the fennel seeds and mix them with the brown sugar and salt. 

 2. Put this rub all over the pork. Rub it IN. Get your salty sugary fingers into all the fatty, meaty pink folds of that beautiful pig meat. Massage it in. If it has skin, score it in crosshatches. Cut into the fat, past the skin, but not all the way down to the meat.

3. Put it in the oven at 280 and leave it for no less than 7 hours. Use a covered dutch oven or roasting pan.

Many hours later....

4.  Take the meat out and place it on a sheet pan or in a shallow dish for broiling. Crank the oven up to 525.
5. There will be liquid left in the pan. Skim out some fat (according to taste). I took about a cup and a half of fat out of mine. Add the cider vinegar to the pan and start boiling to reduce. At this point, you might want to add some more sugar and salt. I ended up putting a few more tablespoons of brown sugar and a pinch of salt in. Boil down into a thin syrup.

The glaze, reducing.

6. While the glaze is reducing, the pork should be back in the oven on high, getting crispy. Brush with the glaze (even in it's mid-reduction form) at 4 min intervals. You want the skin very crispy and very brown.

7. Pour the glaze all over the top. The pork can be easily pulled off in chunks.
Serve with herb bean salad and pickled red onions. Or anything you want.
This was AWESOME. We smashed our roast down and had it pulled-pork style. The skin was BOMB.

TO DIE. Make this at once and apologize to no one!

Shaum Torte

Finished Schaum Torte.

Adam's brother was hosting a Seder, which was super fun. He made matzo ball soup and brisket, both of which were delicious. So we said we would bring dessert, and Adam immediately thought of Schaum Torte, which is one of the two things he likes about Judaism (the other is Seders hosted by Ben). It's essentially a big meringue, served with strawberries and whipped cream.
I had never made this before. But interestingly, in googling about it, it seems to be a Milwaukee / Wisconsin specific food--where Adam's family is from, before NY.
I used the recipe my mother in law sent me:

6 egg whites
2 cups sugar
1 t vanilla
1 t vinegar

Preheat oven to 275. Beat whites until still enough to hold up in peaks; beat in 2 T of sugar at a time, beating thoroughly each time. Add vanilla and vinegar. Grease and flour (with matzoh meal, or just cheat) a 9-inch spring form and fill with the mixture. Bake about 1 hour. It will rise up over the spring form; the peaks will become tan.

After a while you may get bored adding sugar 2 T at a time; you can cheat.

Serve with strawberries (at room temp) and whipped cream.

 Lots of beating eggs! I had been planning to use a whisk, but Adam said that was nuts and bought me an electric egg beater.
Everyone loved it. I will be making this for future Passovers.

The ingredients. And my new mixer!

Cutting up strawberries while watching Nigella Eats online.

Now they need to macerate in the fridge, those pervs. 

Whipped up egg whites and sugar. 

The raw tortes in springform molds, before baking. I floured the molds, then realized this ruined the Kosher-for-Passover-ness of the dessert. Oops. Sorry, Jews. I decided to just not mention it.

  

Out of the oven! Crusty, sugar, soft in the middle. Delightful.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished torte all dressed up with strawberries and whipped cream. Alas. You will have  to use your imagination.