Bona fide

I have been told by many people that it is not possible to get a decent bagel outside of New York City. Or Montreal.

(Not by the same people. In fact, I would hesitate to put the New-York-bagel people and the Montreal-bagel people in a room with my favorite breakable items and then mention the word “bagel”. I think they’re even worse than the New-England-clam-chowder people and the Manhattan-clam-chowder people.

Not that anything with tomatoes in it can be called “chowder”.

But I digress.)

This takes in a lot of territory, and I haven’t eaten enough bagels in enough places to go that far. I will say that, in my experience, real bagels (as opposed to bread rolls that are just shaped like bagels) are pretty damn difficult to find in either Oxford or Canberra.

Since Nigella Lawson apparently has the same problem in London (she probably doesn’t spend much time in the East End, where there actually are real bagels; I never did either), she has thoughtfully provided a recipe for homemade bagels in HtbaDG, which I have selected for Cookbook Challenge Recipe #4.

NL's DIY Bagels
These quantities are half of the NL recipe. Also, I double-checked Under the High Chair’s bagel recipe for some aspects of the method.

500g/1lb+ strong, plain, or all-purpose flour
1.5tsp salt
3.5g/1tsp yeast
1Tbsp sugar
1.5tsp oil
250ml/10oz very warm water*

2Tbsp sugar for poaching the bagels

Grease a clean bowl and set aside.

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast together in a large bowl. Mix the sugar, oil, and water in a jug. Pour wet into dry and mix with a dough whisk, wooden spoon, or implement of your choice. When dough has cohered sufficiently (it will be very stiff), knead with your hands until you have a smooth, springy dough—this will take about 10 minutes of hard kneading.

Place the dough in oiled bowl, turning to coat with the oil. Cover bowl with clingfilm/plastic wrap and leave to rise for about one hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

When the dough has risen, punch it down, knead it a little more, then cut up into six equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, and leave to rest for about five minutes. Meanwhile, grease a baking tray**, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil, and turn your oven up as high as it will go.

When the balls have had their rest, take one and poke a hole in the middle of it with your thumbs. Shape as best you can into a smooth, even bagel shape***, then proceed to the next one. When you have formed all of them, cover and leave to rise for another 15 minutes or so.

When the water is boiling, add the sugar (this makes the bagels shiny), and drop three of the bagels into it. Poach for about a minute, turning once. (Mine rose to the top, flipping halfway, during this time, so I didn’t really have to do anything.) Fish out with a slotted spoon and place on the baking tray. Repeat with the second three.

When you’re done poaching, bake the bagels in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until they are light brown, shiny, and puffy.

Makes 6 real bagels.


* I don’t think this was quite enough water, because the dough was very stiff. I plan to increase it by about 25ml/1oz next time.
** Even with greasing, the bagels still stuck. Next time I might try parchment instead.
*** As you can see from the picture, I couldn’t get my bagels very smooth because of how stiff the dough was. So I’ve decided they have character.

ANZAC Day

Today, Monday April 27, is the official holiday commemorating ANZAC Day. The actual date of ANZAC Day is April 25, and it is sort of an Australian version of Memorial Day. But only sort of.

April 25 is significant because it marks the date, in 1915, when Australian and New Zealand troops (ANZAC = Australia New Zealand Army Corps) began their prolonged and costly assault on the beaches of Gallipoli alongside their Allied counterparts. The campaign in this part of the world was an attempt to break the stalemate that was already occurring in the entrenched lines of the Western Front, or at least to divert attention from it with an Allied victory. The initial ANZAC assault was marred by poor planning, which in turn led to flawed execution, at huge cost of life. The casualty rates are gruesomely familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of First World War history: nearly 45,000 Allied troops, of whom 8,700 were Australian.

Gallipoli has assumed iconographic status in the historical memory of Australians. The death tolls of those days in 1915, horrendous as they were, would be surpassed in later years in pivotal battles at the Somme and Amiens, but Gallipoli was the first: Australia’s coming of age in war. And every year, at the same dawn hour when the ANZAC troops began their amphibious attack, Australians gather, in small towns and big cities all over the country, to honor not only their service and sacrifice, but also the contributions of all Australian veterans.

Since I’ve been in Australia, I’ve visited the national Australian War Memorial here in Canberra, and also the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, both of which were originally constructed to honor the dead of the First World War. After having lived in England, I was familiar with the awesome and lasting impact of this war on generation after generation, but it was only in coming here that I have fully grasped the importance of such physical memorials: how Australians in particular, far removed geographically from where their loved ones had died, and with little prospect either of having a body to bury or of travelling to a distant grave, poured the energy of their grief into communal memorials, as a tangible reminder and commemoration of those they had lost.

I don’t think most Americans even know that Memorial Day originally existed to remember the dead of the American Civil War, and any communal celebrations that still take place are more likely to be of the parade variety. For most people, the only thing Memorial Day commemorates now is the first barbecue or weekend away of the summer season. And there’s plenty of that here, too, for ANZAC Day. But I admire a country that, more than 90 years after the fact, makes the time to reflect quietly upon patriotism, soldiering, and sacrifice: for those who were at Gallipoli, all those who have served since, and for every individual, military and civilian alike.

ANZAC Biscuits
These cookies are an Australian icon in their own right. The recipe was devised to create a biscuit that would survive the long journey to Australian troops stationed overseas, arrive intact, and still taste good when the homesick recipient opened his package. You can find commercially produced versions of them in every shop, and the biggest producer, as standard practice, donates a portion of the profits to veterans’ charities. They’re good out of a package—they do indeed keep forever—but, as (nearly) always, they’re better homemade. I haven't made my own (yet!), so I direct you to an online authority instead. For my first attempt, I definitely want the real thing that someone's gran was baking back when.

Totally nuts

Did you know that macadamia nuts are originally from Australia? I didn’t. I’d always associated them with Hawaii, probably because of those jars of Mauna Loa salted macadamias that were often floating around when I was a kid. They were delicious, but pricey, so I didn’t get to eat them very much, even when I got old enough to buy my own nuts. I was pretty pleased when I started looking at nuts in the supermarket down here and saw how reasonably priced they were—for nuts, that is. Then I saw some for sale in an Australian souvenir shop and realized it was because they’re local. This prompted me to do a little more digging (mostly on Wikipedia), and I present here, for your edification and entertainment, some macadamia trivia.

1. Macadamias are the only plant food native to Australia that is grown and exported in commercial quantities.
2. They became popular internationally after Hawaiian farmers began cultivating them in the early twentieth century.
3. There are nine different species, but only two are commercially produced, because the others contain toxins or are otherwise indigestible to humans.
4. Indigenous Australians have been harvesting macadamia nuts for thousands of years, and have developed processes to use all the species.
5. Their European name is in honor of Dr. John MacAdam, a scientist and secretary to the Philosophical Institute of Australia, by his friend, German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller, in 1857.
6. Among their recorded indigenous Australian names are gyndl, jindilli, and boombera.
7. Macadamia nuts are very high in monounsaturated fats, and macadamia oil is a valued ingredient in skincare products for its high concentration of Omega-7 acids.

As far as macadamia nuts are concerned, I have totally gone native. My snack food of choice these days is a salted macadamia-and-cashew combo that is sold under my local supermarket’s in-house brand (ie, cheap!), and I’ve recently switched over to a macadamia-oil-based moisturizer that is making my skin very happy, especially here in super-dry Canberra.

And, since I don’t like odd numbers, I’ll round off with my personal favorite bit of trivia gained from my reading:

8. Chopped macadamia nuts apparently regularly masquerade as crack cocaine in drug stings because they look so similar.