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While in New York City for the first time recently, it was my full intention to find and eat a real New York bagel for the food blog. I had heard that H&H Bagels was a good place to go, so when I met John and Elsa, a local couple in their seventies, at the bar of the MoMA restaurant Modern where we were all having lunch, I decided to get the local wisdom on this recommendation.
moma4
According to John and Elsa, H&H is not the goods. They like to go to Zabar’s on the Upper West Side to buy bagels to take home (http://www.zabars.com/). I only had two days in NYC and much as I wanted to go to the Upper West Side, principally to get a picture of myself outside Tom’s Diner, the location used by Seinfeld as Monk’s Coffee Shop, I was planning to focus only on Midtown and the Village. John and Elsa had a great recommendation for this area as well – Russ and Daughters Appetizing House in the Lower East Side (http://www.russanddaughters.com/).
Russ & Daughters front
An appetizing store is a store that sells “the foods one eats with bagels.” Appetizing, a term used by American Jews, especially those in NYC, includes both dairy and “pareve” (neither dairy nor meat) food items such as lox, whitefish, and cream cheese, foods typically eaten for breakfast or lunch that, based on Jewish dietary laws, include no meat products (kosher fish products are not considered meat). In short, an appetizing store sells fish and dairy products, whereas a delicatessen sells meats (but not dairy if it’s kosher).
russ and daughters bagel
The New York bagel contains salt and malt and is boiled in water prior to baking in a standard oven, creating a puffy ring with a moist crust. The reasons for this cooking method are rooted in Jewish religious laws regarding no work on the Sabbath. The dough was prepared the day before, chilled during the day, and boiled and baked only after the end of the Sabbath, therefore using the Sabbath as a productive time in the bagel-making process as the dough needs to slowly rise in a chilled environment before cooking.
Elsa complained that today’s commercial bagels are too soft. The reason for this is that commercial bakers have begun making the “steam bagel”, skipping the boiling stage and baking the bagels in an oven with a steam injection system. This requires less labor –bagels are only handled once at the shaping stage, but also results in a fluffier, softer, less chewy product not appreciated by purists like Elsa.
I have to give a shout out to Canada here, as the home of the other major bagel variety in North America – the Montreal bagel. Our version contains malt and sugar with no salt; it is boiled in honey-sweetened water before baking in a wood-fired oven and is usually dipped either in black poppy or white sesame seeds.
According to Wikipedia, “bagel” is also an Orthodox Jewish term for sleeping 12 hours straight, e.g. “I slept a bagel last night.” This may be a reference to the fact that bagel dough has to “rest” for at least 12 hours between mixing and baking, or simply the fact that the hour hand on a clock traces a bagel shape over the course of twelve hours.
Either way, I slept a bagel in NYC, probably due to the high temperatures and humidity, or maybe just because the bed at my hotel – the delightful art deco-influenced and eminently affordable Washington Square Hotel in the West Village – was so comfortable. And did not have time to go for my bagel. So this is now a pilgrimage on the list for my eagerly anticipated next visit to NYC.
Instead, I bought a salted pretzel at the airport and ate it with packets of mustard. It, like the rest of New York, was divine.
~ Deb
The World's Greatest Whisk
You might be wondering why it is that I have posted a picture of a whisk when the topic is National Whipped Cream Day. In theory, I suppose I should have posted a picture of mounds of creamy, pillowy, delicious whipped cream, but the thing is, without this whisk, there is no whipped cream – at least not in my house.
I feel rather passionately about whipped cream, making me a bit of a shoe-in (is that how you spell it?) for this post. As I mentioned on National Cream Puff Day, I am a bit of a purist. I like my whipped cream made fresh and preferably not tampered with a great deal. I loathe the idea of whipped cream in a can. Dea and I have debated this at length as she is a proponent of the canned cream. I understand her perspective. Whipped cream in a can is convenient, mess-free and keeps longer than the fresh stuff. There is no labour involved whatsoever and no dishes other than the ones you eat from.
For me, however, it is simply not worth it. The texture of canned cream is all wrong and it is, almost without fail, too sweet and kind of chemical-y tasting. There has been more than one occasion when I have walked out of Dea’s house late at night in search of a container of whipping cream in order to service whatever dessert we are having; this despite the fact that there is a perfectly useful can of whipped cream already in her fridge. Reading this you are probably in agreement with Dea and whichever other house guests have been present on such occasions – yes, I am a little nutty. I won’t deny it.
I used to work in a restaurant that used whipped cream in a variety of things, including special coffees and most all the desserts. We used those whipped cream canisters that use those little Whip-It cartridges. We would pour a litre of whipping cream into the canister and then add just one small packet of sugar before screwing on the top and putting in the cartridge. This is when I came to the understanding that whipped cream is really just better on its own. A tiny bit of sugar – 1 teaspoon to an entire litre – is really more than enough to flavour it. You might add a smidgen, just a smidgen, of vanilla too. But whipped cream is sublimely decadent and is usually paired with desserts that are verging on the obscene when it comes to sweetness. You need a delicate touch to balance that out.
I do not use Whip-It cartridges at home. Whipped cream that is produced via the instant injection of nitrous oxide bubbles is unstable and a little light in texture. It won’t hold it’s “whip”, so to speak, and reverts to liquid form too quickly for my tastes – particularly when served over a hot food, beverage or … I leave it to your imagination.
I also don’t use a power mixer to make my whipped cream. Why? Because when I use my magical whisk, I am faster and less messy than any electric beater. I recently confirmed this at Christmas dinner at my parents’ house where I used their electric mixer and managed to spray the entire kitchen, top to bottom, with little white droplets of cream; and it took ages for the cream to thicken.
The trick to good and fast whipped cream is to use the freshest whipping cream and to chill the cream and the stainless steel mixing bowl in the freezer for 5 – 10 minutes before whipping it. And you have to have the right whisk. Note the large tines of my whisk and how there are multiple layers of tines set in different directions. This whisk aerates the cream so fast you hardly have time to think about it before you’d better stop or you’re making butter.
I would be remiss if I did not note the fact that whipped cream and its accoutrements have and are used for a variety of illicit and naughty purposes. The notion of whipped cream as sex toy is so common as to be cliché, and surely more than one high school student has enjoyed experimenting with a few Whip-Its from time to time (if you didn’t know, Whip-Its are canisters of nitrous oxide, a.k.a. Laughing Gas). But these things simply add to the Whipped Cream Mystique, the aura of the forbidden, the decadent, and yes, the divine.
Whipped cream is more than just a garnish. Indeed, it can be a dessert in itself (as witnessed at Christmas dinner this year when my sister-in-law, N, a woman after my own heart, chose to forego the pumpkin pie and simply have a bowlful of whipped cream for dessert). It is deceptively light and utterly delicious and I can eat dangerous amounts of the stuff.
Whipped cream is one of the top 5 reasons I took up triathlon.
xoxo B.
