Eat like an Egyptian

This post has nothing to do with breakfast and everything to do with the wonderful book that arrived at my door yesterday from Amazon: the recipe book from Ottolenghi. For a while, I’ve been wondering where to find a bit of new culinary stimulation. Most of my recipe books got left in South Africa, and after so many years as a vegetarian, I find myself a bit illiterate in the ways of cooking meat and chicken. Anyway, Nicole has been raving about the Ottolenghi book, so I sent away for that, and for Elizabeth David’s classic Italian Food.

So. The parcel arrived yesterday (“Another day, another parcel for Greenstein,” says Nik), and I discover with much pleasure that Nicole has not been exaggerating. You can just about smell the olive oil and garlic and cumin off the pages. I flicked it open to a random page and found a recipe for koshari. I have only ever eaten koshari in Cairo – at a street restaurant with a crowd of scuba diving mates; in a publisher’s office as a rushed order – in lunch with teachers and education officials, and in the desert midway along a horse ride to see the pyramids at night. Everything about koshari conjures up for me memories of Egypt.

Koshari vendors fill your bowl – first they pile it with a mix of rice, noodles and lentils, then scoop on spoonful of darkened onions – fried to somewhere between soft, crispy and slightly moist with rich olive oil, then top that with a bright red tomato-chilli sauce. Bowlfuls of crunchy tomato-and-cucumber salad and yogurt might get passed around as additions.

I didn’t get a chance to photograph it last night, so here’s a picture of the dive crew sampling it on the streets of Cairo.

Diving crew from Red Sea dive trip 2005

Koshari

for main dish:

300 g green lentils
200 g basmati rice
40 g unsalted butter
50 g vermicelli noodles (I used spaghetti), broken into 4 cm pieces
400 ml chicken or vegetable stock or water
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
2 white onions, halved and thinly sliced

for spicy tomato sauce:

4 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 red chillies, seeded and finely diced
8 ripe tomatoes, chopped (can be fresh or tinned)
370 ml water
4 tbsp cider vinegar
3 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cumin
20 g coriander leaves

1. Start with the sauce. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, add the garlic and chillies and fry for 2 minutes. Add the rest of the sauce ingredients besides the coriander. Bring to the boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes til slightly thickened. Remove from heat, stir in coriander. Season to taste with salt, pepper, more coriander if you like. Keep it hot or leave it to cool – either will work with the hot kosheri.

(I used fresh tomatoes, and went for the cool option – weather too hot for hot-on-hot food!)

2. To make the kosheri, wash the lentils in a large sieve under a cold running tap. Transfer to a large saucepan, cover with lots of cold water and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat, simmer for 25 minutes. The lentils should be tender but far from mushy. Drain and leave aside.

3. In a large bowl, wash the rice in cold water. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add raw noodles, stir and continue frying and stirring til the noodles turn golden brown. Add the drained rice and mix well until it is coatedin the butter. Now add the stock or water, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, cover and then reduce the heat to a minimum and simmer for 12 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the lid, cover the pan with a clean tea towel; this helps to make the rice light and fluffy.

4. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the onions and saute over medium heat for about 20 minutes til dark brown. Transfer to kitchen paper to drain.

5. To serve, lightly break up the rice with a fork and then add the lentils and most of the onions, reserving a few for garnish. Taste for seasoning and adjust accordingly. Pile the rice high on a serving platter and top with the remaining onions. Serve hot with the tomato sauce.

Heavenly green

Nik says I just like getting parcels. He says that’s why I keep ordering stuff off the internet. Me, I say internet shopping is simply the bomb. You can spend as long as you like finding exactly what it is that you want, then buy it in a few minutes, and a day or two later it arrives at your door. So it was with my handheld blender. I was a little suspicious of it at first, as it came with about five different blades, so it wasn’t as straightforward as the Braun blender I was used to. But it’s won me over. And this, my friends, is because it can do what no man can do: it can blend up ice to a thick smooth crush.

I found this recip e at MadCapCupcake’s blog. Like her, I was a little tentative about the idea of a spinach smoothie. It sounds like something only hardcore vegans would like. And despite a foray into veganism some years ago, I no longer count myself among the ranks of what Anthony Bourdain calls “the hizbolla-like splinter faction of vegetarianism”.

So gone are my days of crushing linseeds to make egg substitutes and whipping tofu into sauces. Why, then, would I fill a cup with blended up spinach and ice? Only one, reason, friends, and I ask you to trust me on this one. It’s goddamn delicious. The spinach is mellow and sweet – even sweeter if you add banana as I like to do. Oh, and it uses up the glut of spinach from the allotment.

Spinach smoothie

a cup of spinach leaves, torn up

a few ice cubes

a banana

some milk, just enough to cover (dairy or soya, whatever takes your fancy)

You’ll need a blender that can crush ice. Blend it all up til it’s smooth and green. It will make you feel virtuous!

Chocolate topped cupcakes

It’s never a good idea to go to a supermarket when you’re hungry. Chances are, you’ll buy much more than you need, and plenty that you don’t need at all… I do it regularly. So I was on my way back from the allotment one time, and passed the little superette along the way, and stopped (as I oh-so-regularly do) for some orange juice. And, well, maybe one of those nice pain-au-chocolat things that they do so very nicely for a supermarket in a crappy area. But to get to the pain-au-chocolat shelf, I had to pass that other shelf. You know – the one with the packaged biscuits and cakes and mini-rolls and stuff. And of course, I’d been working in the garden the whole morning, so a box of cupcakes by the so-called Fabulous Bakin’ Boys seemed like A Good Idea.

Ha ha. These guys ought to be called the Not-so-Fabulous Bakin’ Boys. Either that, or the boys had a really off day when they made these. The baked items in the box looked like little fairy cakes with a dark chocolate icing layer. Adorable, really, until you tried to eat them. Dried out, much-too-small fairy cake bit, and utterly unlickable chocolate layer on top. It resembled, uh, dark brown wax. An altogether depressing cupcake experience, and one that left me wanting the thing I’d imagined. Luckily the thing I’d imagined was all too easy to put together.

These are the cupcakes I made. The cake recipe is from Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess. I usually find Nigella a bit too AbFab for my taste, but Domestic Goddess does contain more than its fair share of classic recipes (if you have it, go get yourself some orange marmalade and a few slabs of chocolate and go make Store-Cupboard Chocolate-Orange Cake).

Nigella Lawson’s Fairy Cakes

(from www.nigella.com)

125g self-raising flour

125g caster sugar

125g soft unsalted butter

2 eggs

Half a teaspoon real vanilla extract

Approximately 2 tablespoons milk

1 x 12-bun muffin tin

12 muffin papers

Preheat the oven to 200C and line the tin with the muffin cases.

It couldn’t be simpler to make cup cakes: just put all the ingredients except for the milk in the processor and then blitz till smooth.

Pulse while adding milk, to make for a soft, dropping consistency, down the funnel. Or using a bowl and wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour.

Then add the vanilla extract and fold in the rest of the flour, adding the milk to get the dropping consistency as before.

I know it looks as if you’ll never make this scant mixture fit 12 bun cases, but you will. I promise you this mixture is exactly right to make the 12 cup cakes, so just spoon and scrape the stuff in, trying to fill each case equally, judging by eye only of course.

Put in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cup cakes are cooked and golden on top. As soon as bearable, take the cup cakes in their cases out of the tin and let cool, right way up, on a wire rack

For the chocolate topping, I just melted a slab of plain dark chocolate with about a tablespoon of butter to make it soft and glossy. Spread the cooled, melted mixture onto the cooled cupcakes.

A fine adulteration

Before I started this blog, I put a cooking-related post or two on my other blog. So, what follows is a copy of a long-ago chocolate brownie post. Because today I made the Moosewood Chocolate Brownies (recipe #3 below, and my abiding favourite). With one adulteration: the addition of cream cheese. I wasn’t sure what would happen. It turns out that the heavy chocolateyness and the pale, almost salty sourness of the cream cheese are a happy combination. Heaven. Also, today’s baking adventure really tested how forgiving Molly Katzen’s recipe is. Not only did I make a curdled mess of the butter and sugar mixture; I also somewhat burned the chocolate – and didn’t have enough time to let it cool before mixing it in. And you know what, the brownies were goddamn gorgeous, as Nikolai put it. The whole post follows below – scroll down to the bottom to find the Moosewood recipe.

So. Chocolate brownies. I’ve made a lot of these this year, in a variety of ways. The revelation about chocolate brownies was a thing I read by Nigel Slater, who points out that if you stick a skewer (or knife or whatever) in your brownies and it comes out clean, you have screwed it up. Really truly. Just start again. I mean, the thing in the pan might taste quite nice and chocolatey, but it will not have the magical squishiness of a true brownie, ok? Yes, you can redeem it with ice cream, but in the long run you’ll have to make more because the first lot won’t have fulfilled that special brownie thing you were after.

So in this post I’ll give you three brownie recipes, starting with the muddiest and richest, and ending with the lightest (though there’s nothing really light about any of these).
1. Nigel Slater’s recipe – the richest, darkest heaviest brownies imaginable. Closer to pudding than to anything like a chewy cookie.
2. A slightly cakier brownie – still rich and squishy, but closer to something you’d keep in a cookie jar (as opposed to the fridge).
3. Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Fudge brownies – a classic, that strikes a heavenly balance between lightly cakey and slightly chewy.

Nigel Slater’s brownies
(I can recommend Mr Slater’s fabulous article about these.)

300g golden caster sugar
250g butter
250g chocolate (70 per cent cocoa solids)
3 large eggs plus 1 extra egg yolk, beaten lightly
60g flour
60g finest quality cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder

You will need a baking tin, about 23cm x 23cm, preferably non-stick, or a small roasting tin.

Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Line the bottom of the baking tin with baking parchment. Cream the sugar and butter well til it’s very, very white and fluffy.

Meanwhile, break the chocolate into pieces, set 50g of it aside and melt the rest. As soon as the chocolate has melted, remove it from the heat and let it cool a bit. Chop the remaining 50g into gravel-sized pieces.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder and mix in a pinch of salt.
With the food mixer running slowly, introduce the beaten egg a little at a time, speeding up in between additions.
Mix in the melted and the chopped chocolate with a large metal spoon.
Lastly, fold in the flour and cocoa, gently and firmly, without knocking any of the air out.
Scrape the mixture into the prepared cake tin, smooth the top and bake for 30 minutes. The top will have risen slightly and the cake will appear slightly softer in the middle than around the edges.Pierce the centre of the cake with a fork – it should come out sticky, but not with raw mixture attached to it. If it does, then return the brownie to the oven for three more minutes. It is worth remembering that it will solidify a little on cooling, so if it appears a bit wet, don’t worry.

The second take is a fraction less like chocolate pudding. When I say a fraction I mean a very small fraction.

Brownie recipe #2

340 g dark chocolate
250 g butter
3 eggs
250 g dark brown sugar
110 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 170°C and line a baking tray with baking parchment. Grease well.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
In a small bowl or jug (or double boiler) melt the chocolate and butter together.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and slowly beat in the sugar. Beat in the flour mixture and lastly fold in the chocolate mixture. Scrape it all into the pan, and bake it for about 17 minutes, then keep checking every 3 minutes til it’s done just well enough to be midway between gooey and cakey. But not liquid.
Take it out and leave it to cool before cutting.

The last lot is Mollie Katzen’s recipe, taken from her lovely classic, “The Moosewood Cookbook”. She has a lovely blog which you can find here. I’ve been making these since I was 12 and I LURVE them. I’ve put the metric measures in though the original recipe is in non-standard and imperial measures.

Moosewood Fudge Brownies

Let soften: 1/2 lb. (250 g) butter (don’t melt it)

Melt: 5 oz. (150 g) bittersweet chocolate. Let cool.

Cream the butter with 1 3/4 packed cups (about 200 g) light brown sugar and 5 eggs. Add 1 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract. Beat in the melted, cooled chocolate and 1 cup flour.

Spread into a buttered 9 x 13″(23 x 33 cm) baking pan. Bake 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees (180).

Optional: chopped nuts, or 1 tablespoon instant coffee, or 1 teaspoon grated fresh orange or lemon rind, or 1/2 teaspoon allspice or cinnamon, or a mashed over-ripe banana, or none of the above.

Yet another option: instead of uniformly blending in the chocolate, you can marble it. Add chocolate last, after the flour is completely blended in and only partially blend in the chocolate. It looks real nice.

Cream cheese adulteration: When you are putting the batter into the pan, spread about half of it in first. Then slice in 200 g Philadelphia cream cheese in a layer on the batter, smearing it in a marbly effect if you like. I guess you could mix it into the batter for a more evenly marbled effect. In mine, the cream cheese sank to the bottom anyway. Then pour in the rest of the batter. I used low-fat, simply because that was in the fridge. Full fat would be, well, even better in the decadence stakes, or worse, in the heart-attack stakes. It really depends what your priorities are.

I hope you like these. I know I also have a recipe for vegan (!!) brownies somewhere at home in Cape Town – I will dredge it out and link it into this post soon.

Rhubarb cake

My newly acquired allotment plot has a large rhubarb plant growing on it. Thankfully one of my neighbours at the site pointed it out to me, or I would’ve yanked it out with the rest of the weeds, as I had no idea what rhubarb looked like. Or what it tasted like, even, as I’d never encountered such a thing before. Nik’s sister Katya advised simmering it with tons of sugar and eating it with yogurt, which was nice. And pink. Then I found this recipe from Veg Box for an upside-down rhubarb cake, yet another utterly easy, not-too-sweet cake that falls into the category of wonderful things you can eat for breakfast. With or without a large dollop of greek yogurt.

Ingredients

Topping:

200g rhubarb
75g brown sugar

Cake:

175g self-raising flour
175g butter, softened
3 medium eggs
175g caster sugar

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 C. Grease and line a 7-inch (18 cm) deep-sided cake tin. (I used a loaf tin).
2. Trim the leaves and bases off the rhubarb stalks. Chop the stalks into 2 cm chunks. Place evenly over the base of the lined cake tin and sprinkle the brown sugar on top.
3. Beat together the butter and the sugar until they are creamy and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, with a tablespoon of flour. Beat well to combine at each stage.
5. Fold in the rest of the flour, so you don’t lose the air from the cake.
6. Spoon the cake mixture on top of the rhubarb and even out the top of the cake, making a small well in the middle. (This means it should rise evenly, rather than with a dome in the middle).
7. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top of the cake is golden brown and springy. A sharp knife or skewer inserted into the middle will come out clean.
8. Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool for 15 minutes. Turn the cake tin upside down onto the serving plate and gently remove it from the cake. The cake is literally served “upside down” with the rhubarb on the top.
9. Allow to cool before serving.

so this is why…

I haven’t posted anything on this blog for a few months. I think he’s the most delicious thing I’ve produced to date

Felafel and other Israeli-style stuff

Another lovely gathering of the south-east London tribe girls, this time at my flat. We were a somewhat smaller gathering than usual, as Sarah’s still at home with new arrival Florence Belle (congratulations!!!!) and others had other commitments. But Elke, Iratxe, Anja and I managed to magic up a feast of felafel, pita breads, hummous, tzatziki and tehina, while little Irene, Ella and Lukas learned a few new things about chickpeas and vacuum cleaners…

Once you’ve soaked up a couple of bowlfuls of chickpeas, both hummous and felafel are wonderfully easy (and economical) things to make. For the effort involved, it’s worth having at least half a dozen people round – we made enough to feed four hungry adults and everyone took some home for their partners. This is food for crowds, preferably crowds that’ll help you clean the bits of ground-up chickpea and garlic and parsley off every kitchen surface. If you just have a craving for felafel for, say, one or two people, I’d say go along to Burrough Market or else to a decent Lebanese or any other middle Eastern restaurant and get them to make it for you…

Felafel

225 g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of chopped parsley
juice of half a lemon
about half a cup of cooking water from the chickpeas
1/2 to 3/4 cup flour
vegetable oil for frying
1. Drain the chickpeas and wash well.

2. Blitz the chickpeas in a food processor with the baking powder, seasonings, garlic and parsley. Leave it for about half an hour for the flavours to mingle. You can leave it longer if you like – you can do up to this bit the day before, if you like.

3. Add just enough cooking water and flour to make a mixture that holds its shape when you make little balls. The trick to making the balls is to have a bowl of water on hand – wet your hands before forming each ball to prevent it from turning into a big sticky mess.

4. Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot. (The sides of the pot will help keep the oil from splattering everywhere, which happens when you use a frying pan. Though I was very glad Iratxe brought an apron!) Fry the balls in batches – about 4 minutes on each side – til they’re golden brown and crispy.

5. Drain on a kitchen towel to get the excess oil off. But the sooner you eat them the yummier they are… Try to wait til the pita breads are ready though!

Hummous

2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight with 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste
juice of 1 (or 2 or 3) lemons, to taste
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
salt
about 1/2 cup olive oil or more
parsley

1. Rinse off the soaking water. Simmer the chickpeas on medium heat for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Put 1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda into the cooking water (but NO salt, as salt will make the chickpeas tough). About halfway through the cooking, rinse the chickpeas well and replace the water with freshly boiled water from the kettle. When they’re cooked to soft and smashable, drain off the cooking water and keep some of it aside.

2. Let the cooked chickpeas cool. Cover with some fresh water. Rub them through your fingers to get most of the peels off. You don’t have to get them all off, but rubbing them gently should get lots off, and you can scoop them out of the water with a spoon or with your fingers. Then drain the whole lot again.

3. Blend up the chickpeas in a food processor (or with a hand blender) with the rest of the ingredients and seasonings. If it’s too thick, add a little cooking water. Keep tasting it and adding more seasoning til it rings your hummous chimes.

4. Serve in a nice bowl with more olive oil and finely chopped parsley sprinkled over.

Pita breads

4 cups white bread flour
1 tablespoon active yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water

2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water with the sugar. Mix in about a cup or two of the flour to make a thick batter. Let it bubble up for a few minutes – 5 or 10 minutes should be fine.

2. Stir in the oil and salt. Gradually add the rest of the flour.

3. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes til the dough is smooth and elastic. Set it aside for about 1 1/2 hours until it’s doubled in size.

4. Punch down the dough, and knead it a little more. Then roll it out into a rope and break it into 9 or 10 pieces. Each ball should be about the size of a tangerine – roll them out into flat discs about 4 mm thick. D

ust with flour so they won’t stick to the baking tray.

5. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Also preheat the baking tray. Bake the pitas for about 3 to 4 minutes on each side. They should puff up with air in the middle.

Tzatziki (subject to corrections by Elke!)

Mix up some yogurt with grated cucumber and salt and lemon juice!

Tahina (yogurt and sesame dressing)

Mix up a few spoonfuls of tahini (sesame paste) into about a cup of yogurt. Squeeze in some lemon juice and lots of chopped parsley. Thin it down with a bit of water til its the consistency of a creamy dressing.

Israeli salad

chopped tomato, cucumber, cabbage, and onion (if you like)

A recipe for self-righteousness

Those of you that read my other blog (or just keep in touch!!) will have picked up that the past week has been dominated by activities on my new allotment. Have been digging, weeding – and finally, today, planting. And meeting a lot of my allotment neighbours. Today, Sofia sent me and Nik home with a big bag of freshly snipped spinach, tenderstem broccoli and spring onions. This is definitely more lunch (or light supper) than breakfast, but it’s gorgeous, possibly the nicest way you can eat green vegetables (although I’ve been meaning to post the spinach pastizzi recipe for a while… watch this space for more on smugness-enhancing vegetables!) We’d run out of soya sauce, so it’s about the straightest stir-fry you can imagine, with a bit of saltiness from the feta.

Rice with wilted greens and feta

(serves 2)

1 cup basmati rice

a couple of big handfuls of fresh spinach

a handful of tenderstem broccoli

a handful of beansprouts

2-4 spring onions

some light olive oil

some feta, cubed or roughly chopped

1. Get the rice on the boil. The ten minutes it takes the rice to cook should be enough time to assemble the rest.

2. Wash the vegetables well, and roughly chop the spinach, spring onion and broccoli.

3. Get the olive oil into a big pot, wok or pan, on a high heat. Throw in the vegetables and stir-fry til it’s all just wilted, then take it off the heat.

4. Put a pile of rice and green stuff on each place, with a generous load of feta on top. If you’re Nikolai, you can add some hot sauce to give it bite.

Pretzels, green sauce and other fine things

So Thursday afternoon was a gathering of the part-time tribe… a bunch of us that, every now and then get together at someone’s house to do homely bits of work together – a big spring clean, planting. And – more often than not – cooking. Some of us have children; some are expecting; the idea was to get together in a more productive and stimulating way than the average toddler-minding tea party. (The “tribe” idea is borrowed from Jean Liedloff’s offbeat little book, The Continuum Concept.)

This time was at Anja’s house – her friend Sofia had brought over a massive sheaf of herbs to make Grüne Sauce (Green Sauce). This is a traditional German recipe, though it might have its roots in the Italian bagnet verde, a simple sauce of minced herbs, garlic and olive oil. The German version is creamier and somewhat fresher-tasting as a result of the mix of herbs: borage, chervil, parsley, cress, chives, sorrel and salad burnet. Alberto at the Il Forno blog sums up the mix of flavours succinctly: “Borage and burnet have both a light cucumber like taste, sorrel gives an acidic note, parsley, chervil and chives contribute their typical aroma and peppery cress adds a bit of spice.”

Most of the herbs were used for the sauce, which traditionally accompanies bowls of freshly cooked potatoes and boiled eggs. But some of it also went into lightly fried herb and parmesan cakes, made by simply stirring some parmesan, breadcrumbs and beaten egg into the herb mixture and forming little flat cakes for frying. All of which composed a very beautiful feast at the late end of a rainy afternoon…

Grüne Sauce

about 200 g of the following herbs, mixed: borage, chervil, parsley, cress, chives, sorrel, salad burnet

500 g plain yogurt

250 greek yogurt (or full fat quark if you can find it)

4 hard-boiled eggs, roughly chopped

1. Wash and dry the herbs, then wield the biggest knife you can find and chop them very finely on a big board. Don’t pound them with pestle and mortar, and don’t blitz them in the blender. Apparently it’s just not done that way; finely chopped by hand is the way to go here.

2. Add the yogurt (and any other seasonings you like), and, like Bob Marley says, stir it up. That’s it.

Anja says: ” Now, if you want you can season it with mustard, mayonnaise, onions, garlic, vinegar, and/or sugar. But that’s up to you. Some people use instead of yoghurt/quark soured cream.A bit to rich for my taste. But you can also mix yoghurt with soured cream.
I personally think the less the better. Just herbs and yoghurt/quark. The herbs have such a great taste and strong aroma, that it doesn’t need anything else.”

Anja was also keen to try baking traditional German pretzels, and – unable to resist the temptation to get up to my elbows in good yeasty dough – I was soon rolling and twisting a dozen or more of the long stretchy strands required for these curiously satisfying little works of breadmaking art.

Pretzels

40 g cake yeast

600 g – 800 g flour

350 ml warm water

1 tsp sugar

3 tsp salt

1 TBSP oil

1. Dissolve the sugar into the water.

2. Crumble the yeast into the water. Briskly stir in a couple of cups of flour to make a thick batter. Leave it for about 15 minutes to get happily bubbly.

3. Sprinkle on the salt and the oil; stir these in.

4. Stir in the rest of the flour, bit by bit to make a smooth dough. At some point you’ll have to switch from using a spoon and other utensils to using your hands.

5. Turn it out onto a floured worktop and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Now here’s the thing: don’t bother leaving it to rise.

6. Roll out the dough into a thick sausage shape and cut it into handful-sized chunks. You should get about 12 or so of these.

7. Now the time-consuming bit: roll each piece of dough out into a long, thin strand.

This is a little tricky as the elasticity of the dough will keep making it want to bounce back into a shorter, fatter thing. And you need it fairly long and thin so that you can form the pretzel twist (shown in the photo above).

Some of ours were somewhat too short and fat; others got overly stretched, distended and twisted in places… fortunatly breadbaking is a forgiving sort of business and all shapes taste good in the end!

8. Once you’ve formed the pretty knots, you’ll need to get a big pot of water on the boil. Oh, and preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Once the water is boiling furiously, add three tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda to the water. Lower the pretzels in gently with a slotted spoon or egg lifter. They should bob around for a bit, then rise to the surface of the water. Ours seemed to float immediately to the surface – I think this was because we took a while over the rolling and knotting process, which gave the bread plenty opportunity to rise a bit, forming air pockets that would cause the pretzels to float. Nonetheless, a couple of minutes in the boiling water is all they need.

9. Lay the boiled pretzels out on a lined baking tray. At this point, you can sprinkle them with a variety of toppings: sesame and/or sunflower seeds; poppy seeds; grated cheese; rock salt. Any or all of the above. (The general inclination was pro-cheese; I preferred the plain rock-salted version.) Although the recipe didn’t say so, I suspect that they brushed theirs with egg for the traditional shiny brown finish in the styled picture.

10. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes in the preheated oven.

Coming soon…

an account of the wonderful German feast we cooked up at Anja’s house yesterday, starring magical Green Sauce and homemade pretzels! Watch this space…