It’s really much cheaper to make your own condensed milk. And you can make quantities of it at one time with almost no effort. But it does require time and patience. It’s something to stir while doing other kitchen projects. Like an intensive cooking or cupboard-cleaning session, or a morning of  phone calls you’ve been putting off. Actually, the coolest thing would be to have a magical spoon that stirs all by itself. Lacking that, just old-fashioned patience and time will  do.

Why would I want to make my own condensed milk? Well, here in Israel, all condensed and evaporated milk is imported in squeezable tubes and cans. Living in a dairy-rich country, it seems wrong to buy a milk product that’s been shipped across the planet. That’s Noble Reason Number One.

Then, while these products have kashrut, they don’t bear a “mehadrin” hechsher (the most stringent kashrut approval).  As the milk I buy is “mehadrin,” it’s sensible to put the excess into products that even my most stringently observant guests will eat. That’s Noble Reason Number Two.

And Number Three, for some reason I had too much milk taking up room in the fridge and I wanted to use it up before it got old and I had to (shudder) pour it down the drain.

As a teenager living in Brazil, I used to hang out in the kitchen with the servants and watch them cooking. The two maids, Rose and Lydia, would let me get in their way among the pots and pans, answering my questions with good humor and occasionally poking sly fun at my ignorance. All our food was made from scratch, from the bread crumbs that coated shnitzels, to the daily rice and black beans, to Floating Island for dessert. (For some reason, those ladies loved to make Floating Island, although I don’t believe they ever ate any of it themselves.) They made lots of condensed milk for us back then.

My mother has often said that she misses her two girls, for girls they were when they worked in our home – rather, young women whose own watchful mothers accompanied them to the interview when my Dad hired them. We have often wondered if dainty-stepping Rose married her Portuguese policeman, whom she didn’t like but who was terribly in love with her and wrote letters (first read by her parents) offering his honorable hand and heart. Lydia, who was a little older and not so pretty, graduated from housemaid to cook in our home. Although only semi-literate, she could make out a recipe from Dona Benta’s cookbook and proved to have a light, sure hand with that savory Brazilian fare. I hope she married a nice man and has long been surrounded by grandchildren of her own.

That was long ago.

But condensed milk. All it takes it to put a liter or two or three in a big, wide pan and let it simmer without boiling till it’s reduced by at least half, if not more. Wide is the operative word here; you want lots of space for the water in the milk to evaporate. Once the milk steams, you must keep stirring and removing the skin that forms on top of the hot milk, or it will prevent evaporation. And scrape the bottom every so often to keep stray bits of fat that drop down from scorching. That’s where patience comes in.

It may take as little as half an hour, or up to several hours, depending on the quantity of milk you’re reducing. Get it down to at least half, if not a quarter of the original volume. The milk will turn tan to beige over the process and start giving up that sweet, condensed-milk odor. When it’s been reduced, allow it to cool somewhat, and strain if you want it free of floating skin particles and the inevitable slightly scorched bits. Refrigerate and use as needed. Condensed milk freezes well. If you’re fond of recipes that require it, freeze by the cupful or 2-cupfuls.

Brazilians reserve the skinny layers and when there’s enough, make biscoitos de nata from it – little milk-fat cookies. They are rare nuggets because they’re really a by-product of making condensed milk at home. I have Dona Benta’s recipe but confess that I didn’t make them this time. I put the cupful in the fridge and promptly forgot about it till it did get too old for use. I am ashamed.

But next time I make condensed milk, I’ll make you the biscoitos. Meantime, here’s the recipe, with a photo borrowed from jmarconi via Flickr, whose images of northeastern Brazil gave me a shock of recognition and nostalgia.

Milk Cookies (Biscoitos de Nata)

Source: Dona Benta Comer Bem, Companhia Editora Nacional, 1969 edition.

Ingredients:

2 cups of skimmed milk solids

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

Flour, as needed

Method:

Put the milk solids, butter and salt in a bowl. Add just enough flour to make a tender dough. Either roll out on a floured surface and cut out circles, or shape as in the photo above by dropping spoonfulls onto a baking tray lined with parchment and pressing a fork on each to make indentations. Bake at 375° F – 190° C for 12 minutes or until golden.

Another thing you can do with excess milk is make dulce de leche. The  granular texture of the home-made product doesn’t resemble the slick commercial stuff, which is usually smoothed down with glycerin. But it’s the real, original milk jam. Use it to fill pastry, make ice cream, sweeten coffee as they do in Cuba, or spread on toast. Or just serve it on a little plate, with a coffee spoon. Like any other jam, it needs added sugar.

Dulce de Leche

Ingredients:

For each liter of milk, 250 grams – 1 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence or lemon zest.

Method:

In a large, wide pan, simmer the milk and sugar together over low heat, stirring often. Cook till the milk has reduced to a semi-solid mass and you can see the bottom of the pan when you stir. Add vanilla or lemon zest just before removing from the fire.

Photo of dulce de leche by Fabiana of the delicious Brazilian blog, Figos & Funghis.

On a rainy day like this, what better thing to do than stay in and bake bread?

I wanted a new bread, something I haven’t done before. So I turned to my cookbooks – too many cookbooks, some of which are dedicated to bread, and to bread alone. Lugging about five into the living room, I spread them out on the coffee table. Spent about 10 minutes leafing through them, rejecting all the recipes for one reason or another. You know how that is, when your fancy can’t seem to light on one thing. Sighing, I put the books away again.

But I did want to bake. I imagined the Little One coming home from school cold and wet and a little grouchy, then brightening up as she smelled warm, fresh bread. Domestic magic! Love, security, and fresh bread! (I have these fantasies. I call them Yiddisheh Mamma dreams.)

Which bread, which bread? Then the white cover of The Joy of Cooking sort of twinkled out at me from the shelf. These days, I tend to consult other cookbooks before The reliable old Joy. But out of sentiment, I pulled it out and turned to the Yeast and Quick Breads and Coffee Cakes section.

Anadama bread. Bread made golden with a small proportion of corn meal, slightly sweetened with milk. Easy to make. It caught my imagination. Why hadn’t I made it before?

So I baked up a big loaf of moist, golden Anadama bread, with a little variation. Here it is. Thanks, Joy!

Anadama Bread

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking, 1973 edition

1 large loaf

Ingredients

1- 1/4 cup hot milk

1 cube of fresh yeast

1/2 cup yellow corn meal

2 tablespoons sugar

2-1/2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Method:

Scald the milk. Put 1 cup of the hot milk in a bowl, and to it add the corn meal, sugar, salt, and olive oil. Stir.

Dissolve the yeast in the remaining 1/4 cup hot milk. Combine the yeasty milk with the corn-meal/milk mixture.

Stir in 3 cups of the flour. Mix to make a loose dough. Add more flour by tablespoons, just enough to make a dough you can knead for 10 minutes, or stretch and fold 8 times.

Don’t make a stiff dough – flour or oil your hands to keep the dough from sticking, to keep added flour to a reasonable minimum. This is good policy for a light, tender crumb any time you bake bread.

Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to rise in a warm place until it’s double in size and light – about an hour.

Knead briefly, and if you like to stretch and fold, do so again, 3 or 4 times. Place in a greased pan or, for a free-form loaf, shape and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Allow dough to rise again till doubled. This will take less time – about half an hour. At this time of year, the top of the stove is a good place to leave it, while the oven’s preheating.

Preheat the oven to 375° F -  190° C.  Bake for  30 minutes, then check for doneness. If the top is crusty but the bottom still soft, flip it gently over and allow to bake another 10 minutes upside down. Check again.

Anadama bread is a good breakfast bread, being enriched with milk. It also makes good toast (wonderful hot and spread with peanut butter), and is delicious as French toast.

Baking notes:

I hardly ever knead bread dough anymore; just a little in the bowl to integrate the flour. Then I stretch and fold – less tedious, better for my back, and results in a lovely crumb each time.

My favorite method for checking doneness of bread is the old-fashioned poke with a toothpick, as with cakes. If the toothpick comes out free of crumbs, the bread is done.

I baked this on my seasoned clay flowerpot saucer, gently sliding it off parchment paper onto the saucer, which had been liberally sprinkled with corn meal just before baking the bread to prevent it from sticking.

Katherine Martinelli is an internationally published food and travel writer and photographer who contributes regularly to publications on three continents. A native New Yorker, she currently calls Be’er Sheva, Israel home.

That’s how Katherine introduces herself on her delicious blog, www.katherinemartinelli.com . But I can say more. She writes the kind of blog you and I love. It’s chock-full of recipes that turn ordinary ingredients into food experiences (like her Sour Cream Smashed Potatoes), and humor, and the most sensuous, mouth-watering photographs. Everything that the ardent foodie likes.

I’m tickled pink that Katherine has agreed to write a guest post on Israeli Kitchen. (I’m telling you, just looking at that photo makes me want to reach into the screen and tear a chunk off that cake.) So please welcome Katherine, and read on…

♥

I discovered this Cinnamon Bun cake during a brief stint photographing contest finalists for The Joy of Kosher website. I wasn’t entirely sure how it would come out. I mean, who doesn’t love a good cinnamon bun, but does it really need to be turned into a cake? Well, let me allow the fact that it was gone in two days flat speak for itself. And there’s just two of us. We ate it for dessert, and for breakfast, and as an afternoon snack. I think it makes a perfect holiday breakfast, something pretty and festive to place on the table.

The cake comes together easily, and this is from someone who is an infrequent baker with a temperamental oven. Be sure to position the cinnamon buns so they face out as this makes for a very pleasing presentation. Although I opted to make this cake dairy it can also be made parve by using margarine in the cake and parve cream cheese for the frosting. I can’t speak to how that will taste, but I’m sure it would be fine.

Cinnamon Bun Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Adapted from The Joy of Kosher

Serves 8 to 10

Ingredients:

Cinnamon Bun Cake:

1 1/3 cups warm water

4½ teaspoons active dry yeast

1 1/3 cups vegetable oil

4 eggs, whisked

7½ cups AP flour

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons salt

4 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1. Put the warm water in a bowl and sprinkle with the yeast. Allow to sit until yeast starts to foam, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the oil and eggs and stir to combine.
3. In a separate bowl stir together the flour, 1 cup of the sugar, and salt.
4. Add the dry mixture to the wet in thirds, stirring to combine.
5. Knead for about 10 minutes, until smooth and cohesive (it may be slightly sticky)
6. Form the dough into a ball. Put into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp dish towel. Allow to rise in a cool, dark place until doubled in volume, about 1 to 2 hours (may vary based on temperature and other conditions).
7. Preheat the oven to 350F/177C.
8. Divide the dough into two equal pieces and set one aside. On a lightly floured surface, roll one out into a large rectangle.
9. Spread half the butter over the surface then sprinkle with half the cinnamon and remaining sugar (feel free to use more cinnamon if desired).
10. Roll the dough into a log. Using a sharp knife, cut it in half, then cut those halves into halves. Repeat once more to have 16 equal pieces.
11. Set aside and repeat with the remaining dough, butter, sugar, and cinnamon. You should end up with 32 cinnamon buns.
12. Lightly grease a bundt pan. Place two rolls into each indentation of the bundt pan so you have one facing out and one facing in. You should end up with two layers of 16 rolls each.
13. Put in the oven and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until golden brown.
14. Allow to cool while you make the frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingredients:

4 ounces cream cheese

2 tablespoons butter, softened

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup powdered sugar (plus more to taste)

1. In a large bowl mix together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until light and fluffy (do by hand with a wooden spoon or in the bowl of a stand mixer).
2. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until it reaches the desired consistency and sweetness. Feel free to add more powdered sugar if you have more of a sweet tooth.
3. Drizzle over the Cinnamon Bun Cake.

Sometimes nothing but a peanut butter cookie will do. With a glass of milk, naturally. And something different in the cookie – not chocolate chips. Looking through my freezer, which often yields gratifying surprises, I find a bag of cranberries. Ah! Perfect.

This recipe requires a lot of cranberries. A lot of everything, in fact. So the cookies, which have a slightly crisp crust yielding to a just-chewy-enough interior with those bright little berries in it – are good just before a brisk, 30-minute walk. And don’t eat too many before heading out.

Just a word to the wise.

Peanut Butter/Cranberry Cookies

Printable version here.

Yield: about 45 cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup margarine or butter at room temperature

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup peanut butter

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-1/4 cups dried cranberries

Method:

Preheat oven to 350° F – 180° C.

1. Beat margarine (or butter) till smooth. Add the brown and white sugar, beating till all is blended and creamy.

2. Beat the eggs and add to the butter mixture. Beat in well. Add the peanut butter, and beat some more.

3. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the peanut butter mixture and mix thoroughly. Add the cranberries and beat, beat, beat again, until the fruit is well distributed throughout the mass.

4. Line a cookie sheet with baking paper. If not using paper, don’t grease the sheet.  Use a tablespoon to separate pieces of dough onto the cookie sheet.

5. Bake 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are slightly brown. Allow them to cool down; they will become crisp.

I once made friends with three Russian butchers in my neighborhood supermarket. For some reason, they took me to their collective hearts. It amused them, I think, to share their wisdom with this American-accented lady who was always asking things. Saturnine Serge gave me a great lesson in sharpening knives. Dark, quick Reuven showed me how to cut a pocket into a half-breast of turkey for stuffing. And the bear-like Avi gave me the recipe for a luscious, cheese-filled bread from his native Georgia. In return, I brought them a bottle of my fruit wine (and the story is here).

I’ve since moved out of that neighborhood, but still think of my three friends with affection. Especially when I bake khachpuri, the cheese bread Avi taught me.

He went over the recipe twice, expanding on each detail. But for some reason I put off baking it. And every time Avi saw me in the supermarket, he’d call out in his deep Russian voice,

“Nu, Miri, have you made the khachpuri yet?”

Mostly to get him to stop noodging, I baked the khachpuri one evening. The Little One’s eyes sparkled over the savory-smelling rolls with the cheese squishing out of them. Do did Husband’s.

I piled four rolls up on a plate for my home folks, then wrapped two in tin foil. It was getting late and the supermarket was going to close soon. I headed out at a jog and found Avi alone at his station, putting things away. Catching my breath, I unwrapped the hot rolls. His face lit up, and without a word, he bounded over to the cheese section, pulling out a knife. With a deft hand he sliced each roll into six and crammed one piece into his mouth. Turning back to me, he smiled, a big, moustachey smile, and said,

“That’s good. Very good.”

By then, the deli workers were crowding around, claiming pieces of khachpuri. Avi doled them out, and I basked in the approval of the Russian community.

Jeez, if I’d known how popular I was going to get, I’d have made khachpuri long before.

Since then, I’ve made it many times. Khachpuri rolls, quartered or sliced into sixths, make a nice snack or appetizer, with beer. Or, being savory and filling, they make almost a whole dinner by themselves. Round it off with a big salad or a bowl of soup.

Khachpuri, Georgian Cheese Bread

Yield: 6 large rolls

For cheese filling:

2 lbs. – 1 kg. mozzarella cheese, grated. (Best is Russian suluguni cheese, a braided white cheese like mozzarella.)

1 cup – 300 grams feta cheese, grated. (Izak says to use sheep’s feta if possible, with goat feta coming in as second choice and cow’s milk feta last.)

Mix the two cheeses.

For dough:

2 lbs. – 1 kg. flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter-flavored margarine or butter at room temperature

2 cups – 1/2 liter buttermilk or yoghurt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 beaten egg for glazing the rolls

1. Mix the flour and margarine (or butter) till the mixture has a coarse, sandy texture. A food processor makes quick work of this.

2. Whip the buttermilk till very light. Add soda; continue whipping.

3. Add vinegar. The mixture will be foamy.

4. Add buttermilk mixture to flour/margarine mixture, stirring and kneading till a smooth dough is obtained.

5. Cover the dough with plastic and put it to rest in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.

6. Separate the dough into 6 pieces. Pat each with the heel of your hand, or roll out, into a circle about the size of a dinner plate, 1 inch – 2 cm. in thickness.

7. Fill each circle with the mixed cheeses. Bring the sides of the circle up to make a rough package and twist the top to close it.

8. Brush beaten egg over each roll.

9. Bake at 420° F – 220° C for 15 minutes or until rolls are golden-brown.

Some cheese will escape during baking, and that’s part of the charm of  khachpuri.

This makes quite a dense loaf. If you love sourdough tang, just omit the baking soda. I made it with brown rice.

Sourdough Rice Bread

Ingredients for overnight rise:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup newly-refreshed sourdough starter

3 cups white flour

1 cup cooked, warm rice

3 tablespoons oil

1 tablespoon sugar

for the following day:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

Method:

Put the water, starter, 3 cups flour, rice, oil and sugar in a large bowl. Mix well.

Cover with plastic wrap and leave to ferment in a cool place overnight.

Next morning, deflate the sponge and to it add 2 cups flour, the salt, and the baking soda. If the dough seems too loose to handle, add the last 1/2 cup of flour, cautiously. Don’t give in to the temptation to keep adding flour to aid your kneading; it will be very heavy. Oil your hands instead. Let the dough remain a little sticky.

Knead 10 minutes or stretch and  6 or 7 times, or until you’re sure that everything is well incorporated. Cover the dough again and leave it in a warm place to rise, 2-3 hours.

Deflate the dough and shape your loaf. Cover the loaf and let it rise somewhere warm till it’s light, 1 – 3 hours.

Slash the top of the loaf to avoid “flying crown.” This is especially important if the loaf is to be free-form, not baked in a pan. Give it about 5 minutes to recover, then bake in a preheated 350°F -180° C oven for 1/2 hour.

When the top has a firm, golden crust, gently remove the loaf from its pan and turn it upside to finish baking – another 15 minutes. It’s always best to test the loaf with a toothpick before assuming its done baking. If it seems underdone, give it another 5 minutes, or turn the oven off and come back in 15 minutes.

Sometimes, when I’m stirring a sourdough batter, I think of my great-grandmother Rose.

Like thousands of Jewish women in the 1800s, she stayed in Russia and waited for her husband to send money for tickets to America.   She arrived at Ellis Island around 1898  with three children, no English and no kosher food. Her husband, working in Chicago and expecting to fetch her and the kids, didn’t know she’d arrived.

The story goes that she wandered in New York, bewildered and hungry, for three days. A kindly Jew rescued the family and put them on the right train. Who this angel was, no one knows today, but we do know that Rose went on to raise a good family on American soil.

My Dad told me that Rose was an excellent cook who knew how to make everything. She used to ferment beets for borsht; brew mead for Passover. I’m sure Rose knew all about sourdough, because that was the only leavening she would have had till she immigrated to the States. What would her blintzes have tasted like, I wonder? Did she ever catch onto American flapjacks?

My family had left sourdough behind in history by the time I was growing up. We never baked  any kind of bread. Ordinary bread and challah came from the supermarket, from the bakery.  Pancakes were Aunt Jemima’s, out of a box.

Now I love baking bread, muffins, and pancakes from my sourdough starter. It’s the connection with the past, yes, but there’s more than that. It’s the satisfaction of managing a natural, living fermentation well. Because the starter in the jar is a live thing, as live as the basil and mint growing in containers on my porch.

And accepting sourdough’s slow rhythm grounds me.  There’s no instant anything with sourdough, no megabytes, no nanoseconds, no optical fiber. Sourdough’s main ingredient is unfolding Time. If you’re willing to learn its secrets, you can make sourdough, and Time, your own.

There are two ways that I know of to make sourdough pancakes or muffins. One is to take starter and make a new fermentation – a batter, not a dough. Another is to take about a cup off a sourdough sponge . That’s the first rise, which has almost all the  required flour and is light and bubbly but  soft and tacky. (Adding the rest of the flour, you make a sturdier dough to knead and allow to rise the second time.) For a full explanation, see my plain sourdough bread recipe.

You thin this cupful of sponge with egg and oil, adding soda and flavorings. If necessary, add some milk. I made these pancakes the second way, but didn’t need more liquid than the egg and oil. It was a sourdough rice bread. I’ll post the bread recipe next post, but pancakes can be made from any dough, not especially this one.

Sourdough Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 cup dough from risen sourdough sponge

1 tablespoon oil

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

1 beaten egg

1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix the ingredients in the order given, stirring thoroughly but briefly – just a minute or so.

Fry as you would any other pancake.

That’s it. Enjoy!

I topped the pancakes with apricot-passiflora jam from The Well Delicatessen, and it was fabulous.

Do you have to be Jewish to love cheesecake?

Well, no.

But it helps.

Shavuot  is coming up next Tuesday night. We have reasons  – religious reasons – for eating dairy on Shavuot. For many, that’s cheesecake.

And what, you might ask, rolling your eyes, does cheesecake have to do with receiving the word of G-d on Mt. Sinai?

Well, nothing.

The custom is to eat dairy. Cheesecake is modern tradition, based on the indisputable fact that it’s delicious.

Two commonly accepted reasons for dairy on Shavuot. The gematria, or numerical value of chalav – milk – is 40. We eat milk to remember the 40 days that the Jewish people waited while Moses received the Torah on Mt. Sinai. (Moses was fasting the whole time, by the way). Another reason is that the laws of ritual slaughter and kashrut were unknown till the Torah was received: to avoid eating un-kosher foods while spiritually preparing ourselves, we refrained from meat entirely and got our protein from dairy.

I’m afraid that if cheesecake had been around while we were waiting, our minds would not have lingered long on things spiritual. But – we are also commanded to rejoice on our holidays. Is cheesecake a cause for rejoicing, or one of many ways to rejoice?

This recipe takes a certain amount of focus. And two or three mixing bowls. And some time. But it’s worth the effort because it’s one of the best I’ve ever made. Rich and dense, with a tart-sweet marbling of puréed fresh apricots – a melting mouthful.

If you use a springform pan and grease it well with butter, you will have a smooth-edged cake. I was chicken about its being hard to remove so I placed baking paper in a pan with a removable bottom and got bumpy edges all around.

But when I served the cake to the ladies of the book club, nobody refused to eat the bumpy edges and got up from the table enraged. In fact they loved it.

The cake goes in four stages: bake the cake bottom, pureé the apricots, mix the filling and bake. It needs at least 3 mixing bowls. But don’t be daunted. Read the recipe through and follow my tips for a seamless baking session.

Apricot Swirl Cheesecake

adapted from Junior’s Cheesecakes by Fine Cooking, The Taunton Press

1 9-inch cake – 12 slices

Printable version here

The Cake Base

Ingredients:

1/3 cup flour, sifted

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch salt

2 large eggs, separated

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Zest of 1/2 lemon

2 tablespoons melted, unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preliminaries:

Preheat oven to 350° F, 180°

If using a springform pan, grease all inner surfaces very well with butter. If using a pan with a removable bottom, place a sheet of baking paper inside.

Wrap the entire outside with tin foil. This is necessary because at the second stage of baking, the cake will bake inside a water bath.

Have ready a pan into which your baking pan will fit easily, for the water bath.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a small bowl.

Zest the lemon.

Melt the butter.

Separate the eggs, with the yolks in a large bowl and the whites in a bowl big enough to contain them whipped.

Measure the sugar, leave it in its measuring cup, and put a measuring spoon on top of the measured sugar. This spares last-second hunting for the spoon when you’ll need to remove a little of the sugar.

Method:

Beat the yolks for 3 minutes, using an electric mixer set on high. Keep the mixer running and add 2 tablespoons of the sugar from the 1/3 measured cupful. Beat another 5 minutes.

Beat in the lemon zest and vanilla.

Sift the dry ingredients over the egg yolk/sugar mix and beat in on low, just to blend lightly. Blend the melted butter in.

Wash the beaters absolutely clean. In the second bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar till stiff. With a spatula, remove about 1/3 of the whites and fold them into the batter. Then add the remaining whites, mixing lightly. Stop when the whites are evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Spread the batter evenly in the pan. No water bath yet – that’s for when the whole cake is assembled. Bake 10-12 minutes or until just set and the center springs back when touched. It shouldn’t be baked till brown.

Keep the oven on. Leave the crust in the pan – you will bake the cheese filling on top of it. Put the pan on a rack to cool while you’re preparing the filling.

The Filling

Ingredients for Purée:

3-5 fresh apricots: enough to make 3/4 cup puréed.

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1-2 tablespoons sugar

Blend apricots and cornstarch and add sugar to taste. The amount of sugar will depend on the sweetness of the apricots. The purée should still be tart.

Ingredients for Cheese Filling:

3 cups full-fat cream cheese at room temperature. If using American cream cheese, use three 8-oz. packages. Israelis: I used Ski.

1/4 cup cornstarch

1-1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

2 large eggs

2/3 cup whipping cream

In a large bowl, mix 1 cup (1 package) of the cream cheese, 1/3 cup sugar, and the cornstarch. Beat on low for 3 minutes or until all is creamy. Beat in second cup (package) of cream cheese, then the third.

Increase the speed to medium and beat in 1 cup sugar, vanilla, and eggs, one at a time. Beat in the cream. Mix thoroughly but stop when everything is mixed; don’t overmix.

Spread the batter over the prepared crust.

Spread the apricot purée over the cheese filling, pushing it down with the back of the spoon here and there. Cut through the purée and batter in a figure of 8, going deep enough to just feel the cake on the bottom. Do this three times, but no more or the cake will will be yellow instead of marbled.

Put the cake in the second pan. Carefully pour hot water between the two pans, up to an inch from the top of the cake pan. Bake for 1 to 1-1/4 hours or until completely set.

Remove the cake from the water bath and put it to cool on a wire rack. Don’t move it for 2 hours lest it fall. When it’s totally cool, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours to overnight.

Leftovers stay delicious if wrapped well and kept cold, for 4 days.

Turning away from grief – for us in Israel and for the suffering of Japan – I’ve been putting my mind towards Purim. I confess, after the shock and tears, it’s a strange feeling to know that a joyful holiday is only around the corner. I hope that this coming Purim will truly foretell hasty redemption and rejoicing.

It was therapeutic to turn to my kitchen, take up my measuring cups, and get to work on something delicious. I found an interesting Iraqi recipe on this eclectic site. Rich pastries stuffed with cheese, nuts, or dates.  They’re meant to be eaten on Purim, I guess, because each one hides a sweet or savory filling in the dough (symbolizing how Queen Esther hid her Jewish origins from Ahasuerosh until the time came to plead against the  genocide Haman had plotted).

I must say – this reminds me of the wry joke that goes around the Internet every so often: How do you define a Jewish holiday?

Like this: 1. They wanted to kill us. 2. We were saved. 3. Let’s eat!

Not true for all holidays of course, but close enough, close enough.

So here is what I baked today, adapted from the original recipe.

Ba’aba Beh Tamur – Iraqi Stuffed Pastries for Purim

About 30 pastries

Notes: the original recipe calls for butter. Pareve margarine works fine too. Likewise, it assumes that you’ll be mixing the dough in a mixer. I just beat everything up by hand.

Here in Israel, you can get concentrated essences of rose and orange water. They’re much stronger than the “waters” and I prefer to use them.

I substituted 1 teaspoon freshly-smashed cardamom seeds for the fennel in the recipe because I dislike fennel. Lacking either of those, use 2 teaspoons cinnamon or the zest of 1 lemon. The dough must have something aromatic or it will be too bland.

My filling was almond/pecan, the nuts ground up quickly in the food processor. I’ll include the recipe for date filling as well. Finally, the buttery dough does seem to call for cheese. I’ll suggest alternative cheeses to the original version’s.

Ingredients:

For Dough:

1 cube fresh yeast

1 cup warm water

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground fennel seed

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons melted butter (or marg)

1 beaten egg for glazing

For Almond Filling:

1 cup ground almonds

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon each rose water and orange water or 1/4 teaspoon edible rose and orange essences.

Method:

1. Dissolve yeast in water. Add flour, baking powder, fennel or other spice, and melted butter. Mix until you have a soft dough that forms a ball.

2. Cover with plastic bag or damp cloth; allow to rise 1 hour or until doubled.

3. Preheat oven to 425°F – 200°C.

4. Work with a quarter of the dough at the time for convenience. Roll it out 1/4″ thin. Use a large biscuit cutter or glass to cut into 3″ rounds. Brush the rounds with a little water.

5. Mix filling ingredients in a small bowl. Put 1 teaspoon filling in the center of each round and fold it over. Press your fingers down all around the edges to seal, or use the tines of a fork. Brush beaten egg on pastries.

Bake 25 minutes.

Date Filling for about 30 pastries:

8 oz. – 250 grams pitted, finely chopped dates. Here you can get date paste in blocks and that’s better.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon milk

1 egg white

sesame seeds

Combine ingredients in top of a double boiler and cook 5 minutes, stirring a few times. Allow the mixture to cool and roll it into balls for stuffing the pastry. When forming the pastry, place a small ball at the center of each pastry round and pinch the sides upwards to make a closed bundle. Flip over and flatten slightly with the rolling pin. Pierce with a fork in several places. Paint the pastries with an egg white and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake as directed above.

Cheese Filling:

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/2 cup mild yellow cheese, grated

1 teaspoon dried, crumbled za’atar, oregano or rosemary

1 finely chopped scallion

1 egg

Combine cheeses, herbs, and egg. Bake pastries as half-circles as in the almond filling.

Too good.

By the way, I wonder if the correct name for this pastry is ba’aba beh tanur, no “m.” I don’t speak Arabic, so I can’t tell if someone’s typo may not be going around, as typos do.

How wise and beautiful is the blessing over bread: Blessed be You, G-d, our Lord and King of the universe,Who brings forth bread from the earth. It amazes me that people ever learned to harvest, thresh, and winnow wheat, grind it into flour, and ferment that flour with water to bake into loaves. How did it happen, so long ago – how did people have the wisdom to go from  step to laborious step and in the end, produce bread to eat? In wonder, I can only believe that the wisdom was a divine gift.

Bread must have been the first product of human technology. When you think of it, the first convenience food too, as it’s edible for days after production, unlike vegetables and meat. But not easy to get, even if the wheat field extends right up to your doorstep.

In ancient societies, people grew and processed their own bread, but it was arduous work. In this article, I read that the ancient Israelite woman might have spent three hours on her knees every day, bent over a stone quern, grinding wheat into flour. To feed your curiosity, this article by Jane Howard describes bread in ancient Egypt, and this Wikipedia article talks about the history of bread (with an awesome photo of a petrified round loaf retrieved from the ruins of Pompeii).

In medieval Europe, getting bread was not only back-breaking but expensive.  Landowners demanded two-thirds of villagers’ wheat production and set overseers to make sure the tax was met. The physical work of milling was taken out of the people’s hands, but not with kindly intention. Grinding flour and baking at home became illegal, so that the humble were forced to carry their wheat to the miller and then carry the flour to the communal baker – and pay for the work. In kind, because they had no money.

No, bread wasn’t taken for granted. Many lived and died without ever having eaten their fill of bread at one time.

Bread will always be a moving force in history. To learn more about it, I recommend H.E. Jacob’s Six Thousand Years of Bread. Much in this book can be taken, like bread itself, with a grain of salt, but the author gives you a panoramic view of bread’s historic role, from neolithic times to modern days. It ends on a poignant reflection of what bread was to Jacobs as he struggled to keep his humanity in Hell:

“In the Buchenwald concentration camp we had no real bread at all; what was called bread was a mixture of potato flour, peas, and sawdust. The inside was the color of lead; the crust looked and tasted like iron. The thing sweated water like the brow of a tormented man… Nevertheless, we called it bread, in memoriam of the real bread we had formerly eaten. We loved it and could scarcely wait for it to be distributed among us.”

Bread is holy, Jacobs concludes. And bread is profane.

Yes, and yes. Nourishment to the body and to the soul, derived from G-d’s grace yet requiring bodily toil and sweat to have.

How wonderful, what a miraculous thing.

Bread recipes from Israeli Kitchen:

Basil Bread

Bruschetta (And How To Say It)

Herbed Cheese Swirl Bread

Honeyed Challah

Light, Sweet Challah

Cheese Rolls

Potato Bread

Purim Recipe: Prune & Chocolate Bread

Tomato and Pumpkin Seed Bread

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread with Walnuts

Sourdough

Sourdough Croissants

Plain White Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Bread with Cornmeal

Sourdough Walnut Herb Bread

Sourdough Onion Bread

Sourdough Oatmeal Bread