Bagels are one of the more curious items of the bread world. Small, hard, chewy and dense, they’re just about everything good bread isn’t supposed to be. But what can I say, that’s the aesthetic of bagels. Good ones, like this one from one of my favorite West Village spots, have a nice glossy golden […]
READ ONPeople seem to be forever debating the origin of the bagel, but the fact is, nobody really knows it. The earliest printed reference to the bagel comes from a public edict issued in Krakow, Poland in the year 1610. It decrees that all women, upon giving birth to a child, are to be given a […]
READ ONTook most of the morning off to go searching for a quantity of osage orange firewood. This wood has an almost mystical reputation among fire builders, since when dried and burned it emits more BTU’s than any other lumber type in North America. It may be just the fuel I need to get my brick […]
READ ONIf you’re in the mood for bagel-making this week or weekend, there are a couple of things I should mention about the recipe below. First, you don’t strictly need malt powder, nondiastatic malt, or malt syrup to make great bagels. But then they don’t hurt either. Any of them are useful for bagel-making. Malt powder […]
READ ONIt happens every time we go to Manhattan. The wife visits her favorite bagel shop (Second Avenue Bagels) and for the next six months I’m under the gun to produce fresh bagels at home. It’s funny, there are actually some pretty decent bagels made right here in Louisville (some truly awful ones too), but then […]
READ ONOne detail of my dessert trends tour that I failed to mention yesterday was a visit the wife and I paid to Jacques Torres Chocolate on Hudson Street in SOHO. SOHO (a sort-of anagram for SOuth of HOuston — pronounced HOW-ston — Street) was once a pop art mecca. These days the galleries are almost […]
READ ONI got so busy settling back in yesterday I forgot to pay tribute to Bo Diddley, who died yesterday at his home in Florida at the age of 79. Bo Diddley will forever be remembered for inventing the bomp bomp bomp a-womp-bomp rhythm that George Thorogood popularized with his cover of Who Do You Love. […]
READ ONWell I’m back from Manhattan, and none too soon. Any more decadent franchise foods and I would have popped. Normally New York isn’t like that for me. The wife is usually busy with something-or-other at NYU and I’m left to roam. Which I do, obsessively. I walk, walk, walk, up the island, down the island, […]
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