COOKING FOR LISA-Episode One

CHALLAH

I started cooking for Lisa on September 16^th, 1984, and I've been cooking for her ever since, even when she's not around. That autumn, I'd practice all week long on a dish in my little apartment kitchen in New Haven and then show off on the weekends when she'd come down and see me from her teaching job in New Hampshire. I had a little plastic box full of three-by-five  cards with recipes my mom had typed out so I wouldn't starve living on my own. I've still got some, like this one: an old-school recipe on an old-school index card with old-school typos. Like me, the recipe has aged a bit, but I like to think it still gets the job done.

So, to begin, if it's Friday, I've probably got flour on my hands. If it's Friday, I've probably gotten flour on the floor, even if the house has just been cleaned. I probably won't even get in trouble, because I'm making a challah. I'm cooking for Lisa, and Lisa loves my challah. This recipe, by the way, got its start with Molly O'Neill's New York Cookbook, which, when it's on a shelf and you're reading the title on the spine, looks like it reads "New York, by Molly 'Cookbook' O'Neill," which is a great nickname, better than "The Peerless Ear."  The recipe began there, and then it evolved over the years.

Challah's not all that hard, since it's the ingredients that do most of the work,
and I've been known (though not today) to plop everything into a bread machine and run to volleyball practice, finding a puffy ball of dough waiting for me when I return. For my first "Cooking For Lisa" piece, though, I'm doing it the old-fashioned way. I've always thought it comes out tasting a bit better when I get my hands dirty, but that may just be my imagination. People, including many readers of these pages, seem to like it a lot, and I try to walk that fine line between saying how easy it is to make and implying that it's really really hard and that I'm some sort of alchemist.

I start with a cup and an eighth of water.

Sometimes recipes will ask for the water to be a bit warm. Too hot, though, and you risk killing the yeast. I tend to make a gesture towards warm water, but in our new house, we have something called "hot water on demand," which sounds like we have hot water whenever we want it, but what it really means, I've discovered, is that we get hot water made for us WHEN we demand it, which means it takes about 90 seconds or so of running to produce. I don't understand how that's environmentally friendly, but I guess it means that there isn't a tank of hot water somewhere in the basement, waiting to bathe me or to be part of a challah. I'm generally not to be patient enough to wait. I suppose I could measure it out and then put it in a microwave. I could use filtered water from the fridge or expensive bottled water. I don't.

Then, in goes the yeast: three teaspoons.
I confess to not completely understanding what yeast is or where it comes from, and the one time I tried to make my own (to capture my own?) by making a sourdough starter, what I created (flour, water, and crushed grapes plus time and patience) was pretty nasty: black oozing bubbles. Lisa made me throw it away before it crawled out of the bowl and attacked us in our sleep. Some recipes have you "proof" the yeast, checking to be sure it's alive by feeding it a little sugar and watching it foam in a few minutes. That can be fun, I suppose, and the bubbles are pretty, but I've never used yeast that didn't work. You can trust it. The only times my bread didn't rise were due to the fact that I was running from class to dog to practice and I forgot to put any yeast at all in the dough. Insert your own Passover joke here, if you'd like.

3/16 of a cup of sugar and an equal amount of oil go in next.

I use something neutral, like canola oil, because I once read a recipe that said that canola oil is "neutral."

I've used safflower oil and even olive oil (which isn't neutral, but is "fruity," I think) instead, when I hadn't shopped. Go ahead and experiment.
I've used brown sugar or even honey instead of sugar. It all works.

Now, add two eggs. You have no choice about this.  I've never skipped eggs, and I can't really imagine a vegan challah, though I'm sure such a thing can be executed. I use honey as a glaze at the end, though, which is also a no-no for lots of vegan recipes.  I suppose that bees would be making honey anyway, whether we ate it or not. Last week, I saw a bee struggling in the pool as I was swimming (on vacation in the California desert), and having read lots of recent articles about the dangers of the declining bee population, I thought I'd do my bit and help the little guy out of the water. He instantly stung me, so I'm going to continue to cook with honey.  And eat eggs.

Anyhow, a half teaspoon of salt comes next. I use kosher salt. I have no idea why.
I suppose it fits the sabbath theme, with challah as the traditional Friday night dinner food. I almost never make a challah unless it's a Friday night or Rosh Hashonah or a Yom Kippur break-fast, when I make a round one. I'm aware that kosher salt and regular salt probably measure differently, due to what they're shaped like, the same way that snow and sleet might, in your driveway. Skip the salt, and the dough will rise a bit too much, sort of like the instant pudding in Woody Allen's Sleeper.

Finally, you need four and a half cups of bread flour. All purpose flour will do, but it'll be different, a bit more like cake and less chewy. Use bread flour, if you can. Don't panic if you can't.

I once knew the difference between bread flour and all purpose flour, and I could look it up if I wanted to, the same way I once knew calculus.  As you add the flour, this will all turn into a big, gooey mess, but that's fine. Mix it together, and it will turn into dough, eventually. Add a bit more flour if you're uncomfortable with getting your hands messy.

Eventually, the liquid will get absorbed and it'll turn into a ball you can knead.  Knead it for a while. Again, I have no idea how long. Knead it (adding flour if it gets too sticky) right in the bowl until you have to go somewhere. Five minutes. Fifty strokes. Honestly, I'm just making these numbers up. I knead it until I feel like stopping or until the dog barks or until I really have to leave for volleyball practice. 

When you're done, leave it in the bowl, covered in plastic wrap or a damp towel (again, I have no idea why) in a reasonably warm spot for ninety minutes or so. Longer? Sure, though it may try to escape the bowl (or the kitchen) or get a little crispy on top if you leave it too long.

In a perfect world, you'll have time for a second rise, after you've braided it. If not, that's perfectly fine. Just form it, and bake it. A second rise can make it pretty, though, and Lisa likes it pretty. It's the braiding that took me a while to learn, as I'd never had enough hair to braid and hadn't really done much with braids other than stare at the one on the back of Jeannie Cascino's head in English class in ninth grade, hoping (and fearing) she'd turn around. The first time I tried to make this recipe, I had to go out into the dormitory we lived in and find one of the girls to teach me what to do. Three strands is plenty, so cut the dough into three relatively equal lumps.

Roll the dough into snakes, and then braid them, tucking in the ends. If there's time, cover the whole thing with some plastic wrap again, or a damp towel, and then let it rise for as long as you can. The longer the rise, the more dramatic and beautiful the finished product will be.
 I used to combine egg and honey for a glaze, but it was always hard to mix them in a bowl.

Instead, I just drizzle the honey (take THAT, bees!) right on the dough,

and then brush on the egg. They combine in the oven and make a sweet crust. Sprinkle on some sesame seeds if that's your thing, and you're good to go.

You can go ahead and bake whenever you'd like, at 350, or at least once the oven is preheated, since I didn't mention that yet. Sorry. Wait until the oven is preheated. I often forget, but that just means that the dough gets to rise a bit more.  Nothing wrong with that. 

Finally, it's time to bake the thing. I usually use parchment on top of a baking sheet since the glaze can drip and get sticky, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Bake for thirty-one minutes.

I know that sounds crazy, but thirty just isn't enough, and thirty-two can be a bit much. Experiment.  I imagine that this is the only recipe in the world that bakes something for 31 minutes, but look what you get! 

There are a few variations of this recipe worth trying, like cinnamon and raisins, particularly if you're going to make French toast with the leftovers, which is definitely the thing to do. Challah makes great French toast.

Ingredients:

1 1/8 cup water

3 tsp yeast

1/2 tsp salt

4 1/2 cups bread flour

2 eggs, plus 1 egg for glazing

1 tbs honey

3/8 cup canola oil

3/8 cup sugar

Thanks for reading.  The next installment of the blog will move to "Cornered and Kicked," the athletics series, which will be slightly less centered on carbs. You can comment at the bottom of the page and also sign up to get an email alert when I've posted a new piece. 

dml

Welcome, Readers!

Hello, friends! Here in my 30th year at Choate, now that I'm done with the paperwork for the end of the winter term (mostly), I'm setting off on my third sabbatical in my thirty years at the school. I'm very grateful for the time, and I intend to use it well.  During my first sabbatical, I spent most of the spring walking my children to and from school. It was pretty wonderful, and I continue not really to know what to do with my hands now that I'm not holding theirs to cross streets.

 A decade or so later, I spent just about the entire sabbatical, it seems, walking our first dachshund, Homer, and learning how to be an actor, as I started my adventure with Shakespeare that spring. I even got to wear a sword! The guy in the middle of the photo chased a thief down the street DURING A PERFORMANCE, caught him, and held him for the police without missing his entrance.

This time around, I'll be off for the next six months (as I'm not going to teach in the summer for the first time ever, it seems), and much of what I'm planning to do will revolve around writing, and I've learned over the years that I write best and most responsibly when I have a sense that I'm being read, so, that's the reason for this blog. Even if nobody reads this, it's a bit of a message in a bottle, written just in case someone stumbles onto it, and I hope it keeps me writing during the sabbatical and beyond.

There will be four threads in the blog, threads that will certainly become entangled with each other, but I'll try to keep them separate and take turns, posting every few days.

One thread, "Cooking For Lisa," will be about food and cooking and my adventures and misadventures in the kitchen, complete with photos and recipes.  This will begin on Friday night with my challah. 

A second series, "Cornered And Kicked," will follow the what happens to my 53 year-old body when I subject it to exercise and competition, ranging from simply staying in shape (or getting into shape, to put it more specifically) to the tales of the North Branford Legends, the over-50 soccer team I play for. The season begins next month. 

Thread number three will be a memoir, mostly about teaching and learning, and the fourth thread, and I hesitate to bring it up, will be a narrative one, furthering a tale that I began during a summer school class a few years ago. 

Will there be other topics? It's entirely possible. As for the title, it's a nickname that my college friends wouldn't stop using after they discovered, to their endless amusement, that if my first name had been "ear"...

Read. Enjoy. Share. Repeat.

dml