Nalou The Silver Age

After a very stupid work accident, I found myself with the obligation to go for a hand surgery to repair a torn tendon in the left thumb.

Nothing to be scared of, really.
Until the moment the surgeon told me I would be off work for 3 weeks. 

I panicked. 

I began to list all tasks I would have to hand over and began to feel guilty towards my colleagues who would have to take in charge an overload of work during my sick leave.

I tried to find good reasons not to go for surgery beginning by "I think it is getting better" (only in my head though) and finishing by "There is not warranty it will get better with surgery" (who was I thinking to fool apart from myself ?).
Ultimately, the date for surgery was fixed and I could not postpone nor cancel it, my sambo was there to make sure I will do it (can I love him more than I already do ?). 

If the surgery went smoothly and almost unpainfully, it is when I looked at the bandage my left hand was in for 2 weeks that I began to feel the torments of restlessness. What was I supposed to do with this voluminous mitten that made my left hand looked like a Playmobil or Lego figurine one ? The surgeon had THE magic answer : do nothing, absolutely nothing, take this time to rest and let your hand heal. 

I should have thought that it was the perfect time to finally read all the books I have been buying awaiting the perfect time off aka holidays, to go for some walks followed by long naps to restore some healthy routine, to go back to writing, to have long conversations with friends and family about everything and nothing, to binge watch the latest tv shows on Netflix or HBO, to prepare lists of to do and to see for our next summer vacation... That is already quite a list for someone supposed to do nothing and yet, the only thing I could focus on was the one I would not be able to do, WORK. 

The two first days post surgery were a living nightmare for me, for my sambo, for anyone coming around. I was clueless on doing nothing. I was in perpetual movement, or more precisely in a permanent state of searching something to do that was not lying on the bed or on the couch enjoying the joy of doing nothing for the first time in a very long time. 

I was missing WORK. 

Family and friends were in total misunderstanding and reminded me what was my work in retail : long hours on shop floor or in stock room, being most of the time on my feet and in movement, the headaches due to the permanent electric light and the background music of both the store and mall, the exhaustion. And going deeper, my own feeling of not being quite enough for the job, of becoming too old to handle it and ultimately not finding any sense in what I am doing. 

After a few days, my body took the lead and decided all by himself that nap was a good activity for him and I found myself sleeping on my laptop or on a book sometimes for hours. Of course, waking up I was feeling guilty and could not help checking some work news. It wad a bad, very bad idea. I then disconnected myself completely from all work related social media and began slowly but surely to really do NOTHING. I tamed the sick leave to begin to reflect on why working was so important for me. I do not talk here about the importance of having a pay and being independent even if it plays some role. No, I am really talking about feeling recognized and useful. And yes, I am working in retail. And yes, even if retail industry can argue about clothes being a necessity, I truly do not think the world needs that we are consuming that insane quantity of clothes each year. 

Why would I feel then so bad not to work ? Why would I feel I am somehow taking advantage of the situation ? (and looking at my Lego figurine hand, what advantage could it be, seriously). 

From then, my sick leave days were an in between of keeping up with a slow pace while having my brain running at 200 km/h speed on all the things I should do to make the best of this off work time. 

And that is how 4 days before getting back to work, I ended up baking a babka while facing that obviously, I need to make a change when it is about my work life. 

There are many, many recipes of babka that you can find by a simple Google research and all are most probably very good ones. But if you want to try mine, there it is. It is clearly not a vegan, gluten free and lactose free one though. 

List of ingredients for the dough :

250g of flour (if you are in France, I would mention T45 flour... I am currently in Sweden and it means absolutely nothing here)

50g of sugar

50ml of whole milk 

80g of butter (you can use salted butter if you like it) at room temperature. In french, we say "beurre pommade" which means that the butter is soft 

1 big egg at room temperature

1 pinch of salt

12g of dried yeast 

List of ingredients for the filling : 

As a matter of fact, you will probably see mainly chocolate babkas all over the internet but really you can chose whatever filling you like.

It can be Nutella or any hazelnut/chocolate paste you like. Just make sure to warm it up just a little bit to make it easier to spread it on the dough. 

It can be a mix of butter, cinnamon and sugar. 

It can be melted dark, milk or white chocolate to which  you can even add some chopped hazelnuts.

It can be your favorite jam.

It can be poppy seeds with cream cheese.

You have an endless choice of flavors.

Step 1 :  Make the dough. 

Ideally you have a stand mixer. 

If you do not have one, you can still do it. Yes,  you can. Like my great grand-mother was doing it. With your hands (no joke).

So in a bowl, you will mix the flour, the sugar and the pinch of salt. 
Add the plain egg and begin to mix slowly. 

Pour in the yeast that you had before dissolved in the 50ml warmed milk. 

And slowly continue to mix. 

Cut the roomed temp butter in small bites and incorporate in 3 to 4 times. The idea there is obtain a very smooth dough so it is important to let the butter incorporate well. 

With a stand mixer using the dough hook, it will take you around 10mn to obtain a soft and shiny bowl of dough. 

With your hands, well, you will have to work a little more but the good news is you will obtain the same soft and shiny bowl of dough and both of you will rest for one to two hours before the next step. 

Actually, if you would like to serve your babka for breakfast, you can prepare the dough the night before and let it rest the whole night in the fridge. The morning after, all fresh from a good night sleep, you will be ready for the step 2. 

Step 2 : the dough has its rest, it is time for filling and baking !

A little flour on the table, you are ready to roll out your dough in the shape of a rectangle. Have in mind the size of the cake mold you are going to use. 

Then spread the filling you have chose, not too thick but not too light neither. Generosity is key for me when I am baking or cooking but I have to say that for the babka, I have to restrict myself on the amount of filling unless it is almost impossible to bread the dough but let's get back to our recipe. 

So you have spread the filling. 

Now, you can gently roll up the dough in a tight spiral placing the seam underneath. Yep, the first time it is a bit of a stress but you will get it. 

Once you have rolled up the dough, it is now time to cut it....ha ha ha. I see your face. But how did you think you were going to braid It ?

So, let's go for a small surgical action and cut the roll in 2 following the length way and will quick understand why too much filling is not your friend. 

You have now 2 long pieces of dough that you can braid so you can see the layers of dough and filling. 

You are nearly there. 

Soon you can rest again. 

Once your braid is done, transfer it into the cake mold that you have before hand generously buttered. If you want to go for reduced fat, you can line you mold with baking paper. 

Cover with a clean tea towel and let it rest for one hour at room temperature to give time to the dough to almost double volume.

15mn before the proving time end, put your oven to heat at 180°C. 

1h has gone, time for the babka to reveal itself in all its glory by going 25 to 30mn in the oven. Brush the the top of the dough with milk or beaten egg and off in the oven !

My tip : at 20mn time of baking, check the coloration. At 25mn of baking, check with a skewer the baking process. It should come out clean. If not, keep on for 5mn.

Some like to make a syrup to give a shiny finish to the babka but I do not like it that much so I will leave you to this because I have a slice of babka that is waiting for me with a hot cup of black coffee. 

One could argue that coming back to writing on this blog with a story about soup is not the most glamorous way and I could agree. Yet, what better but a simple story to get back on track with my writing days?

I am entering this new year with a cold. Nothing out of the extraordinary in Swedish winter but this kind of annoying combo of fever, sore throat and running nose that leaves you looking like an old cloth in less that 2 days and the energy of a locomotive out of steam.

My first action was to press some lemon, add some fresh ginger, star anise and honey and wait for the cold to pass in the warmth of my bed. Remembering I am not living alone, I was about to propose to order some food delivery when I thought of one of my great grandmothers for whom a soup would always save the day. 

Melina, that was her name, was a very pragmatic and strong woman. Some would say she was a bit boorish. Born in 1890 in a small vineyard village in the northeast of France, she got married in 1913 just before the first world war and did not get much of one year of nuptial felicity before the war took her husband to the battlefield as well as all the male members of her family.

So, there she was in 1914, pregnant and handling the direction of a small vineyard and work in the fields with her twin sister Camille while their husbands were on the Verdun's battlefields. These were hard, very hard days and no wonder that Melina became quite a fierce and resourceful woman.

When I close my eyes, the first memories of her are a tiny woman of few words and smile, quite authoritarian, always wearing black and smelling of lavender and rosemary. I think I may have been a little afraid of her even if I was following her like a shadow at each of her steps, when my parents or my grandparents left me at her house and even if obviously, she was quite fond of me as her very first grandkid.

For a kid, Melina's house was an infinite source of curiosity, but the kitchen and the garden were my favorite places. The house was an old winegrower's house with heavy walls, small windows and low ceiling. The kitchen was the heart of it with its ceramic stove that was heating the whole house. Different aromatic herb and flower bunches were hanged at the ceiling, waiting to be dried enough to then be stored in jars that Melina would use for bouillons, tisanes and other homemade medications. 

The whole house furniture has been made by my great grandfather, a fine carpenter, out of the trees in the forest and orchards around. Oak, chestnut tree and plum tree. The melted smell of the wooden furniture, the drying herbs and flowers, the ceramic stove on which there always was a coffee pot, ready to serve, were a part of my childhood that I wish I had the talent to put into a bottle to keep forever.  

From generations of winegrower's wives and daughters, my great grandmother Melina was used from a young age to cook in large quantities with the minimum ingredients to nourish seasonal workers that would come to help for the harvests. 

Some seasons were not that lucky and Melina would then have to compose with the vegetables from the garden and not that much of meat and fat. For those bad days, she would use all her knowledge in herbs and vegetables to make a feast of the simplest soup.

Soup. 

For many French people, soup is probably the most common meal of all. The meal one has when not being rich enough to have meat at every meal. The word itself is not used in fancy menus... One would prefer a "potage", a "consommé" or a "velouté" and lately a bouillon can be the hype on a menu while the soup refers to a very old and rustic meal: a slice of bread on which one pours some bouillon made of vegetables and meat when one could have a fat meat to give taste and richness to it.
In short, the soup was a meal for poor people.

My great grandmother was not a woman who would care of being fancy and staying at her place for dinner from fall to early spring, you would have had a soup for dinner because there was nothing a soup would not help with. So, she would adjust herbs and spices with the vegetables, meat or fish or fat, according to the circumstances: the weather, what she had in the pantry, if one was sick. Staying with her was a full discovery of all kinds of bouillons that would be base of all kinds of potages, veloutés and consommés which she would always end up calling a soup because she would always call a spade a spade.

And that is how on the second day of January, I got out of my warm bed to put the stove on and prepare a soup like Melina would have done. Maybe at this point of the story, you would like to see the recipe of the soup in the picture?

Well, I may disappoint you as soup is the only meal I do not following a recipe but just "going with the flow" as my great grandmother was doing. A few tips I learned from her though: I always begin by making sweat one big yellow onion, or two small, in the pot with unsalted butter, salt, pepper, brown sugar and nutmeg, In Sweden, I recently found a spice mix called umami under the brand Santa Maria and it is quite good. When onions are colored, I add a branch of celery sliced in small cubes, two cups of water and I let it go to gently boiled to make the base of the bouillon. Then I cut the vegetables I have, I especially like the mix of carrots, turnips, pumpkin, leek and potato, put them in the pot and cover with water. I let it go to boil for 3 minutes, add water if needed to keep the vegetables covered, add 2 branches of rosemary, thyme and laurel and lower the stove to let it cook gently. When all vegetables are tender, it is time to mix and enjoy dinner! 

PS: the spoon on the picture is from a cutlery set that was in Melina's house and that I could have a few pieces after my grandmother Marguerite, her daughter, died.