35. No Pineapple in It at All

Anton: Here is something that surprises everyone. In a busy harbour city on the southern coast of a great eastern land, the most famous bun of all is called the pineapple bun, and there is no pineapple in it at all. Not a single crumb.

Vera: Only the look of one. The crackled sugar top is broken into little squares, like the skin of the fruit.

Four O'Clock, Beside the Fruit Bowl

Vera: Ilka is sitting next to the fruit bowl at the head of the table, comparing the real pineapple with the drawing in my notebook. Matti, cross-legged on the bench under the clock, has already decided he prefers the bun.

Anton: The trick is a lid. A soft sweet bun underneath, and on top a thin round of cookie dough, made with butter, sugar and egg yolk. In the oven, the bun swells and the lid cracks.

Vera: Is it baked anywhere else?

Anton: In many places. Across the ocean in a hot land to the west, the same idea is shaped like a seashell, its lid marked with curved lines. In the eastern islands it looks like a melon. One idea, three shapes, many happy children.

Vera: And why chill the cookie dough?

Anton: Warm, it sticks to everything and tears. After twenty minutes in the cold it flattens cleanly, like clay from a cool riverbank.

Question: Why does the sweet top crack into pieces?

Answer: The cookie layer dries and sets in the heat while the bun beneath is still rising. Stretched from below, it breaks into plates, the way mud splits into tiles when a pond dries in the summer sun.

At the Work Table

For eight buns. Dough: 300 g bread flour (2 1/2 cups), 4 g instant dried yeast (1 1/4 teaspoons), 40 g sugar (3 tablespoons), 4 g fine salt (3/4 teaspoon), 1 egg, 160 ml lukewarm milk (2/3 cup), 30 g soft butter (2 tablespoons).

Crust: 50 g soft butter (3 1/2 tablespoons), 60 g icing sugar (1/2 cup), 1 egg yolk, 100 g plain flour (3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon), 1/4 teaspoon baking powder. Glaze: 1 more egg yolk with 1 teaspoon milk. Oven: 180°C (350°F).

Anton: One, for a child: mix and knead the dough for ten minutes. Cover and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: Two, for a child: beat the butter and icing sugar until pale, beat in the yolk, then stir in the flour and baking powder. Chill this soft cookie dough for twenty minutes.

Anton: Three, for a child: cut the bun dough into eight pieces, roll them into tight balls and set them 6 cm (2 1/2 inches) apart on lined trays.

Anton: Four, for a child: cut the crust into eight, flatten each piece between two sheets of baking paper into a circle 8 cm (3 inches) wide, and lay one over each bun.

Anton: Five, for a child: brush the tops with the glaze and press criss-cross lines with the back of a knife. Let them rise forty minutes.

Anton: Six, for a grown-up: bake fifteen to eighteen minutes, until golden and crackled, and lift the trays out in oven gloves. Children watch through the glass. Cool ten minutes; the top is fragile and hot.

A Shop Under a Ceiling Fan, Years Ago

Vera: I tasted my first one on a journey, when I was thirty. Mei sold them from behind a glass counter in a narrow shop where a ceiling fan turned slowly, pushing the warm, wet air around and around without cooling anything.

Vera: She cut one open for me and slid a cold slice of butter inside, so thick it was almost a brick. Hot bun, cold butter, sweet crust. I stood in the doorway in the heavy rain and ate it, and did not care at all that I was getting wet.

Anton: Some foods are worth getting wet for. Did she laugh at you?

Vera: She handed me a paper napkin, which melted in the rain at once. Then she laughed.

The Garden Bench, Late Afternoon

Three quick questions. One: Is there pineapple in a pineapple bun? Two: What is the top made of? Three: Why does it crack?

Answers. One: No, none at all. Two: A thin cookie dough of butter, sugar, egg yolk and flour. Three: The bun rises under it after it has set.

Vera: Matti has peeled off his lid to eat it last. Ilka has eaten hers first. Two ways. Both right.

Anton: Then pour them both a glass of cold chrysanthemum tea, made from dried yellow flowers steeped in hot water and cooled. It has no tea leaves at all, and it tastes gentle and faintly sweet, like a meadow after rain.

36. Wrap It Twice Around Two Fingers

Vera: A letter, Anton. "Dear Vera and Anton, my children say cinnamon is the only spice for buns. But I remember a different smell in my grandmother's kitchen, sweet and cool, a little like lemon and pine. I never learned its name. What was it? Paulina."

Anton: Cardamom, Paulina. Almost certainly cardamom. Today the whole street will smell of your grandmother's kitchen.

Half Past Three, the Mortar on the Table

Vera: Jakob is kneeling on a chair beside the stone mortar, crushing the little green pods as hard as he can, and Liv sits at the cold end of the table, by the open back door, sniffing the black seeds that spill out.

Anton: Smell them. Fresh, sharp, sweet. The flavour lives in oils inside those small seeds. Once ground, it fades quickly, like the scent of cut grass by evening, so crush them just before you bake if you can.

Vera: Where do people bake with it?

Anton: It grows in hot, wet forests far to the south. But the bakers who love it most live in the cold north, at the other end of the world. They twist it into knots and eat them through the long dark winters.

Vera: Was it always so easy to find?

Anton: No. It is still one of the dearest spices in the world. Every pod is picked by hand, one at a time, from low plants growing in the shade of tall trees.

Question: How do we make a knot out of a flat strip of dough?

Answer: Hold the strip by both ends and twist it like a rope. Wrap it twice around two fingers, then tuck the loose end through the middle and under. Slide it off. The filling shows in every twist.

At the Work Table

For twelve knots. Dough: 400 g plain flour (3 1/4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 50 g sugar (1/4 cup), 5 g fine salt (a scant teaspoon), 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom, 200 ml lukewarm milk (a generous 3/4 cup), 1 egg, 60 g soft butter (4 tablespoons).

Filling: 75 g soft butter (5 tablespoons), 65 g sugar (1/3 cup), 2 teaspoons ground cardamom. Topping: 1 beaten egg and 2 tablespoons coarse sugar. Oven: 200°C (400°F).

Vera: Cardamom is made from the seeds of a plant. Anyone with a seed allergy checks every ingredient first.

Anton: One, for a child: mix and knead the dough for ten minutes. Cover and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: Two, for a child: roll the dough to 30 by 40 cm (12 by 16 inches), spread the filling over it all, and fold it in three like a letter, to a strip 10 by 40 cm (4 by 16 inches). Press it once, gently, with the rolling pin.

Anton: Three, for a grown-up, or an older child with a pizza wheel and a grown-up beside them: cut it across into twelve strips about 3 cm (1 1/4 inches) wide.

Anton: Four, for a child: twist each strip, wrap it twice around two fingers and tuck the end through. If filling escapes, leave it; it bakes into crisp sugar. Set the knots on lined trays and let them rise thirty to forty minutes.

Anton: Five, for a child: brush with egg and scatter the coarse sugar. Then a grown-up bakes them twelve to fifteen minutes, until golden, and lifts them out in oven gloves. Melted sugar burns.

A Corner Bakery by the Ferry, Long Ago

Anton: I spent a winter in that north, where the sun barely lifted above the hills at noon. Kerstin's bakery stood on the corner by the ferry landing, with a candle burning in every window against the dark.

Anton: Every morning she ground cardamom by hand in a stone mortar, and the smell went out of the door, down the street and over the frozen water, so that the ferrymen said they could find her shop in a snowstorm with their eyes shut.

Vera: Could they?

Anton: I saw one do it, on a morning when the snow fell so thick that the street lamps vanished. He was very proud.

The Back Door Open, Before Five

Three quick questions. One: Where does cardamom grow? Two: When is it best to crush the seeds? Three: How many times do we wrap the strip around our fingers?

Answers. One: In hot, wet forests far to the south. Two: Just before baking. Three: Twice.

Vera: Liv's knots look like small birds' nests. Jakob's look like rope that fell off a boat. The whole kitchen smells like a forest after rain.

Anton: Then write to Paulina and tell her. Her grandmother's kitchen is here, at our table, on a cold afternoon in a different land, and it smells exactly the same.