45. One for You, One for Me, One for the Neighbour

Vera: How many sides does a pocket need, do you think, to keep its filling safe in a hot oven? Two, like an envelope? Four, like a parcel?

Anton: Ask the bakers of the dry hills to the east, and they will hold up three fingers.

The Far End of the Table

Vera: Willem, at the far corner where the table leg wobbles, is already drawing triangles in the spilled flour.

Anton: Good. That is the whole shape. A circle of soft dough, a spoonful of spinach with lemon, and three edges pinched together into a little tent. A triangle is strong; the people who build bridges and roofs know it.

Vera: And the dough?

Anton: A yeast dough with plenty of oil in it, so it bakes tender instead of chewy. It will feel slippery. Do not add flour to fight it.

Vera: Slippery dough and small hands. We will need towels.

Anton: Towels, and patience. And sumac, if you have it. It grows on bushes in those hills; the red berries are dried and crushed, and they taste of lemon without being wet.

At the Work Table

For twelve pockets, the dough: 300 g plain flour (2 1/2 cups), 4 g instant yeast (1 1/4 teaspoons), 1 teaspoon sugar, 5 g salt (3/4 teaspoon), 150 ml warm water (2/3 cup) and 60 ml olive oil (1/4 cup).

The filling: 300 g fresh spinach, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 small onion, 2 tablespoons olive oil, the juice of half a lemon, 1 teaspoon sumac (a tart red spice; or the grated peel of the lemon) and a pinch of pepper. Oven: 200°C (400°F).

Vera: A child mixes and kneads the dough for about eight minutes. Cover it and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: A grown-up chops the spinach and the onion finely. A child sprinkles the salt over the spinach, waits ten minutes, then squeezes it hard, a handful at a time, until no more water drips.

Vera: Mix the squeezed spinach with the onion, oil, lemon juice, sumac and pepper.

Anton: Cut the dough into twelve pieces and roll each into a circle 10 cm (4 inches) across. Put a spoonful of filling in the middle.

Vera: Lift the edge at three points, like the corners of a tent, and bring them to the middle. A child pinches the three seams firmly from the middle outwards. Pinch hard; the oven will try to open them.

Anton: Set the pockets on a lined tray and brush them with oil. A grown-up bakes them for fifteen to eighteen minutes, until golden at the edges, wearing oven gloves and keeping small hands back from the open door.

Across the Landing, Years Ago

Vera: When my children were small, a woman called Rania lived across the landing from us, behind a door hung with a string of dried red peppers. Her children and mine ran between our two flats all day, and the doors were never locked.

Vera: On Fridays she baked these, three trays, and the whole staircase smelled of lemon and hot oil. As she pinched each corner she said, one for you, one for me, one for the neighbour.

Vera: Then she sent a plate across the landing, still warm, under a cloth. I always sent something back on the plate.

Vera: You never return a plate empty. She taught me that too. The plate went back and forth across that landing for eleven years, carrying triangles one way and plum cake the other, until Rania's family moved to a house with a garden and took the peppers with them.

Before the Plates Are Cleared

Question: Willem asks why the spinach has to be squeezed so hard.

Answer: Spinach is mostly water. In the oven it lets the water out, the dough goes soggy, and the steam pushes the seams open. Squeezed spinach stays inside and keeps the pocket crisp.

Three quick questions. One: How many corners does the pocket have? Two: Why do we wait after salting the spinach? Three: How hot is the oven?

Answers. One: Three. Two: The salt draws the water out, so it squeezes away more easily. Three: 200°C (400°F).

Vera: Look how much spinach we started with. A whole mountain of leaves, and now it fits in Willem's two hands, dark and tight as a pine cone.

Anton: Leaves are like that. All summer they spread out to catch the light, and a little salt brings them back to almost nothing.

Vera: To drink, something cold and golden, the way Rania served it: apricot juice thinned with cold water and poured over ice in tall glasses. Then Willem takes a plate across the street to the neighbour.

46. Nobody Needs a Knife for This One

Anton: Most people believe a loaf must be sliced, and that pulling bread apart with your fingers is bad manners. It is not true of this loaf. It is made of forty small buttered balls, and a knife would only spoil it.

Vera: So the fingers are the proper tool.

Anton: The only proper tool. Nobody needs a knife for this one.

By the Sideboard

Vera: Yara, standing on tiptoe at the sideboard where the tins are stacked, has found the ring tin with the hole in the middle. She is looking through it at me like a telescope.

Anton: That is our tin. The balls of dough go in loose, like pebbles in a stream bed, and in the oven they swell until they lean on each other and become one loaf.

Vera: And the sugar?

Anton: Each ball is dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar. The sugar melts into a dark syrup between the balls. That is why they let go so easily.

Vera: Where does it come from?

Anton: I met it on the wide plains across the ocean to the west. But cooks in many cold lands have pressed small balls of dough together in one pan. Small balls rise fast and bake evenly, and children can roll them, which is half the reason any recipe survives.

A Cookhouse by a Frozen Lake

Anton: I spent one winter, when I was young, baking in a cookhouse at a forest camp in the far north-west, beside a lake that froze so hard the woodcutters drove their sledges across it. The cook in charge was Rhoda, who kept a brass bell over the door to call the men in and a sourdough pot behind the stove.

Anton: On Sunday mornings she made this bread in a great iron ring, turned it out steaming onto a board, and set it in the middle of the long table among forty tired men. No plates. No knives. Every hand reached in and pulled.

Vera: Did they fight over it?

Anton: Never. That was the strange thing. Men who argued all week about axes and wages sat quietly and pulled one piece each, then another, and passed the board along. Rhoda said bread you share with your fingers makes people gentle. I think she was right.

Between the Dishes and Bedtime

Question: Yara asks why the bread must wait exactly ten minutes before it comes out of the tin.

Answer: Straight from the oven, the sugar syrup is runny and pours off. Left too long, it sets hard and glues the bread to the tin. After ten minutes it is thick but still loose.

Three quick questions. One: How big is each piece of dough? Two: What is each ball rolled in? Three: Who turns the bread out of the tin?

Answers. One: About the size of a walnut. Two: Melted butter, then cinnamon sugar. Three: A grown-up, wearing oven gloves.

At the Work Table

For one ring loaf, enough for eight: 400 g plain flour (3 1/4 cups), 7 g instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 40 g sugar (3 tablespoons), 6 g salt (1 teaspoon), 200 ml warm milk (3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon), 1 egg and 50 g soft butter (3 1/2 tablespoons).

For rolling: 80 g butter (1/3 cup), 100 g brown sugar (1/2 cup) and 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. A ring tin 23 to 25 cm (9 to 10 inches) across, well buttered. Oven: 180°C (350°F).

Anton: Knead the dough for ten minutes, cover it and let it rise for an hour, until doubled.

Vera: A grown-up melts the butter over low heat and lets it cool until just warm. A child mixes the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

Anton: Pat the dough into a square 2 cm (3/4 inch) thick. A grown-up cuts it into about forty pieces, each the size of a walnut.

Vera: A child rolls each piece into a ball, dips it in the butter, rolls it in the sugar and drops it into the tin. Pour any leftover butter over the top.

Anton: Cover and let it rise for forty minutes, until the dough is 2 cm below the rim. A grown-up bakes it for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until deep golden. If the top browns too fast, a grown-up lays a sheet of foil over it.

Vera: Wait ten minutes. A grown-up in oven gloves puts a plate on top, turns tin and plate over together and lifts the tin off. The syrup is as hot as melted wax. Let it cool ten minutes more.

Vera: Look at the top, dark and shining, wrinkled like the bark of an old pine. Yara wants to know which piece is hers.

Anton: Whichever one comes away in her fingers. That is the rule of this bread. Then everyone pulls. Yara first. She found the tin.