The udder weirdness of drinking cow's milk

Valenze's is absolutely one of my best food history books ever, and is surely fascinating to all of us who eat and drink - if indirectly - from cows' udders every day.

Milk

There is a certain weirdness about a culture that drinks food meant for another species' babies. Deborah Valenze's book Milk - a Local and Global History, explores everything from medieval imagery of lactating Madonnas and the milk goddess of Egypt to the Victorian use of milk as medicine and the US obsession with ice cream. She also includes a short but fascinating section on modern industrial milk production - a part of our food production whose details remain as shrouded in mystery as the fate of the girls in Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Valenze's is absolutely one of my best food history books ever, and is surely fascinating to all of us who eat and drink - if indirectly - from cows' udders every day. Yale University Press. 2011. Available online, R160-R220.

Bagels

They're everywhere. But they're nowhere. The real ones, at any rate. Bagels are not, as you might be forgiven for thinking if you buy them locally, bread rolls without a middle. They're a whole different thing, a universe away from a baked roll. Like pretzels (their even more fantastic, saltier cousins) what makes a bagel a bagel is the fact that it is boiled before it is baked. Real bagels are not light and airy inside, crusty outside; they're dense and chewy inside, shiny, tacky and even more chewy on the outside, with a sweet-sour maltedness on the crust. Authentic ones aren't easy to find and even many authentic ones aren't particularly good.

If you don't mind a little trip, Feigels delicatessen in Glenhazel keeps a fresh baked daily stash. While you're in this tiny deli you might also want to stock up on their homemade perogen, latkes, schmaltz and pickled herring. You can even buy half-baked (but fully boiled) versions to finish cooking at home. One of these shiny, dense critters, fresh from the oven, could turn the most determined paleo convert into a slavering carb freak in seconds. Feigels Delicatessen, 3 Queen Place, Kingswood Road, Glenhazel, Johannesburg, 011-887-1364.

Bagel bread & butter pudding

For each serving: ¼ bagel, thickly sliced / 1 egg / ½ cup cream / ½ tsp orange rind, grated / shake cinnamon / 1½ tsp sugar.

How: Preheat oven to 180C. Mix eggs, cream, rind, cinnamon and one teaspoon of the sugar. Place sliced bagel in a small ovenproof container, such as you'd use for creme brulee. Pour over the egg-cream mix and leave to soak in for 10 minutes. Sprinkle remaining ½ teaspoon sugar over the top. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the custard is puffed up and hardly wobbly, and the top is golden. Serve post-haste with berry compote or excellent jam.