Baking for a Fast

A 25 hour fast begins this evening. It may seem like a contradiction, baking for a fast, and every year religious people exhort observers of the fast not to focus on the food but on the meaning of the day, which is about reflection and repentance. Fat chance. The right type of food can set you up for a frame of mind that encourages reflection and repentance, and the wrong food can put you in a bad mood for the whole day, worsening only as the hunger pangs increase. No. Getting the food right is really, really important. And loads of fun, if you are an obsessive baking geek like me. The key is not actually quantity. I have yet to stuff myself silly either before or after a fast. In fact I'm more likely to glug back pints of water - this is a no fluids and no food fast - than guzzle down the pasta. But I do know that comfort is the key here. You thought I was going to say low GI, right? If you stuff yourself with the wrong type of carbs, you get hunger pangs half an hour after you've finished eating right?  I am sure the nutrio-science is right on this but I think fasting is much more about the emotions. A lot of people get tearful mid afternoon, just 3 or 4 hours away from the end of the fast. It is important to tap into that vulnerability and service it with your grub. Which also means, providing food that is familiar, and preferably nostalgic. I grew up eating cholent before the fast. My parents worked full time, very long hours, and the only way my Mother was going to get food ready for the fast was by preparing it the weekend before. So, dumplings, potatoes, large sides of beef, butter beans and a sauce, into the oven on Sunday on a very low heat, and by Tuesday the house was permeated with the amazing aroma, the warm and tantalising wreath like smell coming from the oven, of a slow cooked, Eastern European stew. Come the fast, we'd open the pot and find the top and the sides a blackened mess, if I'm really honest. But underneath the crust (and anyway, my Dad LOVED the crust - urgh, no accounting for taste here) were dumplings pungent with stock, falling apart gently when you poked them with a fork, and beef almost dissolved into the potatoes, and plump, melty butter beans....a bowlful of that and you were ready, not just for a day of reflection, but a day of reflection in a community hall a 2 mile walk away IN THE RAIN. Not many foods you can say that about. So it's no surprise that my starter for the fast is reminiscent of this - a beef and mushroom casserole, slow cooked with carrots, celery, garlic and loads and loads of thyme. Mmmm, chant the kids, who recognise the impending fast from the smell of the thyme. See? Nostalgia, successfully tapped into. If there is any casserole left after the fast I have no doubt it'll be hoovered up with chunks of ritual bread to wipe the remains from the sides of the saucepan. But in case there isn't, I have just finished crisp-frying a small mountain of halibut. It has to be halibut, even though halibut will cost you a mortgage. It's a beefy fish, but also it holds its moisture without falling apart or compromising the breadcrumb crust, which I season with...well I'm not telling you that bit. Counterintuitively for a cook, I like to have one Secret Recipe in my life, and the herbs and spices I use to coat my fish for frying constitute my Secret Recipe. Suffice to say, that the small mountain of fish will be reduced to a few small crumbs, minutes after we arrive back home from our day of reflection, tired, thirsty, strangely cleansed from our communal review of a flawed and testing year, exhilarated from the achievement of seeing through the day, relieved to have concluded it, and looking forward to two things: doing our best not to screw things up quite so often in the course of the next year; and, baking and eating my next cake. What's that? A raspberry and almond poundcake, dusted with icing sugar, since you ask. Once the massive steamed chocolate pudding, redolent with dark muscovado sugar, which I am just putting into the oven now, has been finished.