Friendo y Comiendo: Issue 02

I have leftover bread and milk. What do I do with it? El pudin de pan that Mami makes, duh! I could just give the bread to the chickens in the yard but then I wouldn't have a delicious snack with my tea every morning. And since I don't like milk I need to use it up somehow before it goes bad. Here's my adapted-to-Azerbaijan recipe:

Ingredients:
bread
milk
2 or 3 eggs
cinnamon
vanilla
sugar
pinch of salt

1) Take the stale bread you have (right now I have about 3/4ths of a loaf, but you can use however much you have left) and rip it into small pieces.

2) Spread the bread pieces in a baking pan (I have one that is about 12" in diameter). Unless you have a lot of bread I would suggest not using those huge round pans that go in the red ovens because it'll end up too thin.

3) Pour milk over the bread, making sure they all get coated. You want just enough milk so that every piece is soaked. Press the bread down into the pan to make sure they're all getting a piece of that milk action. It shouldn't be too liquidy, but if you think you may have added too much milk just add a couple more pieces of bread to it. Eyeball it. I think a rough estimate would be about 3/4 of a liter of milk per loaf of bread. (I use tendir or the Georgian bread, if you are using that Baku factory bread I'd use a bit less milk.) My AZ6 sitemate was over and left me some of her village milk so I used that in this recipe. This needs to sit for at least three hours so that the bread can soak up the liquid. I put this together last night before I went to bed and just popped it in the fridge.

4) Once the bread has been soaking for a while, its time to start smashing the crap out of it. Pour it into a bowl and use a masher to break down all the big pieces. It'll be easier to do the longer the bread has been soaking. If you're really having trouble mashing the bread, add more milk. The goal is a 'gloopy' consistency. (oh yeah, that's a true chef's vocabulary right there)

5) Once its all mashed its time to add the rest of the ingredients. Add in two eggs, some cinnamon (eyeball it. if you like a lot of cinnamon, add a lot!), about a teaspoon (or more) of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and add about 2/3 cup of sugar (or more if you want it sweeter, or less if you don't). Mix this all together. It should be a bit liquidy, if it seems a bit thick add in a third egg. Or don't. This is a trial-and-error cooking method here, folks!

6) Once that's all mixed up pour it into a lightly greased pan. (I'm using the same pan I used to soak the bread, except I rinsed it out and coated it with a little oil.) Pop this sucka in the oven! My oven has a top rack and a bottom rack, I turned on only the bottom heat and put the pan on the top rack. Check it after about 20 minutes. If its still jiggly, leave it in the oven. After another 15 minutes I noticed it wasn't jiggly anymore, a knife that I stuck in the middle came out almost clean, but it was still white on top. I put it back in but this time turned the top heat on as well. After about another 15-20 minutes the top had browned so I turned off the oven and let it hang out in there.

This is what it looks like when it's done:

Pudin de pan is one of those desserts that is best served room temperature or cold. I know it smells delicious and once its out of the oven you wanna just nuş, but it'll taste so much better if you give it some time to rest. I baked this in the morning and had a slice in the afternoon.

This is what a slice looks like:
I know, delicious right? This was my third attempt at making Mami's pudin de pan, and it has been the best so far! In my previous tries I didn't use enough sugar or enough milk. But this one looks and tastes exactly like it does at home! Some pudin de pan with some çay, yum-yum-yum-yum-yum-yum deliciooooso! You should totally try making this.

So clearly I made a big ass pan of this, which I can't really eat all by myself. And I'm here to share my culture anyway so I gave some to my host mom as well as to the lady who runs the shop near my house where I get my bread from. My host mom likes it, I'll find out tomorrow what the shopkeeper lady thought (inshallah she also liked it). So my suggestion would be to spread the wealth, people love getting/giving food, especially here in Azerbaijan!

Note: Usually Mami le hecha raisins when she makes pudin de pan. Well, usually she will make one big sarten de pudin de pan con pasas and one sarten pequeño for me without raisins. I'm not a fan but if you like raisins, they're great in the pudin de pan, just add them in when you add the other ingredients.