Bagels for all seasons

I HAVE a bagel obsession. Not everyone does, I know. A colleague and friend looked askance at me when I told her that my last meal would be a perfectly toasted sesame bagel, with a side of cream cheese. She said she never understood the appeal of the bagel; but there is just something about the chewy, doughy bread with its crusty edges that hits the spot with me.

I trace my bagel obsession to when I had my first in New York, way back in 1996. I was there for work, and I remember standing in line at the deli, watching bagel after bagel, in their myriad combinations - onion with jalapeño cream cheese, cinnamon raisin with butter, garlic with smoked salmon - being doled out to the waiting breakfast crowd. When I sunk my teeth into a buttered and toasted sesame bagel, I thought it was one of the best things I'd ever tasted in my short life up to that point.

Recreating that experience in Singapore has not been easy (if at all possible). Store-bought bagels tend to taste bland at best and stale at worst. My best bet had, until recently, been the bagels sold by speciality coffee joints such as Spinelli's. But toppings tend to be limited to the accompanying miniature packets of butter or cream cheese. Hardly exciting.