Use for Stale Bagels

This is a weird little dessert that I put together when I had some giant, stale poppy bagels. It's a bread pudding, spiffed up with some nuts and spices and the poppy seeds from the bagels. If your bagels aren't giant ones from New York, you might need to use two. Even though the quantities in here sound small, it should be plenty for four people.

• 1 1/2 stale poppy bagels (or 1 bagel plus some bread, or something similar)
• 1 1/2 cups milk or half-and-half
• 2 tbs. butter and some for greasing the pan
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. garam masala or similar spice mixture
• 1/4 cup sugar, plus an extra spoonful
• pinch salt
• 2 tbs. rum
• 1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and then ground roughly (use a food processor)
• 1/4 cup shelled salted pistachios
• 1/4 cup halvah, chopped into walnut-sized bits (not really essential)

Heat your oven to 325 degrees and grease a small casserole dish or cake pan with butter. Tear the bagels up into pieces; these should be about the size of grapes, but it's nice to have some variation to get a range of textures. Put these in the casserole dish with the halvah and pistachios. Heat up the milk, rum, butter, cinnamon, garam masala, salt, and the 1/4 cup sugar just until the butter is melted. Pour this over the bagels into the casserole dish. Sprinkle the ground walnuts on top, and then sprinkle a spoonful of sugar on top of this. Bake until a knife put in at the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes to an hour.