Love and Cooking

What is a Tim Tam? You might very well ask, especially if you don't run with Australians or New Zealanders.



A Tim Tam is a delicious cookie ("biccie" in Oz slang) made by Arnott's of Australia that is chocolate, or some other, cream between two chocolate wafer layers, all covered with milk or dark chocolate. There are some variations - Tia Maria filling, double coating, and the like.

But the true genius of the Tim Tam is its ability to be used as a delicious if somewhat limited use straw. This practice is known throughout Australia as the "Tim Tam Slam". I was lucky enough to get both some Tim Tams and some instruction from an Aussie at a recent social outing, so as a public service towards better International Understanding, I would like to present a pictoral guide towards enjoyment of this fine biscuit, which deserves to be far more widely known in this country.

If you do not have a merchant of Australian products nearby, or an Aussie friend to bring you some, the nice people at Aussie Products in San Jose, California, would be happy to mail order some to you without Customs hassles. They're on the "Arnott's Sweet Biscuits" page. (Try the Kahlua Slice, too, they're very good.)

The Tim Tam Slam

1. Prepare a suitable hot beverage. Coffee is mighty tasty with this, although many Aussies favor tea.

2. Take the Tim Tam and daintily nibble off two opposite corners of the rectangle.

Before:

After:


3. Holding the Tim Tam firmly with your thumb and forefinger, place one of the nibbled-off corners in your mouth. Alex, the Aussie, gets ready here:



4. Submerge the other nibbled-off corner in your drink and suck for all you're worth.

5. When you get the liquid "hit" off the Tim Tam, pop the biccie in your mouth, and eat it. Do not be tempted to keep sucking, as the wafer will disintegrate into Tim Tam Sludge very shortly. It's much better if you can actually eat it.

Here are photos of me (laughing myself silly as I was being exhorted by the entire table ... you can guess how) and some pals enjoying the Tim Tam Slam at a recent dinner:






Thanks to JB for the pix of me, Dan, and Kelly.

I have been rather busy with non food related (a shock, but it's true!) items lately and only noted the latest IMBB event hosted by Derrickwhen I saw Clotilde's.

I will not, due to circumstances, have a chance to construct this today, but I would like to present a Most Excellent Recipe to the foodblogging community:

Susan Hattie's Goat Cheese Torta

Susan Hattie was a pal of mine on rec.food.cooking. She died some years ago at age 41 after a heart transplant (she had Hodgkins' as a young woman and the treatment really did a number on her internals). I still miss her, but when I make this, I think of her, and know that she would be happy to see both me making it and people enjoying it. It's a great legacy.

I did post the recipe recently in my catch-up, on Oct. 16. Had I known about IMBB, I would have "saved" it, but here goes again.

I have tweaked Susan's recipe to good effect, and my type-up includes the all important "form the layers on waxed paper" step that hers leaves out, but it's all good.


1 large log (8 or 11 oz) soft goat cheese
1 8 oz package cream cheese (lower fat is ok)
1 or more cloves garlic, minced or smooshed
About 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, chopped and patted very dry with paper towels
About 1/4 cup basil pesto (as "dry" as possible)

Leave the cheeses out to soften, and when they are soft, moosh them together in a bowl and add 1 or more cloves mooshed or finely diced garlic (to your taste).

Cover the bowl with cling wrap and refrigerate until the cheese is a bit more set up (1 hour or more). Overnight will not hurt it at all, indeed, the flavors will "marry".

When you are ready to make it, line a small-medium bowl (I believe the one I usually use holds 20 fl oz - smallish serving or large "ice cream"/cereal bowl) with cling wrap in both directions.

On a piece of cling wrap or waxed paper, form about 1/3 of the cheese (less if the bowl is very tapered) into a flat round that will cover the bottom of the bowl well. Flip the cheese into the bowl and smooth out/patch edges.

Cover cheese with a layer either of the drained chopped tomatoes or the pesto.

Form another round of cheese to cover. Flip into bowl (and patch).

Put whichever of the pesto or tomatoes you didn't use last time on top of the cheese.

Form last of cheese into another round. Flip into bowl and patch.

Cover with the cling wrap or waxed paper you used as a surface. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

To serve, remove the top covering, cover bowl with a plate (salad size works well) and invert. Remove bowl and cling wrap. Provide spreaders and baguette slices, or crackers. Eat with happy noises.

I don't have a picture because the last time I made it was for my best friend's birthday and several people were watching me unmold it, and attacked it before I could get the camera out!

This gets more garlicky with age, and if you have leftovers, they are stunningly good on pasta.

Hey, I said I'd actually managed some cooking in the time I was too busy to blog! I made this on Thursday night after work when the Frog visited.

About a month ago, after my visit to North Beach, I got interested in making focaccia.

I seem to have a formula that works without much fuss down, with one big problem when I got overconfident and didn't measure the oil. I plan to try olive or green onion at some point in the not too distant future. I will also experiment with regular all purpose flour, as the blend King Arthur sells for focaccia is low-protein.

If you have a Kitchen Aid with dough hook, refer to my embedded links for how-tos. I do it all by hand.

So anyways, here goes:

Set one package (2 1/4 teaspoons if you use the same brand I do) dry yeast to proof in about 250-300 ml (around 1 1/3 cup, but your Pyrex has the metric, no?) warm water. I put a pinch of sugar in.

While the yeast is doing its thing (should take ~10 min), put two slightly rounded cups* bread flour and one tablespoon kosher flake salt (I use Diamond brand, which is "fluffy", if you use regular table salt reduce this amount) in a large bowl and stir. Scoop out another slightly rounded cup of flour and add about a third of it to the bowl. Save the rest.

Take about 2 5" or so sprigs fresh rosemary and cut the leaves off in little bits into the bowl with the flour. Mix.

When yeast is proofed, dump it in the bowl, and add seven TBS extra virgin olive oil. The better the oil you use, the better the result will taste.

Mix it together. Add flour from the cup gradually until you get a dough that is soft but not sticky. You will probably not use it all.

Turn out dough on lightly floured surface. IMMEDIATELY soak the bowl in warm water. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes. Scrub out bowl, dry, and put a little oil in it. Put the dough in, cover with a clean tea towel, and let it rise somewhere warmish for a couple of hours, or until at least doubled. (There was a reason I said to soak the bowl. Leaving cleanup till the dough proofs makes it narsty.)

Knock the dough back. Lightly oil a quarter-sheet (or slightly larger) pan and stretch the dough to fit it (making sure both sides of dough are oiled). Make dimples with your fingers in the dough. Cover and let rise for 30-45 minutes (or until doubled again). Remember to preheat the oven to 425 F/220 C.

Before baking, add some more rosemary to the top (you can put a snip in each hole, or just sprinkle carefully), brush some oil on it if it looks dry, and carefully shake about another tablespoon of kosher flake salt (or less if you have sea salt) over the top. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until it is golden brown on the top. Cool slightly.

If you do not eat this immediately, cover in cling wrap, and try to eat (or freeze) it soon.


* Both the recipes I saw said 500 G flour. Since that works out to be about 17 oz, and a cup of flour measured via Dip and Scoop runs at about 5 oz, it's three cups and a bit. Doing it this way makes it easy-peasy.

This is the "signature dish" of my late (and still-lamented) net.pal Susan Hattie Steinsapir. I have made it for a lot of people in a lot of different contexts and a number of them have asked for the recipe. I hope they are serving it to their friends, who are serving it to their friends, and so on and so forth. I think that Susan would be happy to have such a legacy. She liked feeding people.

The most recent occasion for making this was my friend Elaine's birthday party. She provided cake and champagne (and the floor show in the form of her Hellcats), and I said I'd bring nibbles. Most of it got eaten, which was gratifying.

This is a good one for non-cooks as it mostly involves mushing and shaping. It is also very make-ahead. If you have leftovers, they are stunningly good on pasta. I have tweaked her recipe somewhat to suit myself, and you can do some tweaking to suit yourself, but it's all good.

Susan Hattie's Goat Cheese Torta

1 large log (8 or 11 oz) soft goat cheese
1 8 oz package cream cheese (lower fat is ok)
1 or more cloves garlic, minced or smooshed
About 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, chopped and patted dry with paper towels
About 1/4 cup basil pesto (as "dry" as possible)

Leave the cheeses out to soften, and when they are soft, moosh them together in a bowl and add 1 or more cloves mooshed or finely diced garlic (to your taste).

Cover the bowl with cling wrap and refrigerate until the cheese is a bit more set up (1 hour or more). Overnight will not hurt it at all, indeed, the flavors will "marry".

When you are ready to make it, line a small-medium bowl (I believe the one I usually use holds 20 fl oz - smallish serving or large "ice cream"/cereal bowl) with cling wrap in both directions.

On a piece of cling wrap or waxed paper, form about 1/3 of the cheese (less if the bowl is very tapered) into a flat round that will cover the bottom of the bowl well. Flip the cheese into the bowl and smooth out/patch edges.

Cover cheese with a layer either of the drained chopped tomatoes or the pesto.

Form another round of cheese to cover. Flip into bowl (and patch).

Put whichever of the pesto or tomatoes you didn't use last time on top of the cheese.

Form last of cheese into another round. Flip into bowl and patch.

Cover with the cling wrap or waxed paper you used as a surface. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

To serve, remove the top covering, cover bowl with a plate (salad size works well) and invert. Remove bowl and cling wrap. Provide spreaders and baguette slices, or crackers. Eat with happy noises.

The Frog came over to drop off something and bring me some end of season tomatoes. While we were talking, I was taking advantage of my evening at home (if not exactly "off") to spend time in the kitchen. I made rosemary foccacia (more on that in its own post) and, while it was rising, made a batch of minestrone, including the TWO bunches of escarole I had in the fridge, thus clearing it out fairly well. I had to pitch out the homemade chicken broth as I had cooked nothing with it "in time" and not put it in the freezer either, much to my distress, but was happy to use the greens I had bought for Italian Wedding Soup.

Minestrone is a great soup because it is comforting and very flexible. There are certain things I always put in mine - leeks or onions, celery, carrots, canned tomatoes, cannelini beans, and (these are what make the soup better-than-usual) green beans and fresh basil - but to a large extent, quantities and what-else-I-have-around are pretty flexible. The last batch I made had chopped chard and chunked butternut squash in it. This batch was made with chicken broth, not veggie, and had meatballs (yay Trader Joe's! - these were also originally intended for Italian wedding soup), the escarole, and mushrooms. The soup is pretty good without the extras (esp. if you have lots of basil!).

My recipe (such as it is) is a riff on the one in a most excellent soup cookbook. I did, however, review the original when I "wrote it down" and realized that I had made several major departures. It doesn't have celery, includes cabbage and other things, includes the pasta (I figure I already have enough carbs in my life) and uses chicken. But it did give me the idea that green beans and fresh basil (and mushrooms when I have them) are great in minestrone.

Minestrone

Preparing the aromatics:

Chop or slice 1-3 each leeks, scrubbed carrots, and celery ribs and saute in a little olive oil in a Dutch oven till soft, taking care to not burn them. If you feel like adding something like bell peppers, chard ribs, cabbage, or winter squash that would benefit from similar treatment, this is the place to do it.

When you figure these are done, add 1-2 cloves sliced or minced garlic and saute for one minute more, till it is fragrant.




Tomatoey Goodness

Add one 14 oz can of good quality canned tomatoes (diced by you, or the manufacturer ... if you do it, kitchen shears in the can work well), a couple of bay leaves, some sprigs of thyme, and a good quantity of fresh basil, chopped or cut in chiffonade.

Then add the beans. I use the equivalent of two 14 oz cans of beans. If I can get fresh cannellini or cranberry beans, as I often can in the late summer to early fall, I am on those like white on rice. Otherwise I use at least one can of good-quality cannellini beans (I like Progresso brand) and sometimes mix it up by including kidney or garbanzo beans. If you have a Parmesan rind, and are not feeding vegans, add it here.

You could, of course, use dried beans that have been soaked. You will need to simmer the soup a lot longer to cook them. I have actually put the canned-bean soup together in about thirty-five minutes, the last twenty or so of which did not require my attention.

Here's a trick I learned from Cook's Illustrated: At this point, DO NOT ADD THE BROTH. Salt it a bit and cover the Dutch oven. Let the tomatoes and beans simmer together for at least ten minutes. It is very flexible at this point so if you want to leave it longer, go ahead.

If you are adding some vegetable that needs to be simmered for a while, such as kale, put it in now, and put some of the broth in too. But not all of it.

Final stage

This one I play by ear. It depends on what I am going to put in the soup. I add the broth (minimum I use is six cups; this works out to be one of those aseptic containers - I usually use mushroom or roasted veggie broth, but Swanson's chicken is very nice if you are not feeding vegetarians - and a can. Or, of course, homemade if I have it) and then the rest of the veggies based on how long it takes them to cook. Mushrooms will go in (sliced) and simmer for at least ten minutes. Similar for chard leaves (cut in ribbons) or escarole (ditto). If you want a soup with meat in it, Italian-style meatballs or chunks of chicken are very tasty in this. Again, some things are pretty flexible. Make sure the broth has enough salt in it (taste).

The last thing I do is put the green beans in. A good line of frozen, especially frozen French filet beans, is entirely acceptable in the wintertime. What I usually do, in an attempt to keep some color in the beans, is add them and immediately take the pot off the heat. The retained heat will cook them, especially if (as I often do) I am making the soup for later consumption.

Remove any rinds, thyme sprigs, and bay leaves and serve. Parmesan is good in this, as is commercial pesto.

If you are using pasta of any description in this, cook the noodles seperately. They will absorb all the liquid. Trust me on this one (although those shells cooked in homemade chicken broth were marvellously tasty).

Just haven't had a lot of time on the computer. Taking lots of classes in the evening, and crazy-busy on the weekends.

Have done some fine cooking lately (foccacia!) and will be putting up entries when I can.