ANZAC Day 2010

Aside from my Birthday, my favourite thing about this time of year is Anzac Day. That might sound kind of weird given that Anzac Day is in commemoration of Australia’s World War I efforts at Gallipoli, but aside from the serious elements to the day there are other things that make it an enjoyable time of year.

To start with, it’s a public holiday. And while a large portion of the population does something very unusual and drags themselves out of bed in the wee hours of the morning for the Dawn services, it still means no work, and that’s fine by me, whatever the reason. I especially enjoy the fact that when Anzac Day falls on a weekend, we still get our public holiday on the Monday. That somehow makes the day just that little bit more Australian.
It’s a day for patriotism and declaring your love of your country by getting up early and acknowledging the men and women who died for our country; then drinking copious amounts of beer and having a BBQ with friends. It’s serious and fun all at the same time.

I’m sure I must have blogged about this before (who cares, it's just that good), but my absolute favourite thing about this time of year is making (and eating) Anzac biscuits. These glorious little sugar vehicles would have to be the most addictive form of biscuit imaginable. They’re soft and chewy and full of sugary goodness that you can pretend is good for you because they’re also full of rolled oats. And what’s better is, their history is right in keeping with the spirit of the holiday.

I’ve made two batches this week already, and will probably make another. The photo below is of batch number 2, and I’ve included the recipe I used. They’re sure to be gone by Monday, and it just wouldn’t be a real Anzac Day without some Anzac Biscuits.

1 Cup Rolled Oats
1 Cup Plain Flour
1 Cup Caster Sugar
¾ Cup Coconut
115g (4oz) Butter
2 Tablespoons Golden Syrup
1 Teaspoon Bicarb (baking) Soda
2 Tablespoons Boiling Water

1. Preheat Oven to 330 degrees F.
2. Combine Oats, Flour, Sugar & Coconut in a bowl.
3. Place Butter and Golden Syrup in a pan and heat until melted.
4. Combine Bicarb Soda with boiling water then add to butter mixture. Stir until frothy.
5. Add butter mixture to dry ingredients and stir to combine.
6. Place tablespoon sized balls of mixture onto a baking sheet and flatten with a fork
7. Bake for 15-20 mins or until golden brown.
8. Cool before eating.

The Great ANZAC

ANZAC biscuits are the single greatest biscuit in the entire universe.

I kid you not.

I made a batch on the weekend and they were so good that if I had had the ingredients to make more, I would have eaten every single one of them and baked more so that I could eat all of them without telling anyone about the first batch.

I'm drooling just thinking about them. Ok, that's a bit of a lie - i'm actually dropping crumbs all over my keyboard while i try to devour one as I type this.

The Pumpkin Pie Experience

Nothing beats Christmas lunch as made by my mother. She is the master of the Christmas roast. Every year she cooks a gigantic leg of pork with the most amazing crackling; a turkey with ricotta and spinach stuffing under the skin, a mountain of vegetables; a baked ham; Christmas pudding and the very best potatoes known to man - baked in the juices from the roast pork. And then to top it all off, we eat it all again at dinner time, along with piles of barbequed seafood & salad. I'm drooling just writing about it now.

Every year I make a small contribution to this fantastic feast which in the past has generally been a dessert - in particular an ice cream dessert which is super easy and super popular and I am going to share my top secret recipe with you right now so that you can impress your friends and family with your amazing dessert making super-powers. For people like me who find recipes pretty boring to read, just skip over this part to hear about my amazing Pie making attempt.

Torrygirls’ Amazing Magical Mini Pudding-Shaped Ice Creams with Chocolate.

I soften a litre or two of ice cream (depending on how many people you need to serve. 1 litre makes about 8-9) and mix in some crumbled meringues, chopped up cherry ripe bars and frozen mixed berries. This works best if you don a pair of gloves and squish everything in by hand – otherwise the berries start to melt and everything turns pink. Pink is pretty, but not very Christmassy.

Then I line muffin tins with cling wrap, and spoon in the mixture. Push it down well so it fills up the corners. I cover with more cling wrap & re-freeze.

Then after dinner I just pull them out of the muffin pan, peel of the cling wrap and we have mini pudding-shaped ice creams topped with chocolate – I like to use Cottee’s Ice-Magic because it sets firm and looks all pretty and professional when really I’ve just squeezed it out of a bottle. It takes about 10 mins to make, tastes awesome and looks impressive.

This year as we’re having 2 Christmases (long story) I thought that I would use 1^st Christmas to try out something new on the side of the family that I’m not overly fond of. I attempted, for the first time ever, to make a pumpkin pie.

The pie baking would have been a lot easier had I been able to get the canned pumpkin that was suggested in the recipe, but as canned vegetables in Australia are pretty much limited to corn, peas and carrots, I had to make my own pumpkin purée. This involved chopping up a bunch of pumpkin, boiling it, blending it and then putting it into a tea towel in a sieve and sitting it in a bowl overnight so that the extra water could drain out. Yes, you're right, that does sound like a lot of effort. Actually, making the pumpkin puree took more effort than putting the pie together. Oh for some good old fashioned American convenience food.

The rest of the pie making was fairly simple. I opted to make my own short crust pastry, which sounds incredibly fiddly, but in fact just involves a packet of pastry mix and some water. The pie prep only took about 30 mins, including the pastry making, so I did it first thing Christmas day & then let it bake while we went about the usual Christmas morning business.

This is the recipe I used (as suggested by Carrie), except that I substituted the ground cloves for nutmeg and I made my own pumpkin puree. It took a lot longer to cook than the recipe said it would, but I think that’s probably as a result of my dodgy oven rather than anything else.And how did it go? Well in an amazing 2D/3D first, you can see for yourself:

Tasty looking, I hear you say? Well yes, in fact it was. Very tasty. Oddly enough it didn’t really taste a whole lot like pumpkin. It was a bit like a more savoury version of a custard tart. It was very sweet and creamy and spicy. And despite the crazy side of the family being incredibly rude about it (I hate people who criticise different foods even though they’ve never tried them), it was a hit. Something I will definitely make again.

Buckets of Rain

Yesterday the bottom of my street was submerged in a flowing river of rainwater. Some kind of bizarre flash flood type rain jumped out of the sky and soaked all of Melbourne from head to toe. It’s not such a bad thing, since we’re in the middle of a pretty severe drought – I just wish it would rain into the catchments a little more and onto my lounge room carpet a little less.

I spent half an hour during the most torrential part of the rain holding a bucket to the lounge room window in a vain attempt to catch the water that was streaming in thanks to the blocked drain pipe outside. I was soaked within minutes, but at least I got a good view of the bizarre river that was flowing through the front yard of the people across the road. We live on a street that is sort of on the side of a hill - our house is way above street level and the people across the road are way below street level. This means that while they were submerged in a brown, frothy tide of rain water, I was standing at my window watching the water flow down our steep driveway and add to the river below.

If I was a better blogger, I would have taken a photo of the river and posted it here you could see how bad it really was. As it turns out, holidays have made me lazy and unmotivated and to be honest, the only reason I’ve managed to blog at all is because I have a laptop computer and I didn’t have to get up from the couch to do it. I figure this is ok, because that’s what holidays are all about – not leaving the couch without a good, solid reason.

I’m going to have to get myself motivated to get off the couch, because with Christmas day coming up very soon, I have a lot to do. This year I’ve decide that I’m going to bake, and I thought that in aid of trying something new and different I’m going to bake a pumpkin pie. I have a recipe from Carrie that I’m going to have a go at. Sadly for me it will be a lot more work because in Australia we have a devastatingly limited selection of canned vegetables, so I’m going to have to purée my own pumpkins.

It should be interesting given that I’ve never done this before, but it’s worth a go, I think. Every Aussie that I’ve spoken to who has tried pumpkin pie has hated it, so I’m beginning to thing that maybe pumpkin pie is a taste that Americans are conditioned into liking – much like Aussies and Vegemite. It could be very disappointing.

I’ll let you know.