For this week’s WHB, hosted by Gay of A Scientist in the Kitchen, I am baking with the seeds from a lovely herb, fennel. I love the fennel bulb for it’s sweet, aniseed-y flavour, and it’s crispness when shaved finely into salads. Their seeds (the dried fruit of the plant) are as strongly flavoured and have many uses in the cuisines of various cultures.

Ground fennel seeds are an essential ingredient in Chinese Five Spice powder; the “wonder powder” of Chinese cooking. I have also seen a sweet version of these seeds sold in Indian grocery stores. Each seed is individually coated in a colourful sugar shell and these are generally eaten after a meal to sweeten the mouth, freshen the breath and aid digestion (by helping to expel gas!).

It is also a commonly used ingredient in Italian cooking, and are what make these Fennel Taralli so special. The recipe, which features in Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking book, comes from a bakery in Brooklyn, New York, run by two Italian Bakers. These rubberband-shaped breadsticks emerge from the oven, aromatic and glossy. They are meant to keep ‘indefinitely’, but I can’t really vouch for that because they didn’t last more than a couple of days in our house!

Fennel Taralli :
(from Artisan Baking, by Maggie Glezer)

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
250g water, at about 43’C
450g plain flour
120g durum flour
1 3/4 teaspoon salt
40g vegetable oil
60g white wine
10g fennel seeds
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a small pitcher, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, stir, and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.

Combine the plain flour, durum flour, and salt in a large bowl. Add the vegetable oil, white wine, and yeasted water. Mix the dough together, then knead this incredibly stiff dough until it smooths out a little. Knead in the fennel seeds.

Immediately after mixing, cut the dough into 32 pieces, each weighing about 30g. Place a cup of water next to you to help you roll. Dampen your hands with just a few drops of water and roll a piece of dough into a rope about the thickness of a pen. It should be about 11 inches long. Pinch the ends together hard. Hold the rope ring together at the seal and let it drop into an elongated oval shape. Place it on a tray or on your work surface. The seal should be at the top curve. Continue to roll and shape the rest of the taralli.

Cover the taralli with plastic wrap and let them rest for 2 hours. They will not appear to rise at all.

Arrange 2 racks on the oven’s center shelves and clear away all racks above the ones being used. Preheat the oven to 205’C.

Fill a wide pot 3/4 full of water, bring it to a boil, and then lower the heat so that the water simmers. Add the olive oil to the simmering water. Set a cooling rack over a baking sheet and place it near the water. Line 2 large baking sheets with baking paper.

Boil the taralli in batches small enough to fit comfortably in the pot. They will sink at first then quickly float. (If they do not float, let them continue to rest for another hour, then boil them.) After they float and puff up a bit, after about a minute of boiling, skim them from the pot and let them drain on the cooling rack. Boil the remaining taralli. After each batch has drained, move them to the paper-lined baking sheets.

When you have finished boiling the taralli, bake them until they are golden brown and very dry, about 45 minutes, rotating the baking sheets halfway into the bake. Let them cool on a rack and store them in a sealed container.

I am a regular, almost chronic, tea drinker. Almost by happy default, I have also become quite an avid fan of all things cookie-like and biscuitty, and am always on the lookout for the next perfect biscuit to try.

A lot of the biscuits I make are a celebration of butter, sugar and flour. While I’m normally a moderately healthy eater, biscuits are an area where I try not to skimp. They are often such small treats anyway that it’s best to consider them something special that you could have on a regular basis and not go too overboard with. If something is going to be consumed in 2 to 3 bites (or 4 – 5 nibbles), you’d definitely want first impressions to last. So bring on the good butter, muscovado sugar, pure vanilla beans, free range eggs and organic flour!

With that in mind, I thought I would create a new category that I plan to add to, as often as possible. The Good Biscuit will feature the biscuits that I have encountered in my kitchen travels, that I consider more than worthy as a companion to a comforting cup of tea (or coffee).

(A couple of things I’ve made in the past that also fit into this category include Belinda Jeffery’s Anzacs, these Mexican Wedding biscuits and OatCakeMan, which is really more of a biscuit to have with cheese, but I love them so much I like eating them on their own too!)

First up however, are these Sesame Coins from Alice Medrich’s latest book. Gorgeous, very tender biscuits that remind me a little of the Chinese peanut cookies I had as a child, every Chinese New Year. The surprise ingredient for me was the tahini paste, which I would never have thought to incorporate into sweet cookery. Tahini even turned up in Katrina Kanetani’s recipe for homemade Pocky. I suppose it makes sense, because it’s like a sesame version of peanut butter. Until now however, my jar of tahini had been confined to making hummus and miscellaneous other savoury concoctions. Happy days, when you find new uses for the ingredients in your cupboard! 🙂

Sesame Coins :
(makes 48 x 1 1/2 inch cookies; from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich)

85g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
195g unsalted tahini (pure ground roasted sesame seeds)
60g unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons natural or black sesame seeds

Whisk the flour and baking soda in a small bowl until thoroughly blended. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the tahini, butter, sugar, egg yolk, vanilla, and salt until smooth. Add the flour mixture and work with your hands until blended. The dough will be slightly crumbly, and you will have to push or squeeze it together.

Divide the dough in half – form it into 2 patties, and wrap the patties in plastic wrap. Chill for at least 2 hours, or, preferably, overnight.

Position the racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 162’C. Line the baking sheets with baking paper.

Remove one piece of dough from the refrigerator and allow it to soften slightly. Roll it between two pieces of wax paper to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Sprinkle the dough with half of the sesame seeds and roll over them gently to secure them to the dough. Cut as many rounds as possible, trying to minimize dough scraps, and transfer to the lined pans, spacing the cookies 1 inch apart. Repeat with the second dough patty. Press all of the scraps together, without overworking the dough, roll out, and cut additional cookies.

Bake until the edges of the cookies are golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the sheets from back to front and top to bottom halfway through baking. Set the baking sheets on racks to cool completely.

The cookies will keep in an airtight container for at least 1 month.

I woke B up last night from laughing out too loud in my sleep. Apparently my slumbering brain had invented the most brilliant word ever. It was ingenious, and the more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed, which got transposed into a sound that jumped the gap between sleep and consciousness. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the word means, and the reason behind its being. Such is the tyranny of dreams. I do however recall being half asleep and very irritated that he didn’t think it was a very good word at all. Doesn’t it sound exactly like.. ?

We finally cracked open the Deus last night. Beautiful beer, with a nice fine fizz and honeyed tone, but probably not worth the asking price. Still, it’s all about experiencing new things, right?

Something else I experienced a good few weeks ago, inspired the above dessert : a dinner at Rockpool(fish) which was capped off by a refreshing, mildly bitter Trumer Pilsner granita with salty peanut ice-cream. The dish came with a few tuilles on the side; the whole effect of which reminded me of the experience of having a beer with salted peanuts and chips. Simple, yet clever enough to keep you interested with each bite.

My version involves a similar granita with vanilla ice-cream and salty peanut nougatine baked to look like potato crisps. While it was good, it could never replicate the feeling of delight I got from tasting the original.

As for that word? Yes B, it sounds like I took the word spleen and changed one letter, but unlike my dessert, spleem is a highly original word in my opinion – a definite improvement on it’s predecessor. A word with an infinity of uses. As in, that was a spleemingly good dessert.

The Dictionary people will be knocking at my door any day now.