Anzac Biscuits
Totally forgot Anzac Day this year. In case anyone else is also in the same boat, here is my tried-tested-and-true Anzac Biscuit recipe.
Totally forgot Anzac Day this year. In case anyone else is also in the same boat, here is my tried-tested-and-true Anzac Biscuit recipe.
If you’re in New Zealand at the moment, you’re probably celebrating Waitangi Day on the beach or with a picnic. You could do something similar in Ireland but you wouldn’t last long on a wind- and rain-swept beach and picnics really need to be at home in front of the fire! This wintery weather lends itself very much to warming soups so, after chancing on some lovely sweet potatoes in Fermoy’s last remaining veg shop, I decided that it was time to make Meg’s Spicy Lentil and Kumara Soup – kumara is a Maori sweet potato that we eat a lot of when we are in New Zealand but can’t get in Ireland. The sweet potatoes that I picked up weren’t a bad substitute, though, I’ll definitely be back to get some more to make more kumara recipes. Now, time to make some Anzac Biscuits for a real Kiwi treat – although I guess I should really be making a Pavalova!
It being Anzac Day this week – and no, I still haven’t got around to making Anzac Biscuits, due to the local shops all selling out of desiccated coconut on the day in question – I was delighted to hear from Slow Food in Christchurch that the 1914 edition of the essential Kiwi cookbook, the Edmonds Cookery Book, is now available online.
It’s been years since I ate porridge regularly for breakfast. Lumpy and overboiled, it was always a one of the foods that I hated as a child – unless it was made in the Aga at Oldcastletown by my grandfather. Put into the bottom oven the previous night, his porridge was one of the highlights if we stayed overnight.
Since the day itself I’ve cooked Anzac Biscuits a couple of times. They seem to be the kind of biscuit that doesn’t really know how to go off, getting slightly more chewy after the first day they’re baked but none the less tasty for that.
Yesterday – 25 April – was Anzac Day. Now, in the days before I got myself the Kiwi boyfriend, I mainly knew the word Anzac from some recipe for Anzac Biscuits that I had cooked when I was a kid.