Heft and Mouth-feel
My local bakery in Australia makes stunning Anzac biscuits. Named for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps during World War I, they have morphed from what must have been something akin to hardtack into a rolled oat and coconut cookie with a satisfying crunch.
I try to avoid them when I’m in a slimming mode because they are compelling. When I have relinquished tight rein on the calorie consumption, I keep them quartered in the freezer, cut when they were still warm, so the oil or butter will stay fresh and the crunch crisp — moist tropical air being the softening agent here.
I order 2 dozen at a time and parcel out the quarters to friends and relatives for a quick dessert, a snack, or, hell, even breakfast. See? I’m not entirely in control when Anzac Biscuits dwell in my freezer. They call to me. I like to check the inventory from time to time, like Pooh conducted inventories of honey. In fact, as I write this, I would head for the freezer right now to consider the sweet crunchy bits in my mouth for descriptors, but alas, no such bikkies dwell there now.
When my daughter arrived at our house before we did one spring, she set up the house for us, including the Anzac bikkies nesting in the freezer. When she went to the bakery to put in her order, the clerk asked her if she was the daughter of that American lady. Bingo. That would be me. I have a certain reputation.
I don’t mind being the American lady — I AM an American lady. One who likes Anzac Biscuits. I’m often introduced as “my American friend.” Rare is the additive “who likes Anzac Biscuits” but I don’t reveal this to just anyone. But, American, I remain.
Aussie’s have a national identity compartment for those not born their soil. An acquaintance of mine will always be “the English woman’ even though she’s lived in Australia for 35 years, is an Australian citizen, and has Australian children. It makes me wonder if the first generation is always transitional — longing for the remembered good bits of what was once home and enjoying the benefits while dodging the pitfalls of the new one.
I guess the question is: when does one begin to feel more Aussie than English, more Aussie than American, more Aussie than Cambodian, more Aussie than Japanese? Is it when outsiders let you be Australian or when you make an internal switch? A friend of mine who married an American and who has lived most of her professional life in the States, thinks of herself as Oz-merican — internally, and now both legally.
We humans have been on the move since Africa — adapting, grouping, overpopulating and moving on. One in four Australians was born elsewhere. Everyone in Australia is from an immigrant family, really, even the First Culture indigenous. All of us have been, if you look back far enough. In fact, that’s what strikes me most in cities like Sydney — how many people are there from different cultures, from different countries, and how they’ve made their way to these shores rather than others. Quirks of fate or deliberate choices. Or maybe people just kept moving on from discomfort until they arrived somewhere useful, somewhere with a recognizable comfort.
Comfort. When I was in the states and longing for a bit of down under, I tried to make Anzac cookies on my own. I used to have a fair hand at oatmeal cookies when my kids were little and Anzac’s are basically a tropical oatmeal cookie — coconut substitutes for nuts or raisons or even a chocolate chip or two. But my effort was disastrous. My oven was too hot, and melted the butter, so the cookies got too flat, too lacy, and too crisp.
The mouth-feel almost as important as the taste. Mine were more like oatmeal candy when what I was looking for was heft. That didn’t stop me from having one or two just to get a hint of comfort and my husband had a few more, just to make sure my taste test needed to be verified, but the rest of the batch ended up in the rubbish bin.
I have a friend who loves baking a good dessert. Of course, she is reed slim in one of those irritating karmic injustices. She makes nifty Anzac cookies — actually better than the bakery as she doesn’t spare expensive ingredients. But there is something compelling about those bakery cookies — thick and crunchy. They can’t sell them fast enough to their regular trade, so they get rancid sitting for days on the shelf, although I don’t know why they don’t freeze them, like I do. I might suggest that when I order my next batch.
Maybe you’d like to experiment with Anzac cookies? Here are a couple of links for experimentation. One is for a version in American measurements and the next with Australian measurements. By the way, if you should happen to see “golden syrup” in the recipe, Karo syrup fills the same role. (-Yes, I have made a pecan pie with golden syrup for an Aussie-grown Thanksgiving dinner, complete with locally grown natural-looking turkey in the early summer November heat. Works fine.)
Bald Mountain near the Queensland border with NSW
April 25 is Anzac Day, to honor those who have died in foreign wars, particularly those who died in the disastrous assault on the Turks at Gallipoli during World War I. As you try these cookies, think of the young men who went adventuring to war half way around the world and died too young, denying Australia and New Zealand young families and eventually people would populate young countries.
1. http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2007/12/12/anzac-biscuits/
2. http://goaustralia.about.com/od/practicalinformation/r/anzacrecipe.htm
Note: I include a photo of Bald Mountain from a recent hike near the Queensland/New South Wales border. I imagine that those soldiers who fought and died at Gallipoli thought about the stark beauty of their homeland when they were so far away.
