Anise Seed Wafers

I came across a recipe for Tortas de Aciete y Anis in the cookbook "Food of Spain". I am always looking for recipes where the fat in the cookie or biscuit or bread or wafer is olive oil and there seems to be some tradition of this in Spain because Mark Bittman has a great orange cookie recipe that he says is an ancient Sevillan recipe. So I tried this recipe and it is quite good - I of course added the part about whole wheat flour and I like a little less sugar. The totally weird thing about this was that the liquids are all alcoholic - beer and anissette - except for the olive oil. Easy to make and fun, they remind me of my friend T., an epicurean dandy who used to mix hash and tobacco into roll your own anise papers. Ahhh, the days of youth.

Speaking of which, I have started to notice that some people in LA have an abundance of statuary. This house has many many many replicas of David.

Tortas de Aciete y Anis
3 cups all purpose flour (or half and half all purpose and whole wheat pastry)
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1/2 cup beer
1/4 Cup Spanis Anis Liqueur

1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Sesame Seeds
2 Tabls. Aniseeds

Preheat oven to 400 - line baking sheet with parchment.

Mix flour, 1 teas. salt in a bowl and make a well. Pour in beer, olive oil and anissette. Mix into a dough. Knead for about 4 minutes. Make into a ball. Divide dough in half. Divide each half into 8 portions.

Combine sugar sesame seeds and aniseeds.

Make a pile of seed mixture on your work surface, put a piece of dough on it, roll out on top of the seeds, embedding the seeds into the top. You want a six inch round. Put the rounds on baking sheet, seed side up and bake for about 5 or 6 minutes, until bases are crisp. Then broil until the sugar carmelizes about 60 secs in my case in my oven.

Drink with coffee and a little anisette.

We have been stressing out about the election and so ....

We garden.

Here you can see the central part of the driveway, which we dug up, removed the bricks and then planted with dymondia - a non-native plant that is drought resistant. The sides were dug up as well and California Fescue, which is native was planted. You can see the arch of the lemon tree that the beloved C. has been shaping.

The Rev. Auntie L got us started on this kick by giving us a garden center gift certificate. So off we went to purchase plants and to labour in the yard. The side garden here is coming along, soon we will plant bamboo mumbly and purple manzanita and then we will espalier meyer lemon and kaffir lime against the fence.

Here is the front of the house, with about a five foot square of evil grass dug up and planted with dymondia, and the front planter under the kitchen window having the weeds replaced with Allodia and some weird round ball stuff we had lying around in a pot with a distressed cactus. So we planted them in the planter as well and then took the stones that we had used on the back patio that we dug and really wasn't working because Beso was digging them out and eating the stones.

And here is a top - down view of the planter

Here's a close up of the Allodia.

And here is a photo of Beso looking like the flying nun.