The dinner

Here's a slice of the timpano, along with a picture of Jeff working on a flaming dressing for his spinach salad. And to end it all, Jeff's luscious chocolate dessert. All in all a wonderful meal !

Timpano !

The timpano came out of the oven looking great. The next task was how to flip it over... Jeff and I managed to do it together. It really was a thing of beauty. It was a challenge to slice, but it held together pretty well. And of course it tasted delicious !

Making the layers...

Pictures tell the story... Chicken, peas, ragu, meatballs, sausage, pasta, eggs, cheese all get layered into the dough bowl, which then gets closed up and put in the over.

The dough

All the components were ready, so the next step was to make some dough. It had to be big enough to line a gallon-size bowl, with enough over the sides to close up the top. It was a workout rolling the dough into a 25" round. Then (after having read a tip on the web) we folded the dough into quarters, lifted it into the bowl, and then unfolded it. Worked pretty well.

The Ragu

The ragu deserves its own post because it was so fabulous. First we had to brown sausage and short ribs, and then cooked those with the tomatoes. We used the sausage in the Timpano, but the ribs were just for flavor! The ragu simmered for 4 hours and was the best tomato sauce I have ever tasted in my life. I want to make the ragu again and just use it with pasta for a meal. It rocked !

Some of the ragu was mixed with some pasta to make up one of the Timpano layers.

Getting started

We started some of the prep work on New Year's Eve. We had to make meatballs, boil eggs, and poach some chicken breasts. The later required some wine, so our first task was to open a bottle. It was New Year's Eve after all.

Spent a couple hours on prep work; with that done, we called it a night. Had to get our rest for the big day of cooking on day 2.

New Year's Timpano

Our friends Tam and Barb gave us a cookbook for Christmas. It is called Regina's Table at Twin Oaks, by Regina Trosclair Charboneau. An accomplished chef, Regina (and her husband) have a home in Natchez Mississippi (Twin Oaks), and Regina offers weekend cooking classes.

Anyway, we found a recipe for something called Timpano in this cookbook. Its basically a big calzone, but maybe a little more interesting, ingredient-wise. The recipe was four pages long, and contained a number of components. After reading through everything, each component seemed manageable, and it looked like fun. We were having our friends Jeff, Susan, and Shea over for dinner on New Year's Day, and we wanted to do something interesting and special. So we decided on Timpano...

The Beginning

This is a blog about food and drink. Sure, there are millions of other such blogs out there, but this one is ours. We are lovers of food and drink, and want to share our experiences with our friends. Our plan is to chronicle our own cooking adventures, review restaurant meals, and maybe even share some wine recommendations. And so we begin....