Produced since 1912 by Nabiso, the Oreo is a biscuit comprising of cream sandwiched by two dense chocolate discs. It is universally loved and at one stage held the record for the post with the most 'likes' on Facebook before rapper Lil Wayne came along and crushed the Oreo's dream. To celebrate the Oreo's valiant attempt, I want to look into the mythos around this biscuit:
- Rumour has it is that Carnivals across the United States of America offer deep fried Oreos. At the time I couldn't understand it as the biscuit is already crisp and consider burnt cocoa as one of the worst tastes in the world. But it would seem that I am wrong as one blogger described the experience: "The Oreo loses it's hard crunchy texture and becomes a warm chocolately cake delight. The creamy center melts and creates an inner glaze."
- In 2007 Domino's offer an unforgiving public the Oreo Pizza. This comprised of a thin pizza base, icing and Oreo crumbs. I have tried to improve the concept in my head but any attempt always ends up with me removing the pizza component ... which defeats the purpose of an Oreo Pizza. To me the Oreo Pizza is like that mythical product, 'Toast on a Stick.' It's really hard to improve on the original, so just shut up and eat your Oreo.
- To successfully conquer the Chinese market, Oreos reduced the among of sugar and introduced the Oreo Wafer. Australian Oreos come from China and as a result I'm left wondering if Oreos look and taste any different in the United States of America. Drop me a line if you have the answer.
- Oreos come a variety of flavours and styles. Check them out of the Oreo wiki page.
That concludes my fact finding mission on Oreos and I think I'll have one for morning tea to increase today's world wide consumption of Oreos to twenty million, five hundred thousand and one biscuits.
With the drop in temperature, the march of the comfort food begins. I normally use a David Herbert recipe but I was far away from my beloved bookshelf so I whipped out my iPhone and logged onto Taste.com.au to locate a recipe. Though this one is pretty similar to my tried and true recipe, I found it a little watery and I had to make a couple of alterations e.g I need to have peas. However the thing I did like about this recipe is that it included carrots and celery, which I will include in my future Shepherd's Pies. So what are you looking at in the picture above? 1 chopped brown onion, 1 carrot peeled and chopped, 2 celery sticks, trimmed and chopped, cooked until soft. Then I added 700g lamb mince, browned, broke up any lumps before combining 2 tablespoons of plain flour. After this had cooked, I added two cups of beef stock, 1 dried bay lead, 1 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, 1 tablespoon tomato paste. I brought the mixture to the boil before simmering for 30 minutes. 
While the mixture was simmering I peeled, diced five large Cream Delight Potatoes, boiled them until soft and mashed them with butter and milk. I don't know what it is in these potatoes but they are fantastic, I found myself digging into a couple of spoonfuls of mash. Nom nom nom! Anyhow this the dish, with the lamb mixture, a scattering of peas, mash and a dusting of cayenne pepper.
If you leave this Shepherd's Pie it does eventually set. But I prefer to my pie to be ready to rock the moment it comes out of the oven. Back to David Herbert with some minor modifications. :)
