Doggy Treat! Lamb Biscotti with Black Pepper and Herbs

Charlotte : Aaah! It’s gay porn!!
Miranda : What was your first clue?
Charlotte : You said we were watching an independent film! I brought biscotti!

- Sex and the City

It all started when I found minced-lamb at the local butcher. Ha, who am I kidding. It was the local expat butcher... and it was wayyy too expensive. But I'm really at my wit's end - this product is unavailable even at Marketplace. I draw the line at braving cranky public transport, and Little India crowds just for a dog's homecooked lamb luxury.

Pringleman (the creative culinaire in our relationship) mentioned he wanted to bake biscotti last night, and his method was pretty unorthodox: "I've seen this on TV before! Damn easy one!! Just throw in flour and bake!! *tosses cooked meat in blender, then mixes in flour*". I stood aside for the first ten minutes, gleefully waiting for him to fail. But the flour and meat were really expensive, and I couldn't bear to see it go to waste! Hence I quickly adapted Smitten Kitchen's Parmesan Black Pepper Biscotti recipe (below). The good part about biscotti is.. it's supposed to be hard and crunchy - there's no specific texture (i.e., a macaron's brittle exterior and marshmallowy interior). No matter how you mess up, simply bake for every long time on low heat to dry it out --

Makes 5 to 6 dozen biscotti. 
Dry Ingredients (Mix all these together)
1 1/2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns (freshly ground)
4 cups pea/rye/barley flour plus additional for dusting
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt  - omit salt for doggy!

Wet Ingredients 
1/2 oz Parmigiano-Reggiano, finely grated
4 oz Minced Meat (we used lamb)
Spices

Others
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

The Egg Mixture (beat all of these together)
3 regular (in Singapore context) eggs
3/4 cup whole milk

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 180c

Make your meat mixture

1. Cook the minced meat  (i.e., put it on a pan and flip until it turns dark) 
2. Blend in a food processor with dog-friendly spices until it looks somewhat like pâté

Make the biscotti dough

1. Mix the meat into the dry ingredients together, then the cheese, then the butter
2. Mix the egg mixture in bit by bit until you get a consistently sticky batter
3. Shape these into logs
4. Brush the tops with remaining egg yolk, and pepper with pepper :b

Bake the Biscotti

1. Bake the logs for about 20 minutes, remove from oven
2. When you can touch the biscotti with your bare hands, slice the biscotti with a serrated knife. Thin slices end up crunchier
3. Bake at 150c for the next 15 minutes - take the cookies out halfway to flip them over and rotate the tray

Cool and store in an air-tight jar for up to two weeks!

Notes

• Pringleman didn't grind the peppercorns! D: He just tossed them in. How blasphemous. But this gave the biscotti much more flavor at the end
• Spices - We used parsley and turmeric
• We used a drizzling of olive oil instead of butter.. because I forgot to buy butter
• We didn't use cheese this time, but I expect it to taste much better with cheese
• I've decreased the egg and milk requirement from the original, because my batter for cheese biscotti ended up being wayyy too wet

Do try the recipe! Don't be put off by the double baking - It's really not daunting at all, even for first time bakers - oh and there's also lotsa joy in checking on the treats while they're baking too :) It's an exercise in patience for Mr. Paws :) He really enjoyed following us around!

Yeeees we could've bought his treats.. but the truth is.. I'm a Serial Nibbler. When preparing Pringles' food, I'm not above filching a choice piece of human-grade liver. Baking treats enables me to safely share his food :)

Use other types of flour if you can. It's healthier for you as well!

Serious faced baby^^