Christmas Dinner: Timpano a la Big Night

This year for Christmas, we essentially had one very long Sunday Night Dinner, which started on Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday morning - complete with two sleep overs. For Christmas Eve we made Kev's beef stew and for Christmas morning I made this strata.  None of that compares though with what we ate on Christmas night.  If you've seen the movie Big Night, you probably know what a Timpano is. If you haven't - you can check it out here.  

I wish I could take credit for this creation, but it was really all Simon. He had been talking about making a timpano for well over a year and this seemed like the perfect time to do it. The recipe isn't hard, but it is super time consuming and labor intensive.  He prepared the meatballs and sauce a couple of days in advance and then the rest of the steps were done on Christmas day. 

While he made the dough, we drank some tea and ate some of Heather's amazing linzer torte. 

And then the assembly began.  We prepared two different timpanos - one meat and one veggie.

(click on any photo to make it bigger) 

 Got all that? Once the timpano comes out of the oven, you let it sit in the bowl for 30 minutes and then you very delicately flip it over onto a plate - this requires two people.  Let that sit there for another 20 minutes. 

Here's one of our timpanos (timpani?) patiently waiting its required 20 minutes. 

And then, very very carefully, we sliced into it. 

This is the veggie version. We held off slicing the meat version until we had all had a slice of the veggie. By the time we made it into the meat version, I was already in a food coma so don't expect any photos of that one.

After we were all thoroughly stuffed and couldn't possibly eat another bite, we had dessert.  I made this Pear and Raspberry Crostata, from a new cookbook I received as a present.  I love that the pears are halved and not thinly sliced.  I also love the little hints of ginger in there and the tartness of the cranberries. This recipe is a keeper. 

We used the timpano recipe from the official Big Night Cookbook. If you don't have $1,000 to spend on a cookbook (Simon found his in a used bookstore), you can look here for the recipe.

Hope you all had a happy Christmas as well.