DUNK THOSE DIGESTIVES

Make biscuits for tea time

“A Thermos of tea and Ovaltine Biscuits.” That's what homemaker Linda Becker in Sarnia, Ont. asked her husband to bring to the hospital in 1981 to toast the birth of her daughter, Alyssa.

Becker had grown up eating them in New Amsterdam, Guyana, which was then a British colony. And 41 years on, Alyssa, buys and eats Ovaltine Biscuits for herself.

“It's an iconic product with a passionate and loyal following,” says Nimal Amitrigala, president of Grace Foods Canada Inc. “If you grew up in Jamaica, they were a pantry staple.”

The time is ripe for this nostalgia. To pour a “cuppa” and break away from a world gone mad.

Let's talk about dunking. Getting it right is important. There's a moment before disintegration when the biscuit is sopping. The British brand Mcvitie's even has a dunking expert, Stuart Farrimond, and he claims that dunking digestives in a milky drink releases more flavour than you'd get from a dry one. Two quick dunks are ideal.

Plain digestive biscuits are like Euro walking shoes — sensible, not sexy. “It was my grandmother's favourite aisle of the supermarket,” says Guardian columnist and Rome-based food writer Rachel Roddy. “Her teacup saucer always had two biscuits on it.”

The breakfast ritual of her Italian husband, Vincenzo, is also up for scrutiny. She admires his commitment. With his morning milky coffee, there are massive soft, cakey biscotti all'uovo, a childhood holdover from growing up in Sicily. “You have to dunk them,” she says. “Italians say, `inzuppare.'”