World MOINK Ball Day MONSTER Creation - MOINK Timpano!

We had a great World MOINK Ball Day with a large group of family and friends. I decided to do something a bit over the top for this Holiest of Holidays, so after cooking 60 MOINKS and putting out 30 for appetizers, I made the world's first grill-cooked MOINK Ball Timpano. Some of you may have seen this as the showcase dish on the movie Big Night. Timpano is a handmade Italian pastry that is filled with over a dozen Italian ingredients in layers. My version was made in a giant eight quart vessel and had a final cooked weight of 16 pounds. It took two days to make. After cooking, to get it out of the pan without a tragedy, I had to quickly flip all 40 lbs of pan, Timpano, and cutting board in one fluid motion. I was sweating bullets but it worked.

It was a huge hit with the crowd and half of the beast with sides fed everyone. We served it with a spinach salad and grilled lamb chops. I had the chops for a diabetic and a low-carb diet guest but they both broke down and ate huge slices anyways.

The Timpano included:
1 gallon of ragu made with smoked sweet Italian sausage and smoked veal
2.5 lbs. of rigatoni
7 hard boiled eggs
4 pounds of cheese including mozzarella, fontina, provolone, pecorino romano, fresh made ricotta
6 cups of sauteed spinach
5 kinds of plumwood smoked meats including MOINK Balls, sweet Italian sausage, genoa salami, hard italian sausage, and veal scallopini
4 beaten eggs

Making the Ragu:



Ingredient Lineup:


Rolling out pastry to 32" diameter!! - MOINK Ball for scale:


Laying down over 25 layers of ingredients:




Put on the grill indirect at 350 for 1 hour 40 minutes:


Rested it an hour and then flipped it while hiding from guests so nobody would see 16 pounds of food slide onto the floor:


Serving the first slices:



On the plate:


Thanks for sharing in my First Annual MOINK Ball Timpano cook.

landarc said:

What do you not understand about 'cannot be done on the grill'?

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DOES_NOT_COMPUTE.:icon_bugeyed

landarc said:

Also, is that a Kramer knife?

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That is a Kramer but one of the "cheaper" handmade commercial ones - not an original from his hand. I have a few in my kit from both the European and Japanese commercial collections.

There's a long story here but to make it short, I had an opportunity to get on Kramer's list years ago to have 3 knives fabricated but it was a lot of money for me at the time and a long wait so I foolishly ducked out. Ironically, as my salary has scaled so has the price of his knives ($500 per inch for my extravagantly desired specs) and he doesn't even accept orders anymore unless your name ends in Keller. I am on his lottery list so I have a whopping 0.1% chance of getting an order in next year. I wish someone would just give me one as a gift.ray: