How to Impress a Southern Boy

Show him your biscuits!

 

I love biscuits. They’re deceptively simple and infinitely variable. And for some reason they really seem to impress people. As if they’re some kind of fancy or something. Really, they’re not. Yes, it is nice to have freshly baked warm biscuits on the table at any time of day, but the ingredients are basic, and the process is simple.

To me they will always bring back memories of being flat broke, which is quite apropros to the origin of this dish; it gained popularity shortly after the stock market crashed about a hundred years ago. Recipe Guy’s grandma learned to make them from her mom, who was feeding a family of 6 on less than half an income. I learned how to make them when I cooking with Food Bank ingredients. Every week, I got flour, margarine, and powdered milk. Every week, I made biscuits and ate them for breakfast with jam, for lunch with peanut butter, and for dinner with soup.

Had I known back then that I could make a cream gravy with those same three ingredients, I’d have been eating biscuits and gravy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Because for all that it really is cheap Depression-era food, it’s freaking tasty!

Especially when you can dress them up a bit. Like with sharp cheddar in the biscuits and Argentinian beef sausage seasoned with garlic and chives in the gravy...

Biscuits and Gravy, Northern Style

What you need:

Biscuits:

• ½ c whipping cream
• ½ c milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• ½ c butter
• 2 c flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ c grated sharp cheddar (optional)

Gravy

• 1 large sausage
• 1 tbsp butter and/or bacon fat and/or sausage drippings
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 c milk
• salt
• black pepper

What you gotta do:

Let’s start with the biscuits. In your measuring cup, mix the cream, milk, and the lemon juice and let it sit for a few minutes.

I did this because I couldn’t find a smallish container of buttermilk. So yes, you can just use a cup of buttermilk here instead.

Chop the butter into chunks in a large bowl. For once, I’m not going to tell you to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. Biscuits are more like pastry and pastry is best made with cold butter.

Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the big bowl.

With a pastry cutter, or a couple forks, cut the butter and flour together. You can’t do this with warm butter, you end up “creaming” them like you would with sugar and butter for cookies and that’s not the effect we’re going for here.

What you’re making are tiny chunks of butter covered in flour.

When you’ve got a nice mixture with a texture kinda like damp sand, make a well in the middle with a spoon and pour in your lemony cream.

You’re not going to actually taste the lemon in this. That’s not what it’s there for. It’s there to make the cream even more acidic than it already is. The higher acidity will cause more of a reaction with the baking powder (which is alkaline) and you’ll get lighter, fluffier biscuits.

Mix the cream into the buttery flour until it’s just combined.

Turn it out onto a floury counter. Do Not Knead The Dough.

I know it’s tempting, but the last thing you want to do to this stuff is stretch it. Stretching forms gluten and gluten is not flakey. Pat it down into a shape as closely resembling a square or rectangle as you can, then roll it a little flatter. Flour it, fold it into thirds and roll it into a rectangle.

Since I only needed to feed two people and since biscuits are always better freshly baked, I split the dough in half and froze some for later… (I totally promise to show you what I did with it)

Roll out the half you’re keeping into a rectangle. You can flour, fold and roll again if you want. The more you do this, the more layers you’ll have in your biscuits and the flakier they’ll be. But once will do, if that’s all you feel like.

Spread half your grated cheese over the middle, fold one third in. Spread the other half of your grated cheese on top of the folded part. Fold in the other third.

Roll the cheesey foldey dough into a rectangle and cut it into 8 pieces.

Bake these at 400 for about 12 minutes until they’re nicely golden and the cheese is melty.

If you decide to stop here and just eat cheese biscuits, I will totally understand.

But really, it’s only a few more steps to make the gravy. And you can even do it while the biscuits cook.

Remove the casing from the sausage and break it up into a hot pan.

Fry it until it’s golden then remove it from the pan to drain on paper towels.

Depending on how fatty the sausage was, you may or may not need to add bacon fat, but I recommend a little at least, just for the extra flavour.

Add the flour and pepper, and sautee them in the fat for a few minutes.

Slowly pour in the milk, stirring as you go.

Don’t worry if it gets all clumpy,

just add a bit more milk and keep stirring.

You can use a whisk to break up any clumps or a soft spatula to mash them.

Just keep stirring and adding milk,and maybe a little more pepper,

and eventually you will have a lovely smooth, happy gravy.

Add the sausage to the gravy to make it even happier.

Put a couple of the cheesey biscuits onto a plate and smother them with gravy.

Um, I need to go make more now.

What did your family make during the depression?

The 32 Hour Day

I need one.

I do promise that eventually I will make Creamsicle cookies for Lyra. But omg math. I spent 9 hours on one day of the long weekend doing homework (more on other days too!) and I'm just managing to keep up. I've also started hiding in empty boardrooms on my lunch break so I can scribble numbers in peace. This is not looking like my funnest summer ever.

And after eating sandwiches and cereal for dinners last week I decided I really needed to make freezable meals again this weekend. Not that I object to cookies for dinner from time to time (you so have and you know it) but I just don't think a full week of it is a good idea.

So instead, I made meaty balls. Froze them. No pics.

And chili.

Or at least, what I call chili.

I'm sure there are purists of all kinds who are going to complain about one thing or another but you know what? Go make your own freaking chili. No beans allowed? Too bad. I love the musical fruit so they're in there. Ground beef? Yup. Deal with it. Tomatoes? Holy freaking crap you'd think the world was gonna end if someone put tomatoes in chili. But you know what? I did. And I still have an assignment due next week so obvioulsy it can't be that catastrophic.

Chili, The Way I Felt Like Making It

What you need:

• about 1 lb of lean ground beef
• 2-3 onions
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tsp dried crushed chilis
• 1 chipotle in adobo sauce
• 3 poblanos
• 2 anaheims
• 2 sweet red peppers
• 1 jalapeno (at least)
• 1 c dried pinto beans
• 1 c TVP (I'll explain later)
• 2 c crushed tomatoes
• 2-3 c beef broth

What you gotta do:

Chop your onions and garlic and combine them in the biggest pot you have (you know, the one you have to put on top of the cupboards because it doesn't fit inside them) with the ground beef and oregano.

While that's cooking (stir it from time to time to bust up the meat) chop your peppers. A coarse chop is fine. They're going to be in there all day simmering and will break down quite a bit, so save yourself the work.

Speaking of saving work, since you're going to be adding heat and seeds to this, don't worry about picking every single seed out of your peppers. If you just cut around the top:

And then pop the core out:

Good enough.

It's particularly easy to do this with poblanos, but it works on any pepper really.

Do it to them all, chop em, and toss em in the pot.

Give it a stir and then pile in the spices.

May as well stir them in too.

Now, add the dry stuff. Beans and TVP.

Textured Vegetable Protein. Yeah, I see you making that face. But you've probably already eaten it. I first learned of it from a vegetarian roommate. He'd use it to make spaghetti sauce, meatballs, pretty much anything that would normally have meat in it. It's cheap, fat free, veggie sourced protein and when it's reconstituted it has the same texture as ground beef. Even some restaurants use it (yup, you've probably eaten it). You can find it at most bulk stores, any health food store, and even at some supermarkets.

And it makes a pound of beef make a lot of chili.

But it is dry, and needs liquid. That's where the tomatoes and beef broth come in. You could use water, beer, or any other liquid you like. Start with about a cup and a half.

After a while, the beans will be wrinkly.

But then they'll start to puff up. You might need to add more liquid. I did.

I cooked mine on fairly low heat with the lid on (do not need the extra humidity in here). But still, check it from time to time, and add more liquid of choice if it seems too dry. And then eventually, you'll have something that looks like this:

And you'll be able to mash a bean against the side of the pot.

And the peppers will have broken down, and the TVP will look exactly like the beef, and the whole house will smell freaking amazing.

And since there was no way I was turning the oven on (it's finally warm here and I'm really thinking I need to get myself a little window AC unit) to make corn bread, I had it with corn chips. Organic blue ones. Fun!

And then I bagged the rest and froze them for later this week.

And probably for dinner next week as well since I really don't like eating the same thing for dinner every night. Except, apparently, when it's a bowl of cereal.

I really need a couple 32 hour days so I can get all the crap done that needs to be done. Like feeding myself.

What would you do with a 32 hour day?