Biscuits Redoux (a.k.a. Way the F@#$ Better Biscuits)

Kayso, our last Biscuit encounter was an exploration into the world of How to Do It Wrong.
Don't get me wrong, they were delicious; and I learned a few very useful techniques. But the texture was all wrong. I can open up a can o' biscuits from the store and get great texture, but creating that on my own is difficult because, honestly those guys cheat. They use big machines and fancy equipment to make their biscuits. I think a great chef should be able to do this without all the shenanigans. Like some ancient Samurai, who kills people with but a graceful sweep of his sword... >.> Something like that.

I consulted Nick Malgieri's 'How to Bake' for this next experiment, using the Buttermilk Biscuits recipe. I also used Bakewise's technique of handling the dough gently. And I folded some butter into the dough to make some nice layers (even Ogres have layers). These turned out extremely tender and delicious. Taste-wise, they were a little flour tasting, which is not bad, but I firmly believe that if I used heavy cream instead of Buttermilk, and added in a tablespoon or two of sugar, they'd have the perfect taste and texture for a sweet, breakfast biscuit.
As is, they would be wonderful rolled into balls and crammed together to bake as quick rolls. Brush a little garlic butter on top... mm.


2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into about 1"slices
plus more for spreading
3/4 to 1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.
Combine dry ingredients, stir with a fork or your fingers to mix.
Rub butter into dry mix (or pulse in food processor) until mixture resembles fine meal and there are no big butter lumps left.
Add buttermilk and stir in with a fork.
Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and turn it over on itself (lightly knead) until its less sticky and more dough-like. Gently pat flat, about 1" thickness. Spread butter over dough. Fold over itself a few times (do not knead, just fold), this creates buttery layers! Pat flat again into 1" thickness.
Cut with a biscuit cutter or a glass into rounds and place them on a prepared pan. Press any scraps together and pat again to 1" thickness, cut. Discard any remaining scraps (or roll 'em into a ball and make mickey mouse biscuits!!)
Bake 10-12 minutes until well risen and lightly browned.

Cheesy Potato Scones ala Martha

 These Scottish "scones" are traditionally cooked on the griddle and served hot with other breakfast items. Fried in butter, these are crispy on the outside but inside are soft with a texture of mashed potatoes. I got this recipe out of Martha Stewart's Living magazine (Feb 2012 edition). The only thing I really did differently was to use Parmesan cheese instead of the fancy hard-to-pronounce cheese she lists in her magazine and I used Red potatoes instead of Russet. Use whatever cheese you have. I think that rustic recipes should include any sort of thing you have lying around if it looks like it would work with it, as that is really the essence of any rustic recipe.

Potato Scones
4 Red potatoes, skins on (or two large Russet)
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 stick of butter
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup or so shredded cheese (Parmesean, Jack, Cheddar, or whatever fancy cheese you have lying around)

Wash potatoes well and put on a plate in the microwave (covered with a paper towel), microwave 15 minutes until soft (or boil in salted water until soft). If using Russet potatoes, I'd take the peel off at this point (or peel before boiling). Red potato peels taste good though.
Place 3/4 stick of butter (about 6 tablespoons) into a bowl, add hot potatoes and blend with hand mixer until well blended and skins are torn into little pieces.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Stir into potato mixture with a spoon, until just combined. With your hands, knead in bowl to form a dough ball (a minute or two), cover and let rest about 20 minutes.
Dust work surface and rolling pin with flour. Roll out dough into an 8x10ish rectangle, sprinkle on cheese, fold in half and roll out again into a rectangle. Cut into squares and pan fry in butter (at about medium heat) 3-4 minutes per side until browned and cheese is melted.

I Heart Food - A Food Rant

This morning I opened up a can of biscuit (whoop ass) and had those babies for breakfast, spread with creamy butter and a tart French marmalade. The biscuits were store bought. And I am a food snob. But I must admit, Pillsbury really knows how to build a biscuit makin' machine. Mouthful after mouthful of greasy, soft-yet-flaky biscuit, I wonder how they do that.

My favorite thing in the world is cooking. Food is like God, food is like porn. Food gives me a reason to live – literally and figuratively. I think I identify myself with Food. A strange thing to identify yourself with, you might think, but the truth is, there is no better faith.

Food is like rock and roll. Its art. Its music. It gets you going. It gives you a glimpse into a fantasy world, where everything is good and fine and perfect. It puts you in another place.

Have you ever had a pasta so good, it made you wonder if you felt what they felt in the old days, when people cooked over a real fire and harvested each grain of wheat by hand and ground it under real stone? No? You're missing out.

You eat two to three times a day, or more: breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner, snacks; the list goes on And that is a normal day. Think of holidays, birthdays, celebrations of all kinds. There's always food, whether its some special cakes, cookies, pies or appetizers or snacks or a huge elaborate banquet. Food is an integral part of our lives, one that is taken as much for granted as using the toilet. You just do it, every day, without really thinking about it.

That is the problem with this country. Nobody cooks anymore. People think the problem lies in politics or the economy or the oppression of other nations. It doesn't. Its about the inability to really get down and enjoy life anymore. The simple things are the ones most taken for granted, yet the most integral to our existence. Nations rise and fall. Life goes on. Sure, I mean if some other nation invaded ours and took over, we'd be speaking another language and we'd be all oppressed and whatever. Who cares? We'd still eat food, every day (hopefully). And, god damn it, some one still has to cook.
I actually feel very blessed to be able to come home to my little apartment kitchen. It's like a heavenly escape, with delicious tastes and smells and textures. It really doesn't get much better than this. 
Yes, these are the kinds of things I think of when I get up in the morning.

And now... for a cup of freshly ground and brewed coffee.

Toad in a Hole

I know most of you call it 'Egg in a Hole' or some other derision of that. But this is Toad in a Hole, which is more fun. This is easy and buttery and delicious and probably healthy - when you consider pop tarts and cocoa puffs for breakfast, this is healthier.

Serves One
double or tripe recipe for more people
 
Two peices of Bread
A cup with a small mouth (a wineglass works well) or small round cookie cutter
2 Eggs
Butter
Garlic Salt, Pepper

Heat a pan to medium. Cut circles out of the middle of each piece of bread with glass, set aside centers. Drop 1 tablespoon or so (a dollop?) of butter into the hot pan. As the butter melts, place each slice of bread into the melted butter. Drop centers in to remaining melted butter (add more butter if needed). Crack 1 egg into hole in each piece of bread. Add a few dashes of garlic salt and pepper, or whatever seasoning you like on eggs.
Cook eggs for two or three minutes per side, depending on how you like your eggs. I like mine over medium so I cook them for a minute or two, till the bread is browned and the back of the egg is cooked, then flip it and cook another minute on the other side. Flip centers when browned.
Serve hot toasts with toasted centers for dipping into egg yolks. Or just eat them with jam, they're delicious!

Fish N Chips

Good Fish n Chips is hard to come by in the states, unless there's a good British pub nearby. This recipe is pretty darn good. Made it for 6 people tonight and it turned out very satisfactory. I used a deep fryer but you can use a stock pot or another deep pot.
The original recipe shows you how to make your own 'authentic' type chips, but I used frozen crinkly fries.
Yum! Based on the recipe from Food.com

Serves 6
12 Tilapia filets
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup good beer (about 8oz, beer bottles usually come in 12, so drink the rest!)
Salt and pepper
1 bag of frozen crinkly fries

Heat up deep fryer and a pot of oil on the stove (or two fryers if you have em), for fish and fries while you ready the batter. Turn your oven on Warm. Stir together flour, baking soda and beer with a whisk. Make sure there aren't any flour lumps. Season with salt and pepper. 
Shake fish in some flour (this is important for the batter to stick to the fish). When oil is ready for frying, dip each piece of fish in the batter and then carefully drop in the oil.  I have a small fryer so I only do two pieces of fish at a time. Fry until golden brown, about 3 or 4 minutes, remove with basket or slotted spoon and place on a plate or baking sheet lined with paper towels.
Keep cooked fish in the oven to stay warm while the rest cook.
By the time your fish are done, your pot of fries should be ready as well.

Serve with lemon slices, salt and malt vinegar.

Quickish Chili for Two

Looking for something easy to make that you don't have to go shopping for? Grab a few cans of stuff from your pantry, brown some meat, dump it all together and season to taste.
Minus having to wash ALL of the dishes in the house... >.< (insert irritation here)... this only took about 15 minutes to make. Delish and easy lunch, great for cold winter days.

1 can black beans (or any kind of beans really)
1 can stewed tomatoes with peppers (or without if you dont like spicy)
1/4 lb ground beef
spices such as garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, seasoning salt and black pepper
Shredded cheese, Doritos (optional)

Brown beef in skillet, drain. Season meat with cumin, garlic, onion, salt and pepper. Dump in cans of beans and tomatoes, let cook 5 minutes or so to bring up to boil. Should thicken with the bean juice but, if not, feel free to add a little corn starch mixed with water to thicken (or masa with water if you have it). Taste and re-season if necessary.
Top with shredded cheese and Doritos (Cheese is best but I happened to have Cool Ranch and it was good to). You could probably use corn chips too.

Pho Style Ramen

I'm a big fan of Pho. There is an amazing Vietnamese coffee house in Ft. Worth Texas called Lieu's which not only has nom-alicious iced coffee but, of course, excellent Pho. If you don't know, pho is a noodle soup dish (usually rice noodles) with all kinds of spicy fun stuff you can put in it, like bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, jalapenos, etc.
I made some 'fake' pho for lunch. I call it Poor Girl's Pho. Because I'm a girl.

Poor Girl's Pho
serves 1
1 pkg dry ramen (i used Chicken flavor)
1 egg (optional)
1/4 lb ground beef
A handful of cilantro, thinly sliced jalapenos

In a skillet, brown ground beef and season with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Boil 1.5-2 cups water, add dry noodles (without flavor packet). Cook for a minute or two, stirring to separate noodles. Add flavor packet, stir.
Drop a whole egg into the middle and let simmer until cooked (I like mine with the yolk runny, but you can 'scramble' it by stirring it a little while it cooks).
Serve noodles along with a plate of 'toppings' - the beef, cilantro and jalapenos.
Rooster sauce is always nice too.

Biscuits... Like a Baws

 Why do biscuits from a can taste so good? Things from a can are supposed to be not-good.
Am I right?
Biscuits have always been my evil nemesis when it comes to baking. They always turn out hard like icky buttery rocks and, I hate to say, I'd rather just open up a can of biscuit whoop ass and put those babies in the oven than try to do it myself.
But no more! Today I actually made decently good biscuits. Turns out, it's easy!
The trick is, the dough needs to be wet and handled gently.
No yeast. No rolling. No kneading.

I'm not going to re-type the entire recipe with directions here, but you can find this in Bakewise under 'Touch of Grace' Southern Style Biscuits.

Kayso, of course I did things my way. I don't own self-rising flour or buttermilk. According to the Internet, you can add a bit of melted butter to milk to make Buttermilk (go fig?) and self-rising flour is simply flour with baking powder added to it. So methinks... I can do this.



The first batch was too wet. Made biscuits smaller since the batter was so wet (do they mean large or small curd cottage cheese? when they say soupy, does that mean still lumpy?). Also by melting the butter and adding it to the milk, the milk was WARM where it should be cold which may have contributed to the over-wetness of the dough. 
Very nice flavor though, and I can use these experimental ones for biscuits and gravy!
Useful Lesson #1: 'Like cottage cheese' means the dough is just really sticky (not soupy)
Useful Lesson #2: Make 'buttermilk' 10-15 minutes early and refrigerate to achieve coldness.

The second batch was better. But still too thick, not enough lift to biscuits. Not sure if I added enough baking powder to flour. Try again with two teaspoons instead of one.
Useful Lesson #3: You can make your own 'self rising flour', but pay attention to ratio of flour to baking powder.

The Third Time will of course be 'the charm' but I ran out of cream and I don't have any money until next paycheck.
Useful Lesson #4: Be sure you have enough ingredients for several batches. 

Sorry for the (insert dramatic music) Cliffhanger!!! >.<

German-ish Food

For a few years, I lived in San Antonio, Tx. Nice city, lots of great food. There is a lot of great German food there, since there is a large-ish German community in the area, for some reason. If you're in the area, there's a restaurant I like called Old World German Restaurant (in ye olde country, heh!) on Babcock Rd. Very authentic, and also great pastries. Eat there!

So last night (I didn't blog it because I was drunk at the time) we had semi-authentic German type food. Well I think the potato salad was more or less authentic. The sausages were store bought. But yummy!

Beer Bratwursts with German Potato Salad
Serves two to three people

Brats: 
1 package Beer Bratwurst's (Johnson's usually comes with 5 sausages)
1 bottle of good beer (I like Dos Equis but any beer you'd drink is good)
1 Tablespoon [or so] of butter (optional)

Potato Salad:
3-4 medium sized potatoes (I use large Red potatoes with skin on)
4-5 slices bacon (I'm quite fond of Applewood Smoked thick cut)
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon parsely
salt and pepper to taste

For the Brats - Heat a pan to medium high and sear the sausages on both sides (a minute or two per side), then pour in the beer (about half a bottle), lower heat to medium. Cook 15-20 minutes until liquid is boiled off, turning halfway through so both sides are colored. To caramelize a bit more (optional), drop some butter into the pan and fry  sausages in the butter and juices (be careful not to burn) to get bit of crisp on the outside of the sausage. Yum!

For the Potato Salad:
Wash the potatoes and put them in the microwave for about 15 minutes, cook until soft. Or take the scenic route - slice into chunks, cover with water and boil until soft (10-15 mins). While potatoes are cooking, fry the bacon until crispy. In a large bowl, combine water, vinegar and sugar. When potatoes are done and still hot, add to the liquid and stir so potatoes soak up the flavor. Add crumbled bacon, parsley, salt and pepper to taste.
Alternately, simmer liquid in a pan, add potatoes and cook just until liquid is soaked up. Add bacon, parsley, salt and pepper to taste.
You can fry onions with the bacon if you like onions.

Slice sausages and serve with potato salad on the side :) Eat with Beer.

Roast 'n Dumplings

So I made a pot roast the other day in the crock pot. Love crock pots - makes life easy. People bring you coffee, for free. Policemen decide not to give you speeding tickets and let you of with a warning. Y'know, makes life easier. Really!
Anyway I made a pot roast - a little of this, a little of that. I rubbed the roast real well with salt and pepper, seared it in a hot pan on all sides till browned nicely, then threw it in the crock pot (well, gently placed) with a bit of water, some beef and tomato bullion (tomato paste and beef broth work fine too of course). Chopped a few potatoes, half a large onion, threw in some baby carrots. Easy.
Problem is, sometimes you ACTUALLY have leftover food. So what to do with leftover pot roast?
Tastes delicious but nobody eats leftovers in my house, EVER. Well I've been known to reheat leftover pizza sometimes. But I digress. Turning leftovers into something entirely different so people will actually eat them is... kind of an art, I think.

 Roast 'n Dumplings
Don't tell them it's leftovers!

1 Pot Roast with Veggies and any Juices
(break up meat into little pieces)

1-2 bullion cubes (for flavor)
A large pot
1 batch of dumplings (see recipe)

Skim any residual fat off of the roast if necessary. Dump everything into a pot, add water to cover. Cook over medium/high until bubbling. Add bullion or other seasonings if it tastes bland. I think I also added some dried basil and oregano (since the roast already had those) for a little flavor boost.
Add dumplings to pot, boil for 10-15 mins until dumplings are big and poofy and bready in the middle.

Dumplings

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon margarine
• 1/2 cup milk

1. Stir together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in medium size bowl. Cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in milk to make a soft dough. Roll into golf ball sized balls.

Brownies

Having successfully resuscitated my Nook from an untimely disconnection to life (power cord broke) and also having finally arrived back "home" to Virginia from a ridiculously long military deployment... Deep breath...
I decided to make brownies.

I've been drooling over Shirley Corriher's Bakewise for much of the deployment and missing my kitchen dearly. And my coffee pot, omg, but that is another issue altogether.
Bakewise is an informative guide for aspiring bakers because, in addition to detail and advise on baking, Corriher also gives you the plain ol' how and why of each recipe. It's not just recipes, this book is about technique. Anyone who knows or suspects they know anything about food understands that it is technique that distinguishes between a good cook and a phenomenal chef.
Unfortunately, this recipe is NOT from Bakwise. I didn't have all the ingredients in hand. So. This one is from Allrecipes.com, a great source for tested recipes with reviews.
This is but one of many brownie experiments.

This recipe makes a moist brownie with a crisp crust. My addition of alcohol (instead of vanilla extract) not only adds flavor, but moisture. This isn't a dry cakey brownie. It's very moist with a velvety texture.

The original recipe is here.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used chocolate liquor- around a tablespoon)
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch square pan.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and water. Hear over medium until boiling, stir continuously to keep from sticking. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips until melted and smooth. In a mixing bowl, add the eggs and vanilla/liquor. Just break the yolks, don't mix thoroughly. Gently add chocolate mixture. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the remaining mixture. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until brownies set up. Do not overbake! Cool in pan and cut into squares.