Biscuits are better at home

Biscuits are one of those things that I just can't make. I have tried various recipes over time, and they never turn out how I want them to. They're either too hard, too flat, taste like nothing, or are just plain ugly. That is, until today.

I went to a friend's Christmas party Saturday night and really did my part helping her get rid of her red wine. Ugh. So, Sunday morning when I wanted sausage biscuits from the Barksdale to ease my pain, getting showered and dressed and out into the cold seemed like far too much effort to exert just for some breakfast. The good news: we had half a package of sausage in the freezer. So, time to make biscuits! I checked my favorite southern cookbook, The Lee Brothers Southern Cookbook, and located a recipe for bird eye buttermilk biscuits. Problem #1: no buttermilk. Problem #2: not even any milk! We did have some heavy cream leftover from a recent baking extravaganza, so I squeezed a little lemon juice into the cream and went with it. The recipe was also for little 2-inch biscuits, but I went ahead and used a juice glass to cut mine out. I wanted to make sausage biscuits after all, not hors d'oeuvres. Prepared for failure due to my long history of ruining biscuits and to the fact that I tweaked what was probably a perfectly good recipe out of sheer laziness, I made biscuit dough. I checked them a couple of times while they were baking and began to realize that I had, in fact, made biscuits! They were rising beautifully and turning brown on the tops...breakfast was on the way!

An important thing about biscuits: don't overwork the dough or they will be tough. For this reason, I chose not to make any biscuits from the scraps, but if you need more biscuits, you can always roll out the scraps to make a few more. They'll just be a little tougher than the first round.

Cream biscuits:
makes 6-8 biscuits

2 cups flour
1 T baking powder
4 t sugar
1 t salt
4 T cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 T cold shortening, cut into pieces
3/4 c cream with a squeeze of lemon juice

Preheat oven to 400. In the food processor, mix together the dry ingredients. Scatter the butter and shortening over the dry ingredients and pulse a few times until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Add the heavy cream and pulse a couple more times, just until the dough comes together. Remove the dough from the bowl of the food processor to a floured board and knead for about 30 seconds. Pat the dough into a rectangle about an inch thick. Fold the left third of the rectangle in towards the center, then fold the right third in towards the center. Fold in the same manner a couple more times. Roll the rectangle gently out into a rectangle about an inch thick, and use a 4-inch round cutter or a glass to cut biscuits. Place the biscuits in an ungreased pan (I use a cake pan) with the sides almost touching. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.

Baked Pappardelle, or the pot roast that lived on...

Believe it or not, this cheesy (and delicious, if I do say so myself) baked pasta dish began as a pot roast! The same day I made the duck rilettes, Chad and I also made a yummy pot roast dinner for friends. We browned the (red wine-marinated) chuck roast we got from Neola Farms in bacon fat, then braised it for a few hours with red wine, vegetables, and a bouquet garni. When it was tender to the point of falling apart, we removed the roast from the cooking liquid, reduced the liquid, and used it to glaze the roast at a higher temperature in the oven.

Since Chad and I didn't really have any idea how many people to expect for dinner, we ended up making far too much. (As opposed to our usual m.o. of making not enough? Ha!) Result? A large plate piled with leftover braised beef. What to do? Make bolognese! And make it I did.

Chad was out of town for a week or so, and I seem always to be inspired to make long-cooking recipes when I am in the house by myself. I used an onion, a carrot, some garlic, six big cans of organic whole tomatoes, the leftover beef, and a heck of a lot of olive oil, as well as some red wine vinegar to make my bolognese. The sauce cooked for about three hours, and by then the meat was completely changed from lovely tender pot roast to a wonderful, melty texture in the bolognese. I froze the sauce and gave half to my grandmother, who lived in Italy for a good while with my father and the rest of the family way before I was born. Incidentally, I was at her house a few days ago, and I noticed that the sauce is still in the freezer untouched. Hmmm...

The other half lived in my freezer for a couple of weeks until Chad and I decided to thaw it out and have it for dinner with some homemade pappardelle. Our pasta dough: 3 cups white flour, 1 cup wheat flour, a sprinkling of cornmeal, and six eggs. We rolled out the dough with the trusty kitchenaid pasta roller (gasp! I know, I'm just lazy that way) and cut the noodles with a pizza cutter. This was a delicious dinner, and the pasta was so easy to make that I really feel bad for ever eating boxed pasta.

And finally, after a very long day this week, we tried to go to Bari, our most favoritest restaurant in the whole wide world, with the kids to grab a quick dinner before heading home for bath time and bed time, but were unable to stay because the bar was packed (yes, we eat at the bar with our children. Big deal, wanna fight about it?) so we went home and had to scrounge for dinner. Enter the leftover pappardelle from two nights previous...put it in a baking dish, poured a little heavy cream over it and topped with bread crumbs, grated parm, and salt and pepper, and voila! The third and best incarnation of the pot roast: baked pappardelle.

Phew!

By the way, wonderful and more exact recipes for the pot roast and the bolognese can be found in one of my favorite cookbooks, Cooking by James Peterson.

Gjetost Ski Queen "cheese"

Ski Queen is without a doubt the weirdest cheese I have ever tried. My cousin Alison sliced me a bit after she tasted ski queen at Fresh Market, where it was paired with apple slices, which makes perfect sense for a cheese that looks and tastes like a big caramel. I know it sounds gross, but it isn't. It's more...intriguing.

I looked at the website for this strange Norwegian cheese, and I am now convinced that you go to Oslo for the sweaters, not for the food. Check out this recipe for a stew that includes ski queen cheese and reindeer meat, just in time for the holidays! And apparently, if you add ski queen to your gravy, you'll never want to make gravy without it again. I don't know about you, but I'm not buying it. Well, I mean, I bought the cheese, but I'm sure as hell not putting it in my gravy!

Duck Rillettes

Rillettes is a spread similar to pate that is made with meat poached in its own fat until it is falling apart. Not a bad start, eh? Since this type of preparation of meat is exactly how you end up with duck confit, I thought it would be a brilliant use of the enormous can of duck confit that Marion and Conan brought me from France ages ago. We had some friends for Sunday dinner recently, and I decided it was time to use the can of duck confit. It was a toss-up between rillettes and cassoulet, neither of which I had ever made, and both of which I really wanted to make. Since time is always a consideration when you have two small children, and the rillettes are infinitely easier to make than any cassoulet recipe I read, I made the rillettes.

The first time I had rillettes was at Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain's restaurant in New York, and it was pork rillettes (traditional) rather than duck. As far as I'm concerned, you could cook almost any kind of meat in a big pot of fat and it would probably be delicious, so I was a fan of rillettes before I ever tasted any. The recipe that I followed used butter instead of additional duck fat, and was seasoned with cognac, pepper, and parsley: oh-so french!

Duck Rillettes
adapted from foodnetwork.com, Emeril Lagasse

* 1 recipe Duck Confit (4 legs)
* 1/4 cup minced onions
* 1 tablespoon minced parsley
* 10 garlic cloves, reserved from the Duck Confit
* 1 tablespoon cognac
* 1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons fat reserved from the Duck Confit

Pull duck meat from the bones and shred. Discard skin and bones.

Combine the pulled meat, and all of the remaining ingredients, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Beat at medium speed for about 1 minute, or until everything is well mixed. Or use a food processor, taking care not to puree the mixture or let it turn into a paste. The texture should be like finely chopped meat.

Serve rillette with crostini.

If not using immediately, spoon rillette into ramekins and cover with reserved fat from the duck confit. Store in an airtight container, in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

By the way, you end up with a lot of extra duck fat when you use the meat for the rillettes. I roasted fingerling potatoes in some of it that same night to go with the pot roast...dang! Good stuff.

Midtown Farmer's Market

I visited this market Monday and, while I wouldn't really call it a farmer's market, it is definitely not your typical Memphis grocery. The produce was a little sparse, but the store did carry a wide variety of Neola Farms meats as well as the ridiculously low-priced seafood from Muddy's. A friend and I got a pound of head-on shrimp for $10 and a really nice grouper filet for $7. (Frozen, FYI) The store carries a selection of Aunt Lizzie's products, and also frozen entrees and sides from No Time to Cook. I hope this market sticks around for a while!



The Midtown Farmer's Market is directly across Union Avenue from Wiles-Smith Drugstore, where you can get yourself an orange freeze to reward yourself for being such a responsible shopper! (Or make yourself one at home by blending orange sherbert and orange juice together)

not-so-French Macarons

I was at a friend's party Saturday night when Dani, who I haven't seen in ages, asked me if I was still doing my blog. I told her that no, I had not done a blog in about fifteen months.

(my fifteen month-old)

Since I'm done having children now,

(my two month-old)

I thought I should get back to it.

For the past couple of days, I have been obsessing about macarons. Not the coconut kind, but the french kind. Lovely little airy bites of deliciousness that come in every flavor known to man. Maybe it's because I am co-planning a baby shower for a friend that is happening in a couple of weeks, and I am reluctant to re-do the all day event that was the onesie-cookie-decorating-party-favor-extrvaganza for the last baby shower I co-hosted. (I love you Julie!) Wouldn't a little baggie filled with macarons be just the perfect party favor? I think so. And anyway, it gives me an excuse to get this book I've been wanting!

For these macarons, I turned to a David Lebovitz recipe that I have used before with success. (When you bake for therapy, success is very important!) The recipe is for chocolate macarons with prune or chocolate filling. I used the cookie recipe, but not the filling, mainly because I did not feel like getting myself and my little son out in this torrential downpour that has lasted for about two months just to go to the grocery store and indulge my silly cravings. So, and here's the not-so-french part: I decided on a Halloween candy theme. My daughter has already been to several candy-collecting Halloween events, and we bought candy for the house as well, even though we never get trick-or-treaters (except the ones who come far too late, and are far too old, and are not wearing costumes. is this trick-or-treating or robbery?). I decided to go with Hershey bars and leftover pulverized almonds. Much sweeter than any french person would ever approve, but who doesn't love a Hershey bar?

A note about this recipe: make sure your oven racks are in the middle/upper section of your oven. I used the middle and bottom, and the poor cookies that baked on the bottom burned. And I don't have enough cocoa powder left to make more, and as I already said, I am not going to the grocery.

Chocolate Macarons
Makes about fifteen cookies

Adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris (Broadway) by David Lebovitz

Macaron Batter
1 cup (100 gr) powdered sugar
½ cup powdered almonds (about 2 ounces, 50 gr, sliced almonds, pulverized)*
3 tablespoons (25 gr) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
5 tablespoons (65 gr) granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (180 degrees C).

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and have a pastry bag with a plain tip (about 1/2-inch, 2 cm) ready.

Grind together the powdered sugar with the almond powder and cocoa so there are no lumps; use a blender or food processor since almond meal that you buy isn't quite fine enough.

In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they begin to rise and hold their shape. While whipping, beat in the granulated sugar until very stiff and firm, about 2 minutes.

Carefully fold the dry ingredients, in two batches, into the beaten egg whites with a flexible rubber spatula. When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop folding and scrape the batter into the pastry bag (standing the bag in a tall glass helps if you're alone).

Pipe the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheets in 1-inch (3 cm) circles (about 1 tablespoon each of batter), evenly spaced one-inch (3 cm) apart.

Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake them for 15-18 minutes. Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet.

For the filling, melt six miniature Hershey bars in the microwave for one minute, and mix with the leftover almond powder.

Spread one cookie with filling and top with another.

*I used slightly more than 1/2 cup of raw whole almonds, pulsed in the food processor until powdery, and then I saved all but 1/2 cup for the filling.



The last entry on my old blog, Edible Therapy, was an unimpressive-looking peach crumble. It will, sadly, live in cyberspace for all eternity.