Scribbles & Munch

      Lately, the sun hasn't been sleeping well. It's groggy, and doesn't want to roll out of bed when it's supposed to. So it drags a sheet of ragged cloud across the horizon and blearily peeks its pink face through from time to time. This means the first couple hours of morning are hazy, the light a diffuse shade of real strawberry lemonade, full of the lazy sounds of crickets. It's the kind of morning for wetting your fingertips on the condensation around your iced coffee, both you and the sun working up to a day of brightness.

      I am not a southerner - in fact I've only visited the Deep South twice, and briefly both times - but something about a hot, humid summer day makes me crave southern food. Visions of pan fried chicken, collard greens, and hot buttermilk biscuits dripping with butter and honey pop into my head, egged on by the sound of cicadas outside my window. And the next thing I know, I'm sweating over a stove instead of dining on cool, crisp salad like a sane person. *sigh* My stomach rules me.
     I wish I had my own recipe for fried chicken to share with you, but the truth is, Alton Brown's Pan Fried Chicken is the most delicious thing that could happen to that barnyard bird, and I'm smart enough not to mess with perfection. Follow the directions exactly and you'll be up convinced heaven is something that comes on a plate. I also wish I had my own recipe for collard greens, but I'm still wrangling that one--when I get it down, you'll be the first to know. I suspect my friend Addi has one and I just need to wheedle it from her. What I DO have (and what I made for breakfast this morning) is a recipe for Buttermilk Biscuits. Now back in May I posted a recipe for herbed buttermilk biscuits, which accentuates things like fresh ramps, chives, rosemary or thyme really, really well. But if you just want a true, straight-up buttermilk biscuit I actually recommend this recipe instead.*
      Now as I stated earlier, I am not a southerner, which means I do not possess that secret they share among themselves down in Alabama, Georgia and the rest that enables them to create clouds in baked-good form. Desperately - and for years - I have searched for an answer: is it the flour? The humidity? Do they feed their cows differently in that part of the country!?! Whatever it is, I haven't got it quite perfect...but I've gotten pretty damn close. I started with a biscuit recipe from Dori Greenspan's "Baking" cookbook (that woman is pretty much the goddess of baked goods--her shortcake recipe is foolproof, I tell you, FOOLPROOF!), but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Then I took in a few tips from Good Eats, in terms of ingredients and - just as important - the manipulation thereof. The result is my recipe below. And if you have a better one (hint hint, every person in Mississippi), please send it my way.

Z.D.'s Pure Buttermilk Biscuits

1 & 1/2 Cup all-purpose flour
1/2 Cup cake flour + more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons shortening, frozen & cut into bits
3 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
1 Cup cold buttermilk

 - Preheat your oven to 450º F, and line a baking sheet with parchment or silicone.

 - Whisk together your dry ingredients. Why the two different flours? A.B. swears the 3:1 ratio is as good as biscuit flour (something that supposedly is available in the south, but I was unable to find in two different grocery stores in Louisiana--maybe they hide it from Yankees). Also, be sure that your baking soda & powder are not too old. Ideally, you shouldn't ever have any older than six months, but unless you bake a lot that's unlikely. If you want fluffy biscuits, however, your leavening has got to be up to snuff. Make sure you keep a generous half cup of cake flour for dusting your surface and also for dipping your biscuit cutter!

 - Cut in the fats using your fingertips. Yes, use your fingertips. If your hands are hot, run them under cold water for a minute, then dry quickly and get started. You want a pebbly mixture when you're done, with fat-&-flour-bits ranging in size from oat flakes to sand grains to lentils.


 - Gently toss in the buttermilk until just barely combined. Turn out the dough onto a (cake) floured surface, dust with cake flour, and fold four times. As I mentioned in my last biscuit post, this does seem counter-intuitive: every good biscuit baker knows if you handle the dough too much, it becomes tough! But A.B. learned this technique from his grandma, and frankly, it works.


 - Pat the dough to about a one inch thickness. Using a metal biscuit cutter (they really do work best) cut straight down, then give a small twist as you remove the cutter. Again, I don't know why, but it works really well. Once you've cut as many biscuits as you can, gather the scraps and quickly and gently work them back together into another inch-thick pat of dough, then resume cutting. Continue until all dough is used.

See that one in the uppermost right? That's the last biscuit, molded from the scraps rather than shaped with a biscuit cutter. Watch how it comes out.

 - Place your biscuits on your prepared baking sheet, almost touching but not quite. See, the leavening will make the biscuits rise in all directions, so if they're close together most of the rising will be upward, making taller, fluffier biscuits. I put my biscuits in a honeycomb pattern to maximize proximity.

Behold the mutant biscuit in the upper corner!

 - Bake until just golden brown, about 16 to 18 minutes. Let cool on pan for a minute or two, then serve nice and warm, with plenty of butter, honey, and whatever else you like to slather on those puppies. I like to put a fried egg n one of mine and let the biscuit catch the yolky-goodness.

There's the mutant biscuit again. I tell myself nobody else will want it because it's weirdly shaped--more yum for me!

*Yeah, only somebody ruled by her stomach actually bothers with coming up with TWO freakin' recipes for buttermilk biscuits. You have my permission to mock me. But you probably won't, once you taste the biscuits.


P.S. - Just in case you're wondering what's going on in writer land: since deciding my current project needs to be more than one book, I've stopped working on the story and resumed tweaking the outline. I have a feeling this may take a few days. So the ambitious goal of actually finishing the whole first draft by today was - as I suspected - a pipe dream. No new clothes for me.
      But who needs clothes when I have fresh biscuits?!