Hello lovelies. I am back with a late summer update. A couple of days ago I looked out my front window and realized that we are winding down summer. Life in quarantine is weird. I have slowed way down, and my time is measured more by the life in my garden than by clocks and calendars. When I looked out I saw that the garden was in that full throated bloom that happens this time of year. The roses are in their second flush, as is the coreopsis (yellow moonbeam on the hillside and ruby by the stoop). Purple coneflower is blooming ecstatically, the annuals are at their fullest and the Blackeyed Susan is coming into its own. The sedum “Autumn Joy” which had been displaying green flower buds is starting to color up, yarrow is budding, and the last of the lilies are gone. The cherry tomatoes are coming fast and furious, there are green beans to harvest every day, and the basil is embarrassingly lush. Mint overflows from its pot and the sage, oregano and rosemary are beautiful and lush. The catmint that was cut back to the ground in June is lush and green making the neighborhood cats very happy. And I have a gold finch. This morning I looked out at one of the herb boxes — a large free standing one on my back patio. I had put in a lot of experimental things this year and one of them was hyssop. I saw it at the nursery and thought it would be neat to grow. Whenever anyone asks me what it is, I tell them that it was used as part of the embalming ritual in ancient Egypt (which it was) and they are generally flummoxed. Gardening humor is the best. The hyssop bloomed earlier in the week, sending out tall spikes with fluffy looking purple flower clusters. Yesterday I looked out and saw a beautiful little yellow bird perched in the hyssop busily eating the seed heads from the blossom. I, of course, did not have my phone to take a picture, but I looked him up and sure enough he was a North American goldfinch. I watched him share the seed heads with a few bees and felt just a little more hopeful than I have for a while. I found a picture of one on the Audubon website. Isn’t he gorgeous?
I was in the kitchen because I had decided to make biscuits. I had been promising my hubby some authentic southern biscuits for a while, so here I was midweek preparing to make good on that promise. I found that all my butter was in the freezer, so I had to grate the butter into the dry ingredients. This was a happy accident as it resulted in some of the best, flakiest, most tender biscuits I have ever made. Even using plain old all purpose flour, they were almost as good as ones made with White Lily flour. I used this simple recipe:
INGREDIENTS
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o 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the board (if you can get White Lily flour, your biscuits will be even better)
o 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
o 1 tablespoon baking powder (use one without aluminum)
o ½ tsp salt
o 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, very cold
o 1 cup buttermilk (approx)
INSTRUCTIONS
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1. Preheat your oven to 450°F.
2. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, or in the bowl of a food processor.
3. Cut the butter into chunks and cut into the flour until it resembles course meal. If using frozen butter, grate the butter onto a sheet of wax paper using the large holes of a box grater. Add the shredded butter to the dry ingredients, and use your hands to toss the butter in until it is all coated. Continue with the recipe as written.
4. If using a food processor, just pulse a few times until this consistency is achieved.
5. Add the buttermilk and mix JUST until combined.
6. If it appears on the dry side, add a bit more buttermilk. It should be very wet.
7. Turn the dough out onto a floured board.
8. Gently, gently PAT (do NOT roll with a rolling pin) the dough out until it's about 1/2 inch thick.
9. Use a round cutter to cut into rounds.
10. You can gently knead the scraps together and make a few more, but they will not be anywhere near as good as the first ones.
11. Place the biscuits on a cookie sheet- if you like soft sides, put them touching each other.
12. If you like"crusty" sides, put them about 1 inch apart- these will not rise as high as the biscuits put close together.
13. Bake for about 10-12 minutes- the biscuits will be a beautiful light golden brown on top and bottom.
14. Do not overbake.
NOTES
The key to real biscuits is not in the ingredients, but in the handling of the dough.
The dough must be handled as little as possible or you will have tough biscuits.
Some people think that a food processor produces superior biscuits, because the ingredients stay colder and there's less chance of overmixing.
You also must pat the dough out with your hands, lightly.
Rolling with a rolling pin is a guaranteed way to overstimulate the gluten, resulting in a tougher biscuit.
Note 2: You can make these biscuits, cut them, put them on cookie sheets and freeze them for up to a month. After they are frozen, remove them from the cookie sheet and place in freezer bags.
When you want fresh biscuits, simply place them frozen on a cookie sheet and bake at 450°F for about 20 minutes.
While making these, I got to use one of my favorite kitchen gadgets. It’s a biscuit cutter designed to cut up to 6 biscuits at once, eliminating scraps so you don’t have to re-roll your dough more than once. So the step child biscuits made from scraps are not so numerous. Here is the ingenious invention. My hubby bought for me as a gift years ago.
We slathered the final product with butter and honey. Delicious. They looked just like the homey biscuits my granny used to make. Don’t worry, we didn’t eat them all! The rest are in the freezer awaiting our next craving.
Since the world is so crazy right now, take some time to walk in a garden, watch a few birds and maybe cook up a batch of biscuits. Until next time, keep cooking!
