Biscuits!

Yet another "I was told to blog about this" post!  And so I am.

So biscuits! So easy! So delicious! So buttery!

My favorite biscuit recipe is Smitten Kitchen's cream biscuits. They are literally 4 ingredients, one bowl, DEAD EASY, tasty tasty biscuits.

It took me a while to make the connection as to why these biscuits work so very well, considering the usual way of making biscuits is to cut or rub cold butter into the flour/salt/baking powder, then add buttermilk or milk to make a dough.  But then, DUH.  Butter + buttermilk - shaking = cream.  

A few tips: don't overmix or over knead biscuits or they'll be hard and tough. You just need a light hand with the mixing and the patting out. Don't bother with a rolling pin, use your hands.  And I don't bother cutting them into rounds with a biscuit cutter or a glass because I hate gathering the scraps and repatting them out.  It's far easier to just gently pat the dough into a rectangle and cut the rectangle into smaller square biscuits.  Quicker, too. 

Smitten Kitchen says they can be frozen pre-baked, and then baked off straight from the freezer with a few additional minutes in the oven. I have never tried that because biscuits now please.

I have successfully made a half recipe and then regretted it because I wanted more biscuits.  Don't make my mistakes people. 

And so here's my version of Smitten Kitchen's version of James Beard's Cream biscuits:

Makes 10-12, depending on how big you want them.

2 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt, or 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Oven at 425°F.

Melt your butter in the microwave, and put to the side.  In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt with a whisk or a fork.  Stir in 1 1/4 cups of cream, making sure all the dry bits are incorporated. I use either a fork or a silicone spatula.  If the dough is stiff, add a little bit of the remaining 1/4 cup, a little at a time. 

Don't overmix or over knead or the biscuits will be tough.  Dump your dough onto a flourer surface and gently pat into a rectangle or square about 3/4 inch high.  Use a sharp knife or a pizza cutter and cut into 10-12 squares.  Place squares onto a parchment or silpat covered baking sheet a few inches apart, and brush lightly with the melted butter (drizzling is fine too if you don't have a pastry brush). 

Bake until golden brown on top, about 12-15 minutes. Don't underbake--the golden crispy top is the best part.  Eat.

Edited to add:

I nearly forgot to tell y'all how to mess with them!

• Add shredded sharp cheddar, and voila, cheddar biscuits.  
• Add chopped rosemary or chives, and voila, herbed biscuits.
•  Add chopped rosemary or chives AND cheddar, and voila herb cheese biscuits. 
• Add a tablespoon of sugar, serve with sliced strawberries and whipped cream and voila, strawberry shortcake.

The ultimate pasta sauce

It's Marcella Hazan's onion-butter-tomato sauce. 

And it's not just me who thinks so. No one who has tried this sauce doesn't agree.  The beauty part is that it's dead easy, super tasty, and freezes wonderfully.

Make it. Make it now. Seriously. 

don't use this whole chunk of butter. Or the whole onion.

Here's what you need:

big can of whole tomatoes (though I've fudged it with a big can of chopped tomatoes)

Half a stick of butter

A yellow onion

Salt

Open the can of tomatoes, dump it into the saucepan. Break them up a bit with your (clean) hands or a wooden spoon. Add half a stick of butter (per can of tomatoes, you can double this recipe super easily).  Cut the onion in half, and take off the peel and any root thingies.  If your onion is small, throw in both halves as is.  If it's big, throw in one half, and stick the other half in the fridge for something else. Add a big pinch of salt, and put the pot on low heat.  

The butter will melt into the tomatoes and disappear.  about 30 minutes later, the butter will start reappearing as little droplets of oil on the surface. Fish out the onion and toss it.  Stir, breaking up the tomatoes a bit more if you need to.  

Eat.  

It's like crack, right?. SO GOOD. 

linky links! the food edition

Dorie Greenspan's custardy apple squares on food52.com

Why oh why does no one in my house save me like cooked fruit?  This looks AMAZING. 

I myself prefer fudgy, but not overly fudgy, brownies. Food52 breaks it all down. 

Mmmm. Nachos. 

It's well worth the trip to Philly for Bassett's ice cream. 

An oral history of  More Than Words by the brilliant Maura Johnston. Cheese is a food, a delicious, super catchy, awesome food. 

Perfect eggs

the incredible edible...

this is another one of the posts that I was told to write (this time, by jbb). The perfect, easy peeling, hard or soft boiled egg. 

First, and this is the biggest trick for an easy to peel egg, use old eggs. And by old, I mean like a week old, not like months. If you get awesome freshly laid eggs from chickens you know or the farmers market or whatever, wait like two weeks.

The reason for this is that the little air space inside the egg will get bigger as the egg ages. The more air inbetween the egg and the shell, the easier it'll peel.

So take your old eggs, put in cold water in a pan, covered with like half an inch of water, cover and bring to a boil. As soon as the water boils, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and set the timer for 11 minutes for hard boiled eggs, 5 for soft boiled eggs. 

When the timer goes off, dunk the eggs in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Voila, eggs!

the best/easiest vinagrette

I was informed that super easy vinagrette recipe that I rattled off in the hallway at work, was, in fact, worthy of a blog post... and so, I present the best and EASIEST vinagrette!

You can make this in a bowl, but it's way easier to do in a jar with a lid.  If you're truly lazy like me, wait until you're just about out of dijon mustard, and make it in the not-washed-out-mustard jar.

my favorite dijon

here's my measuring

Start with a plop of dijon mustard.  And by plop I mean spoonful-ish.  I've also been known to stick my small whisk into the jar and use whatever comes up as the amount.  Add a hearty pinch of kosher or other coarse salt and about twice as much coarse ground pepper as you think is reasonable.

the jar of salt. Mmmm. Salt.

DIGRESSION ON SALT: First, buy kosher salt. Second, keep it in a covered dish (I use a cheap glass sugar jar bought just for salt) or salt pig  Third, don't be stingy. Salt is flavor. Use like a HEARTY pinch, not a few grains, I'm talking a decent chunk.  

Oh sherry...vinegar.

Then, throw in a small pinch of brown sugar, and a glug of sherry (or red wine, or champagne, or rice--anything but balsamic or white) vinegar. 

oil it up!

 Top with three glugs of decent olive oil.  Whisk, or if you're using a jar, pop the lid on and shake. Voilà, vinaigrette! Keep it in the fridge and it'll last a good long while.

If you want to get REALLY fancy or not lazy, crush or grate with a microplane a small clove of garlic into the whole mess, or add a finely diced shallot.  Neither are actually neccessary. I mean, they're good but they also require cleaning something after.

food storage tricks

Ever get pantry moths or pick up a thing of flour or pasta from a sketch grocery store only to find it had nasty little bugs in it (which are probably pantry moth larvae)?

It sucks, it sucks a LOT.  And pantry moths are such a bitch to get rid of. (ASK ME HOW I KNOW. UGH.)

Best trick ever to avoid any kind of infestation: when you get flour or pasta from the store, stick it in the freezer for a week before using it.  If it does harbor any nasties from the store, the cold will kill them and they won't decide to use your kitchen pantry as a breeding ground and infest everything.

(still check to make sure there aren't any dead bugs before you use it. And if you're my brother, this apparently translates to "keep your flour AND sugar in the freezer," which makes zero sense. But you do you kid. You do you.)