Cheesy buttermilk biscuits

I love biscuits. I mean, to an unhealthy degree. Someone mentioned the word "biscuits" 3 days ago, and this ravenous part of my brain turned on and wouldn't shut up about how badly I need to bake and eat some biscuits right this second. And it wasn't even the relevant context: they were asking if they could give my dogs biscuits.  

I don't know how I waited 3 days before making them, but it happened, and it made the biscuits that much more delicious. No wait. It didn't. Because biscuits are the maximum amount of delicious already. 

Now that we're clear, here's a biscuit recipe. It is mostly adapted from the classic Joy of Cooking, with the addition of some cheese.

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
5 Tablespoons butter
3/4 cup buttermilk (or just put about a tablespoon of lemon juice into 3/4 cup milk)
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup grated cheddar

Procedure
Preheat oven to 450F. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl. Cut in the butter (either with a pastry cutter or just with a knife). Keep chopping the butter up until it's as small as you're willing to get it. Pour in the buttermilk and the parmesan and mix lightly, just until you more or less have something you can call dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface. Knead gently for 20-30 seconds. Using your knuckles, pat the dough down to about 1/4 - 1/2 inch thickness. (Obviously the thicker the dough, the thicker the biscuit. I like mine pretty thick, but you may not. Play around with it if you're not sure.) Cut circles into the dough (I used the small end of a plastic funnel for canning; I've also used the rims from Ball jar lids). Place onto a foil-lined baking sheet. If you want a little cheesy crust on top, sprinkle the cheddar on top. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until the biscuits are just starting to get golden on top.

Cut them in half, lengthwise, and add a thin pat of butter in the middle. Enjoy with some pork chops, tea and jam, or literally every other thing.

Challah back!

Holla! I finally made some challah! Is that joke super old? A-yup. I'll stop.

Active prep time: 20-30 minutes
Passive (waiting) prep time: 2.5 hours
Bake time: 30-40 minutes

Ingredients [Makes 2 braided loaves]
2.5 cups warm water (110 F)
2 tsp instant yeast (or 1 Tbsp active dry)
0.75 cups honey
4 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg, 3 egg yolks, and 1 more whole egg for brushing on at the end
1.5 Tbsp salt
8 cups flour

Procedure

Put the water into a large bowl (or a KitchenAid stand mixer if you have one). Sprinkle the yeast into the water (you can technically skip this proofing part if you're using instant yeast, but I don't think it makes a difference so I'll include it here in case you're using active dry yeast instead). Beat in honey, oil, 1 egg, the egg yolks, and the salt until thoroughly mixed. You might have kind of a frothy mixture at this point but that's OK.

Beat in one cup of flour at a time (waiting for it to mix in thoroughly before continuing). If you're using an electric hand mixer (or a whisk---jeez, I don't envy you if you're doing this without the aid of kitchen power tools), you'll want to switch to kneading when you've added enough flour that you have a thick dough. If you're using a stand mixer, just beat it with the dough hook to begin with and you don't really have to worry about it.

Knead the dough for a couple of minutes, until you have a soft, thick dough that is no more than a tiny bit sticky. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest until the dough about doubles in size (about 1.5-2 hours in my experience, but this will depend on the temperature in the room and the activeness of the yeast, so just start checking the dough every half hour after the first hour has gone by; if you're too busy to be that attentive, you'll probably be fine even if it over-proofs slightly). 

NB: You may want to grease or flour up a bowl and let the dough rest in there, as I found that putting it in a bowl without those precautions resulted in some extra work in scraping sticky dough off a bowl.

...

OK, now that the dough has doubled, punch it down in the bowl, and turn it over onto a pretty floury surface. Split it into two halves (one for each loaf) and knead each one for a few minutes. Add flour as necessary to keep it from sticking to your hands, but don't go overboard. 

Now the most fun part! If you want to do the traditional braided type loaf, start by splitting each half into thirds (more or less), and making each piece into a long snake about 2 inches in diameter. 

Squish the (let's say right) ends of the three snakes together firmly, and braid them. Squish the open ends (left, in this case) together when you're done.

NB: Some people like the circular style loaf. You can achieve that by braiding the strands together and then squishing the ends of your loaf together into a sort of braided bagel shape.

Place the loaves on a well-greased baking sheet. Once again, cover with a damp towel and allow it to rest for an hour.

 

NB: Unless you don't mind your loaves sort of melding into one, be sure to give them a good amount of space when you let them rise! Oops. 

...

So, now you have fat, squishy braids ready to be baked! Preheat the oven to 375F. Beat an egg and brush generously onto the loaves, coating every surface as best you can. This will give the bread that nice glazed, shiny, and browned surface that you probably associate with challah.

Bake at 375F for about 40 minutes, until the bread is browned and you can flip it over and thump the bottom and hear a nice hollow thud. Personally, I like challah much less if it's kind of overbaked and dense, so if this is important to you, I'd start checking every 5 minutes after it's been in the oven for 30 minutes, because it would be a shame to waste such a potentially delicious bread by making it gross.

When it's done, let it cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before cutting into it (to avoid crumbliness or squashed bread, etc.). Voila!

Some more notes

• If you object to slightly stale challah, and you aren't having lots of company, I recommend halving the recipe and just making a single loaf. I'm not totally sure why I made two---probably because the recipe I adapted this from called for two and I wasn't in the mood to do simple division. Also, you may want to freeze it after the first day or two of sitting out and just make toast with it. I noticed it tasted a little more stale already on the second day.
• Speaking of toast and too much challah... you can also make challah french toast. But that's a recipe for another time, so you'll have to look that up on your own.
• I noticed it wasn't as flaky on the inside as challah usually is. Check back for a follow-up challah experiment to see if I figure out why.
• Source: adapted from this recipe.

Easy fridge pickles

This recipe works for just about any vegetable that you have going to waste in the back of the refrigerator. We did it with baby red peppers and string beans, and they turned out really delicious. We'll definitely be doing this with other veggies in the future, too!

Ingredients

[Makes enough to fill 3 quart-sized Ball jars]

~ 3 lbs. string beans, peppers, and/or whatever other veggies you want to pickle

3 cups vinegar

3 cups water

4.5 Tbsp. pickling salt

6 cloves garlic

6 Tbsp. dill seed

Procedure

Clean the jars in boiling water to disinfect. Put the garlic and fennel seeds into the bottoms of the jars.

To make the brine, combine the vinegar, water, and salt in a large pot until the mix comes to a roiling boil. While that's heating, put the veggies into the jars on top of the spices. Try to pack them in pretty tight. You may need to trim the beans if you're using pint jars or the veggies are particularly long, but I didn't find this to be an issue in the quart jars.

Pour the brine over the veggies, leaving about a 1/2 inch at the top. Stir a little bit to remove any air bubbles, put on the lids, and stick the pickles in the fridge for about a week (for full flavor). That's it!

Storage

These will last for a while (at least several weeks) in the fridge.

If you've canned stuff (like jam, or "real" pickles, or tomatoes) in your life, you probably know that there are more particular steps to be followed. One thing that's so great about this recipe is how easy it is, because the pickles last for a long enough time in the refrigerator to render serious canning unnecessary. But if you do decide to can them, this recipe will still be perfectly fine---you're just on your own for the canning procedure. This is what happened when we tried to do it:

And no. This is not our first attempt at canning. Maybe some people just aren't meant to be able to make pickles that can be stored indefinitely at room temperature. 

Variations

You can add red chili flakes for a bit of a kick, but as our household average spice-wussiness level is quite high, we haven't tried. 

Mini Meat Pies

Following our Game of Thrones themed birthday party, we had an insane amount of leftovers. The small amount of lamb still leftover two weeks later was easily dispatched by our dogs (they liked it almost as much as when they got to devour blue cheese filet mignon last week -- yeah, these dogs are ridiculously spoiled). The only thing left was a bit of rabbit stew. Super delicious and made by my mom -- who will perhaps post a recipe here one day?!

So today I finally got off my butt and decided to use our leftovers for good! And hence rabbit muffins. Or... Stew scone? Bunny bread? Carcass cupcake? Yeesh, okay, I'll stick with mini meat pies.


Ingredients
Leftovers
Pie crust

Pie Crust
[For 12 mini pies.]
2 cups flour
2/3 cup shortening
1 tsp salt
~1/2 cup cold water

Procedure

Mix flour, salt, and shortening together using a pastry blender until you have a fairly homogenous crumbly mixture. Add in water, a little bit at a time, and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a ball. Roll it out (depending on your work surface, you may want to roll out half of it at a time) pretty thin line the bottoms of a greased muffin tin. Spoon in your leftover filling (any thick stew would work, as would anything that's not too runny).

 Cover the filling with another layer of dough, crimp the edges with a fork, and glaze with a bit of egg wash. Bake at 425F for about 15-20 minutes, or until the pie is slightly golden on top.

When you're splitting up the dough into the muffin cups, neatness is not very important. Just rip out a portion roughly large enough to go into the cup and stick out a over the sides. Same for the top. All that matters is you can crimp the edges to seal in the meaty goodness.

* Dog approved!

(Taken with a pie held over the camera. Don't feel bad, he got to eat it after.)

Storage/Leftovers
These will not be great re-heated, so only make the amount you plan to eat. Remaining uncooked dough can be frozen.

Fiddleheads!

too old!

So I was wandering around in the yard the other day looking for a big stick... as I do. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw some ferns. Which reminded me, as I get reminded every year, that I have been planning on foraging for fiddleheads for the last five years. But every year, when I am reminded, I'm invariably reminded by the tall, unfurled, mostly full grown ferns that we see all summer, and not by the small, edible (nay, delicious!) young shoots.

That's the problem with fiddleheads. They aren't edible for longer than a few days, or at least that's how it seems to me. They start coming out in spring or even early summer, according to sources on the internet, but at least this year (maybe due to unseasonable heat? it's been near 80 for the last couple of weeks), most of the ones I've seen have already been mostly unfurled.

So I was really excited to see these little edible shoots. SO EXCITED.  

juuuuust right.

To make sure you're picking the right variety of fern, look at the stalk. If it curls inward like a celery stalk, you've got the right one. You can just rip them off -- the bottom bit of the stalk is a bit white, and people claim this part is woodier and not really tasty (I wouldn't know though) so I just ripped above that. When they're young, they'll snap pretty easily.

Before you go nuts, Wikipedia gives some sense that fiddleheads are full of healthy stuff but may also be harmful if ingested in great quantities:

Fiddleheads contain various vitamins and minerals, as well as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. They are a source of antioxidants and dietary fibre.^[2] They are low in sodium, but rich in potassium, which may make them suitable for people who need a low-sodium diet.^[4]

Fiddleheads may harbour microbes, and should be washed and cooked before eating.^[2]

Many ferns also contain the enzyme thiaminase, which breaks down thiamine. This can lead to beriberi and other vitamin B complex deficiencies if consumed to excess or if one's diet is lacking in these vitamins.^[5]

Further, there is some evidence that certain varieties of fiddleheads, e.g. bracken (Pteridium genus), are carcinogenic. Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) is not thought to cause cancer,^[6]although there is evidence it contains an as yet unidentified toxin.^[7]

Though it seems like these types of fiddleheads (ostrich ferns) haven't been known to cause specific health issues, may as well play it safe and only eat a bit at a time.

So now that I've said that, let's move on to the cooking bit. Clean off any of the dried brown leafy bits that may be stuck to the fiddleheads and wash them thoroughly.

Step 1. Steam or boil for 10 minutes.
It seems to be generally accepted that whatever toxins may be in ostrich ferns, you can nullify their effect by steaming the ferns for 10 minutes first.

Step 2. Saute in butter and lemon.
Drizzle a bit of lemon on them and saute in a bit of butter for 2-3 minutes. Drizzle just a little more lemon on top and serve.

Serving suggestion.
Serve on a bed of quinoa with a side of pickled daikon (or whatever happens to be in the fridge when you're serving hungry people a late dinner). Fried egg on top is also delicious.

Stove-top Flatbreads

This recipe comes from River Cottage Every Day, like a couple of others on this blog. I love it because it is fun and extremely easy/fast. We had it with Indian food the other day, and it served admirably in place of naan. Extra bonus points for being something we can literally throw on top of the wood stove when it's heating the house anyway.

Ingredients
[makes 8 individual flatbreads]
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp canola/vegetable oil
2/3 cup warm water

Procedure
Lightly flour your counter/cutting board/whatever. Combine salt and flour in a bowl. In a separate container, add the oil to the warm water. Pour the oily water into the flour in a thin stream, mixing it in as your pour, until the mixture is a more or less homogeneous dough.

Knead the dough with your hands on your floured work surface for about 5 minutes. (You can use the dough hook on your KitchenAid or whatnot instead, but that's not nearly as fun. And probably won't save you any time or effort when you factor in the extra dish washing.)

It will feel pretty elastic after 5 minutes. Let it rest underneath the overturned bowl for about 15 minutes.

This bread will be much, much better hot, so don't cook it until you're ready to eat. (The rolling process will take about 5-10 minutes and the actual cooking process will take about 2.) When you're about ready to eat, roll the dough into a long sausage and divide it into 8 equal pieces. Keeping the surface pretty floured, roll each piece into a ball with your hands and then roll it out with a rolling pin into a circle (more or less) about 1/8" thick. If they're a bit thicker, that's okay too -- you'll have a slightly chewier bread.










(Note that if you aren't going to be cooking all of the pieces, you can freeze them after you roll them out. For more on that, see the bit about storage, below.)







If you have a woodstove going nice and hot, wipe that clean. If you're not so lucky, heat a cast-iron pan quite hot, then turn the heat down a bit. Ready a plate lined with either a clean tea towel or a double layer of paper towel.

Shake off excess flour and toss the bread onto the pan/stove. After about 2-3 minutes, the dough will start to look a bit hard (or "set" as Fearnly-Whittingstall calls it) on top. Flip the bread over. If it doesn't have nice golden brown patches, flip it back over and give it another 30 or so seconds and try again. (Do not exceed 3-4 minutes though.) Cook it another 45 seconds on this side, and then place it between the towels on your plate to keep it warm and soft.

Eat immediately!


Storage
You can store uncooked dough in the freezer for a long time. To store it, roll out fresh dough and place on a piece of wax paper. Layer however many breads you want to store in between pieces of wax paper and place them in a plastic bag.

Recycling
As Fearnley-Whittingstall points out in the book, if you do end up with some unused and already cooked breads, they won't be that great once they cool. But you can turn them into crackers by brushing them with some herbs/spices and oil, tearing them into smaller pieces, and heating them in the oven at 425F until they get crispy to your liking. Breads brushed with oil mixed with some oregano go well with Mediterranean dishes (like a side for a Greek salad or some stuffed grape leaves).

Pasties (also: an easy puff pastry recipe)

Another experiment brought about because of River Cottage Every Day, even though all we used of that book here was the recipe for cheaty puff pastry. Cheaty because it isn't as complicated as "real" puff pastry, but I couldn't tell the difference between this and any other puff pastry I've tried, especially on those pasties in which the dough wasn't rolled out too thinly.

Puff pastry 
[Makes 6-7 pasties]
2 cups flour
pinch salt
2/3 cup butter, chilled and chopped into small cubes
ice water

[I would recommend adding more salt!]

Procedure
Sift the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Throw in the cold chopped up butter and toss until all the butter chunks are covered with flour. I found it easiest to do this with my hands. Add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing it in with a wooden spoon, until you have just enough liquid to make a firm dough. The butter is still in chunks at this point.

Shape the dough roughly into a rectangular prism with your hands and put it on a well-floured surface. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out in just one direction (away from you is easiest) until it makes a long, flat rectangle -- about 3/8" thick. Fold the top third down and the bottom third up over that (like a letter) so that you have a rectangle that's three layers thick. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat the process. Roll out, fold, and rotate a total of six times. Then cover the dough with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prep the fillings (see below for some examples). When ready, preheat the oven to 375F and pull out the chilled dough and roll it out so that it's about 1/8" thick. Use a plate or pot lid to cut out circles (I used a smaller pot lid, which gave me 6-7 pasties from each rectangle of dough). Spoon the dough just off center, and fold the dough circle in half. Brush the edges of the pastry just a little bit with water and crimp them tightly, making sure the filling is sealed in. I think the more you can fit inside, the better it'll taste, but that's up to you. Brush the tops with an egg wash (use 1 egg beaten together with 1 tablespoon of milk), lay on a greased, foil-lined baking sheet, and bake for about 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Fillings 

In this first and unreasonably ambitious experiment, we made four savory and one sweet type of pastie. This is a great medium for shoving it full of whatever leftovers or random ideas you have, so the following filling descriptions are pretty vague -- no exact amounts or instructions. You can figure them out yourself. :) 

1. Mushroom & Barley
   barley
   chopped mushrooms
   cooked spinach
   onions
   salt
   black pepper
2. Chickpeas & Curry
   chickpeas
   boiled chicken
   red pepper
   green beans
   potatoes
   curry
3. Butternut Squash & Chicken
   boiled chicken
   boiled butternut squash, pureed
   potatoes
   raisins (optional)
   onions
4. Keema Matar
   
   I made keema last night with this recipe and used the leftovers for this pasty. :)
5. Butternut Squash, Ricotta, & Raisins
   
   boiled butternut squash, pureed
   ricotta
   brown sugar
   raisins

Avocado Pile

When I was a kid/teenager, my dad often made these "avocado sandwiches" for breakfast. They're more piles than sandwiches, but that's what I always called them growing up for some reason. He also added salmon caviar, which I don't have at my disposal anymore now that I live in a rural area with no Russian immigrants in it. He'd also frequently add in leftover salmon if he'd baked some the previous day, which is surprisingly delicious cold. The salmon adds a beautiful color to this recipe -- a talent that tinned sardines do not possess. Even so, if you can look past the drab appearance of the fish-in-a-tin that you found in the deserted end of the pantry, it makes for a shockingly delicious (and oh-so-nutritious!) meal.

I'm completely guessing on these amounts, by the way. It doesn't make any difference how much you add of what, so just throw in ingredients until things look and taste right to you.

[Makes two avocado piles.]
Ingredients
1 fresh, ripe avocado
3-4 sardines/anchovies/some other salty fish
1/4 cup feta cheese
2 eggs, poached or medium-boiled (slightly runny yolks)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions
Get your eggs cooking. If you're poaching the egg, just boil some water in a deep pan and crack the eggs carefully into it. Flip the egg over halfway through, and remove the egg just after the whites have been cooked. If you don't mind running egg whites, which I find gross, then you can remove them even earlier! If boiling, put the eggs in cold water and cook over medium heat. After the water has been boiling for just under 2 minutes (though the exact amount depends on how much water you used -- the more water, the faster the egg cooks), pour the water out and run the eggs under cold water; peel.

Meanwhile, cut avocado in half and remove the pit. (The best way to do that is to give it one firm chop with a sharp knife and then gently rotate the pit. It should come out easily as you pull the knife away.) Carefully slice up the scrumptious green meat into cubes


Using a fork, scoop the avocado out into a bowl, but reserve the shells for serving. Crumble up the feta and add it to the bowl, along with the fish. Grind in pepper (and whatever other seasoning floats your boat) to taste. Chop up the (hopefully slightly runny) egg and toss it on. Serve inside the avocado shells.

Variation: Try the original -- replace the canned fish with salmon, either smoked or leftover from whatever method of preparation you prefer (baked, fried, grilled...). In this variation, remember to squeeze some lemon juice in the mix.

Stuffed Tomatoes

I was looking through a cookbook on Middle Eastern food for inspiration when I came across a recipe for Tunisian stuffed tomatoes. Those call for olives and capers, which I really dislike, as well as preserved lemons, which I don't have. So this is a departure from the Tunisian traditional, but we loved it. Try it with lemony potatoes for a light dinner. Or just make the stuffing part as a quick spiced-up version of a tuna salad for lunch/snack.

Ingredients
2-4 medium tomatoes, firm but ripe
2 red peppers
1 can tuna (chunk light -- not albacore!), drained
1/4 cup parsley, chopped up, stems removed
1-2 tsp. lemon zest, grated

Directions
Roast the peppers. This is the most fun part. If you have a preferred method for pepper-roasting, do that and skip to the next paragraph. I like to do it the Alton Brown way -- directly over a gas burner. Put the peppers (one per burner, if you're doing more than one at a time) directly on the metal grate above the burner and turn with tongs every couple of minutes until you get an even char on the skin. (You'll remove that part, so don't worry.) Then put the hot, charred pepper into a bowl and cover with a plate. Let it sit until it cools, about 15 or so minutes. This will steam the pepper inside its skin.

Preheat the oven to about 350F. Combine all the other ingredients in a separate bowl. When the peppers are cooked through and cool enough to handle, peel off the skin. You should be able to do this easily with your fingers -- it'll come right off. Get all the charred bits off the pepper, and pull the pepper apart to reveal the seeds inside. Depending on how cooked through your peppers are, this may be messy. Get all of the seeds out, and then cut the peppers into thin strips (whatever size you want to eat inside the tomato).

Now take your tomatoes and cut a small hole into the tops -- reserve the caps. Scoop out all the juice and seeds with a spoon. Now shove your tuna/pepper mix into the tomatoes, replace the caps, place them on a baking dish, and roast for about 20-30 minutes. The tomato should be soft but should still retain its form.

Serve as a side dish or as a main course. Goes well with lemony roasted potatoes. If you have filling remaining, refrigerate and use for the next day's lunch box -- works well as a fresh tuna salad over a bed of baby spinach.

Roasted Lemony Potatoes

The idea for adding lemon slices to a baked dish came, unsurprisingly, from River Cottage Every Day. Turns out roasted lemons are delicious!

The amounts in this recipe, as in most others suggested on this blog, are very approximate. It's all just about how much of a meal you want to have, whether you want leftovers, how lemony you want your potatoes to taste, etc. It's also approximate because I don't weigh or measure things when I toss them together, so this is just a guess. The good news is that it makes no difference whatsoever.

[Serves 4-5 as a side dish.]
Ingredients
2-3 pounds potatoes
1 lemon
2-3 garlic cloves
olive oil (not extra virgin)
salt, pepper, herbs for seasoning
fresh parsley

Directions
Preheat oven to 400F. Soak and wash potatoes, scrubbing off any ground-in dirt, but leaving skin in tact. Depending on the size of the potatoes you can leave them whole or halve/quarter them. I used golden potatoes and quartered them. Boil them for about 5 minutes, until they're still pretty firm but can be pierced with a fork. Pour into a colander of some sort and drain. Slice the lemon thickly, and maybe cut the slices in half if you like. Crush the garlic cloves but leave the skin in tact so as not to over-roast the garlic. Place the potatoes, lemon slices, and garlic in an ungreased baking dish. Season as you see fit (I used some garlicky salt and random herbs & spices -- some oregano, maybe thyme, and other stuff). Pour olive oil generously over the mixture and toss it around with your hands until everything's pretty mixed around.
Bake until a golden brown crust starts to appear on the potatoes. At about 30 minutes I got too hungry to wait for the browning and I put the potatoes in the broiler for about 2-3 minutes, which did the trick. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with parsley and/or whatever other fresh herbs you like most.