Can I just take a moment here?
Please? Because we have to talk.
Seriously.
We have to talk about something that is in danger of disappearing from kitchens: biscuits.
From scratch. Some of these kitchens do include us of the Southern persuasion.
Yeah, biscuits.
Can I tell you that cried over a biscuit once? Don’t laugh. It’s a true story.
I can’t even tell you the disappointment of living without biscuits on my Sunday brunch plate. I can’t even begin to explain what a terrible, terrible, absolutely without a doubt, what a horrible baker I am. No, I didn’t cry over a biscuit because I couldn’t figure out how to at the time understand the recipe or come even remotely close achieving the perfect biscuit. No. I cried because I was living threethousand miles away from home and they had gotten it all so horribly, horribly, wrong.
And it all started with the biscuit.
There were other things too. Southern food embodied mystery, strange brews, and funny names to these folks. It meant lots of mayo–hey–I am not complaining. It meant tater tots in the corned beef hash and yes, as a matter of fact, I did go there. What can I say? After a night of waiting tables, a little dancing, and an early morning Linguistics class it is enough to drive you too, to do the same. Perhaps the most memorable: garlic ailoi on a barbecue sandwich that was already doused in a poorly dressed KC Masterpiece sauce. The bread? Let’s just say it was forgettable and leave it, literally, at that. The pork? That was like pulled shreds of shoe leather. Oh the shame!
It pushed me over the edge. From that point forward I was determined to eat at just about every greasy spoon in the region looking anything resembling a buttery but slightly floury biscuit.
I never got it.
I did discover slew of interpretations on biscuits, cornbread, coleslaw, fried chicken, baked beans, barbecue, even greens. I actually found a cafe that served grits. Real god’s honest grits. I couldn’t even get grits in the grocery store or at the co-op. Trust me I tried. The only response I got was, “what’s a grit?” Yeah, just like the movie. It was miserable. So when did I cry over a biscuit, you ask?
The first cry happened unexpectedly.
I was moving back to the land of everlasting sunshine. Florida.
Just before heading into California, I simply put my hand on the dashboard. Palm facing up. Praying that I would never not ever see another drop of rain again. I was horribly sick. A paste-y type of transparent. I had bright red streaks from the bottom of my nose to the top of my horribly chapped and crusty top lip. I had not seen any small even teeny, tiny cracks of sunshine in over 4 months.
I wept. I stopped the car. I watched the sunset over the Pacific.
It wasn’t until around about two thousand miles later that I cried again. And yes, this time it was over a biscuit. AND. Cornbread. It was the most single amazing moment, that epiphany. That epiphany was that I can not never, ever, leave the Southern homeland again. I didn’t belong and couldn’t exist anywhere else if it was ever going to be this difficult again. I also realized in that moment that I am inextricably linked to my Southern roots. Those roots were and still are the food I eat, the hard liquor I drink, and the opportunity to get a little rowdy every now and then.
Drink a little too much on Saturday.
Wallow in the biscuits and gravy on Sunday. With bacon.
Eat too much cobbler. Enjoy peanuts in your Coca Cola. Work hard.
Repeat.
Don’t apologize.
Buttercup Biscuits
(not even slightly adapted from Pastry Chef, Rhonda Ruckman. Thank you for giving me my first successful biscuit. From scratch. Thank you.)
Yield: a lot of biscuits, 24 to 36. Maybe more.
5 cups all purpose flour, 3 ¼ TBSP baking powder, 1/8 TBSP baking soda, ¼ cup sugar, 1 LB butter–from the freezer, 3 ¼ cups buttermilk.
Combine all the dry ingredients. I sifted mine through a fine colander. Next and this is the secret: all the cold ingredients need to be really cold. Butter from the freezer and grate into the flour mixture. (This is also the secret to scones, grating frozen butter) Next, add the buttermilk. Just stick your hands in that mixture, loosely combining wet to dry ingredients. On a floured surface, fold your biscuit dough about 10 times then roll it out to ¼" thickness. I used a wide-mouthed Ball jar to cut the biscuits. Bake at 400 for 15 mins, turning once half way through.
Don’t worry about the hot mess you’ve made because these biscuits are rich. They are buttery. They will satisfy, no doubt. If you want a fluffy, more layered biscuit substitute a portion of the butter for lard. Yeah, lard.
Don’t apologize.