Yeast Biscuits

Keep an open mind.  That’s my advice to young chefs.  The day you think you know everything and have become the king of the culinary world is the day your kingdom shrinks.  I’ve always felt this way.  You can learn from anyone, any publication.  Which brings me to my latest complaint, the economy.

No, did you really think I was going to there?  My latest complaint is that my wife and I rarely (ok never) get invited to a dinner party.  Oh sure, you assume I’m always “busy” in the restaurants, but c’mon, I’m 22 some years in the business and I’ve earned some Saturdays off so it no excuse.

Wait, maybe it’s because you simply don’t want me in your house.  Hmmm, okay I’m going to let that thought go because I’m turning 50 soon and I have enough issues here, and I really want to talk about Yeast Biscuits.  That brings me to the points I have just touched on in that, 1) you can learn from anyone, and 2) I was once invited to a home for dinner, at which, I tasted the best yeast biscuits.

His name (which I will protect because of the risk of multi-million dollar lawsuits, which frankly, scare me) is Jorge.  Now George, I mean Jorge, lived on top of a mountain, and he kept some live snakes.  So George, I mean Jorge, has my whole family up (and I mean up) for dinner.  This is in the 90’s, back when my kids looked up at me, and not down like they do now, and he was in the middle of building his house….by himself. Now that alone, was enough to impress me.  Any man that can build his own house, is well, a man.

So George, I mean Jorge, whipped out these incredible yeast biscuits.  I was floored.  They were better than anything I had made before and even though dinner was served sometime way beyond my kids (little) bedtime (meaning half of them screaming tired and not loving the biscuits as I was) (George, I mean Jorge, didn’t have kids) I pressed George, I mean Jorge, for the “how to do’s”

He wouldn’t tell me.

But he did unleash the snakes. Yeah, two copperheads and a rattler whose core was the diameter of my forearm began to dance around.  Couple that with four youngin’s tired and screaming all in a 400 square foot plot of space, and we now had a party.

Still, I was thinking about the yeast biscuits more than anti-venom. Later, I would come upon a recipe for yeast biscuits which I would like share.  It’s simple and it will impress your family and friends.

Yeast Biscuits:

1 T dried yeast

¼ cup water

Mix together, let set a couple minutes

2 ½ cups flour

1 t baking powder

1 t salt

½ t baking soda

2T brown sugar

Put this all in a bowl. Simple Simple.

5 oz butter (that’s 10 T according to package) cut into chunks

Now add the butter and work it with your fingers until it forms a thick sand texture.

 

Add this

1 cup buttermilk

Then knead (like you would bread) for just 30 seconds.

 Place it in a bowl and let it sit for an hour.

During this hour, think about your kids hanging out with poisonous snakes in a space more or less the size of where you watch TV.  Let it go and now flour a board and

roll or pat your dough out to about 1 inch thick. 

Find a cutter you enjoy using, I like this one.

Then cut your heavenly morsels and place them on baking sheet.  Let them rise another 30 minutes. In all this between time you can be working on the rest of dinner. Bake them at 375 for 12 or so minutes.  Take them out of the oven, place in your favorite country looking bowl, swagger over to the dinner table, put them down, pound your chest three or four times and shout, “Who’s da man?”

Now if I could just build my own house.

                                                                                                      

Cobb Salad

Sometimes I channel my inner TGI Fridays, and crave a Cobb salad. Luckily for me, so does my wife.  Truthfully, it’s a bit of a production, but if done in order, you and your special someone can be sitting down to this

in about 30 minutes.    Left to right, hard boiled eggs, bacon, blue cheese, avocado, tomato, chicken and chopped romaine on the bottom.  Here are some tips for a speedy assemblage of these guys.  First, have maybe some leftover chicken in the fridge, you know from the “Roast Chicken” (remember to say that with an English accent),  crisp your bacon on a plate between paper towels for 3 minutes, and WHATEVER you do ! Start the eggs first.

Full proof method of hard boiling eggs.  Notice how perfect they are in the photo.  Place eggs in saucepan and cover with cold water, turn on high. Look at the clock. Tell yourself in ten minutes to turn heat off.  Then do it. Wait another ten minutes. Remove eggs.

Let’s recap. Ten minutes in water while the heat is on, ten minutes heat off.   Perfection every time.  So during that twenty minutes, assemble the other ingredients. 

Or, you can do what I did a couple months ago.

Assemble all the ingredients, THEN realize I forgot the eggs!!!! (Insert drama music here)

So now I’m facing a delay of another 25 minutes until lunch is ready, while my better half’s blood sugar is hovering just north of her toenails.  Just then, I look to my shoulder to find what appears to be a startling miniature image of myself in chef whites, except this version of me has a tail, a couple horns on his head, and he’s holding a pitchfork.  Weird. 

“Dude,” this mini Tim says to me, “use the microwave.” He says this while pointing with his pitchfork.

My first thought was, where did he get that mini chef coat?  My second thought was I had never cooked an egg in the microwave. “I can’t do that.”

“Dude, sure you can! It cooks everything faster”

“Who are you talking to, honey?”  asks my beautiful bride from upstairs, “Is lunch ready yet? I’m starving. “

I look back to my little friend as he’s mouthing the words “honey I’m starving” while nodding his head towards the microwave.  I grab two eggs, place them in a shallow pool of water in a pyrex pan, cover, place into the microwave, set it for 3 minutes, then on high.

I’m fourteen years old.  I’m in the woods with my brother in law, holding his double barrel Winchester shotgun.  I never shot one before.  We all have plenty of firsts in life, and I’m pretty sure most of us remember the first time we pulled a trigger of a shotgun. This gun had two triggers, two barrels.

“Now, just point at the tree there, and slowly pull the trigger.

BOOM!!!

How does one describe a deafening explosion without all caps and upgrade of font size? That boom was a product of me pulling both triggers and that boom knocked me on my ass and I hadn’t heard such a boom again until sometime just less than three minutes after I pressed the start button on the microwave.

The microwave jumped about four inches to the right. It nearly came off the shelf.  It had steam leaking from the lower right corner, and I knew, I had done something terribly wrong.  I opened the door to find the lid off the Pyrex,  one egg intact, and the ceiling of the microwave covered in faint yellow debris.  If you could spray eggs, like from an aerosol can, that's what it looked like.

Needless to say, that Cobb salad was egg-less.  So remember sports fans, always start your eggs first, and if a miniature self appears on your shoulders, don't listen to it.

Enjoy!

Roast Chicken

So here’s another thing that bothers me (since I can seemingly be bothered by any number of things), Roast Chicken.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good roast Chicken, its just that every time I open a cookbook or read an interview with a famous chef there will be this exchange:

Do you ever cook at home? 

“Yes”

And what do you most like to cook at home?
To which the chef in his most affected Prince Charles accent,

“A roast chicken”

Now, maybe my grumpy meter is red lining right now because of Miami’s performance the other night.  Really? 16 points in the first half? 24 percent shooting?  I’m not sure which bothers me more, the loss or the inability of chefs to cook anything other than a Roast Chicken at home. (Last time I type Roast Chicken)

We had a guest last night and Sharon suggested I cook, you guessed it, and after throwing back a couple of these, 

 

I did what everybody else does and slapped a picture of this on Facebook bragging that I will show the world how to cook the perfect you know what.

 That’s the star of the show there in the foreground, surrounded by russet potatoes, Kale, and Cauliflower.  I don’t normally use Russet’s for whipped potatoes, but the Yukon’s were giving off a weird vibe at the store. Really. I’m not saying food speaks to me in the same manner, say my daughter does, but I often chat with my bread dough.

Anyway, here’s my secret to good R______ C______. First, turn the oven to 450 and get it hot!   Rub the bird thoroughly with olive oil and then ( and this is the most important thing) season it liberally with your salt of choice.  Now, if you are one of those people who are averse to salt, then kindly hit the back button there at the top left of this page and go back to whatever diet planet you came from because I cannot help you.  Take your pepper grinder and do the same. I mean season it, don’t leave with it.

Cut 2 lemons in quarters.  Stuff the lemons and 6 healthy springs of rosemary (which you undoubtedly clipped from a bush just outside your kitchen, and if you didn’t, then plant one tomorrow. I don't care what your house looks like if you have a rosemary bush outside then you have a cool house) into the cavity of the bird.

That’s it!   Put that bad boy into your hot oven and cook it at the high temp for 30 minutes.  It should be nice and brown.  Then, drop the temperature to 350 and cook it another 35-45 minutes, depending on the size of the bird.  Remember, the last part of the bird to cook will be the inner thigh, so to be sure its done, simply take knife and prick the flesh at this point and see if the juice runs clear.  If it is, you’re done, if its pinkish, cook it a little more.

Should look something like this



Transfer the bird to a platter and set it in a warm spot.  At some point during the last hour or so, it would have been nice if you had chopped a half an onion and pasted 3 or 4 cloves of garlic.  You'll need that now for the Kale.  Now, look down into your roasting pan, notice those juices, start clapping your hands, nodding your head several times, and let go of a "Yeeeeaaah Boy!" because your staring at gold and your family needs to get excited about this meal, AND they need to understand you are in complete command of the kitchen right now.

Toss the onions and garlic in the juices for a minute, then add your chopped kale.  Season lightly (the juices are pretty seasoned,  and cook until the kale wilts.  Done. Serve with Whipped Potatoes ( do I really need to tell you how? Okay, hint, warm your butter and/or milk product before you add to the potatoes), roasted cauliflower, yeast biscuits.  Recipes for which (if you can call it that) another time.

Enjoy