Welcome to the second installment of Cliff Notes, authored by my favorite baker and my favorite Cliff – MY DAD! Dad is the inspiration behind the classics proper right here on the weblog. You notice him and love him for his Chocolate Chip Cookies, his Buttermilk Pancakes, and he’s moreover baker of Buttermilk Biscuits that disappear so fast on the dinner desk, it’ll make your head spin. Let’s proper right here how these wonderful little biscuits acquired right here to be from the particular person, the parable, the legend himself – Clifford Wilson. xo Pleasure
Assured Chef and Her Irresistibles
A Biscuit Yarn
My mother was an outstanding cook dinner dinner. Nonetheless she certainly not measured one thing. In fact, we had no measuring cups or spoons, nor did we have a mixer. Mother didn’t even private a cookbook, and there have been no recipes she had written down. Our first cookbook was Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook dinner dinner Book that my sister, Dede, had purchased. Nonetheless by then, Mother had prolonged been braising cube steak that fell apart sooner than it hit the plate, and her slow-roasted leg of lamb might presumably be eaten with no tooth. Actually, Mother had been determining her technique throughout the kitchen nigh on 30 years! From her luxurious gravies and sauces to her irresistible desserts and pies, she had them down!
Since early age in Tennessee and Arkansas, cooking for her father, her sickly mother and sisters, my mother used her eyes, arms, and elegance to be taught the habits of elements as soon as they’re launched collectively. She developed a preciseness in textures; how dough felt to the contact, how batter dripped off a spoon, and the way in which all types of meals responded to heat. Her absolute favorite ingredient was butter. In her opinion, butter made all of the issues model increased. Nonetheless she knew when to utilize it and when to not, notably in the midst of the Good Melancholy and World Warfare II when butter was rationed and several types of fat have been cheaper.
Procter & Gamble had an environment friendly promoting advertising marketing campaign for its easy-to-use and versatile Crisco vegetable shortening. A whole bunch of hundreds of bakers made their desserts, cookies, and pie crusts with this low cost product, even to these days. And shortening is a major storeroom merchandise in foodservice for deep-frying along with for frying meals at residence. Furthermore using Crisco, my mother used bacon grease left over from breakfast. Rising up, definitely one in all my favorite meals was fried hen and biscuits, which we had for supper on Sunday afternoons after church. Mother would scoop shortening and congealed bacon grease proper right into a cast-iron skillet and heat it up. Then she’d take hen objects that had been soaking in an egg and buttermilk tub in a single day throughout the fridge, and would double-dip them in salted, paprika-laced flour sooner than putting them throughout the scorching oil. She’d reduce shortening and bacon grease into flour for her biscuits, too! When it was time to eat, I’d pull apart a scorching fluffy biscuit, slather on some butter and cargo it up with fig jam made out of the figs off the tree in our yard. Although I had merely gotten out of church, chowing down 3 or 4 of those mouth-watering biscuits had happy me that I had died and gone to heaven.
When Mother was aged, she continued to cook dinner dinner southern-style, with the an identical Good Melancholy thriftiness; she continued to utilize shortening and bacon grease regardless of numerous dietary tendencies. And when it acquired right here to her explicit sauces and desserts, BUTTER, the culinary love of her life, on a regular basis took coronary heart stage. As soon as I started making biscuits, I could certainly not duplicate hers, on account of I certainly not developed her “actually really feel” for the elements; I on a regular basis must measure all of the issues. I created this biscuit recipe, made with all butter, in honor of my mother’s passion for butter. These flaky harmful boys sit tall, and are implausible for breakfast, lunch and dinner! They make good shortbread for dessert. Or add savory sweet fillings to the shaggy dough—cheddar, dried figs, darkish chocolate chunks, one thing that pleases. And the way in which about this? For those who’re making cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner, crumble up these biscuits (instead of using bread crumbs) to mix with the crumbled cornbread. Wow! It takes stuffing to a whole new diploma!
BTW: It acquired’t injury my feelings within the occasion you sneak in a little bit of bacon grease.
Get pleasure from!
xo Cliff
Uncover Dad’s Buttermilk Biscuit recipe proper right here!
And uncover the first installment of Cliff Notes, on Sweet Potato Pie proper right here!