Welcome to the second installment of Cliff Notes, authored by my favourite baker and my favourite Cliff – MY DAD! Dad is the inspiration behind the classics right here on the weblog. You realize him and love him for his Chocolate Chip Cookies, his Buttermilk Pancakes, and he’s additionally baker of Buttermilk Biscuits that disappear so quick on the dinner desk, it’ll make your head spin. Let’s right here how these good little biscuits got here to be from the person, the parable, the legend himself – Clifford Wilson. xo Pleasure
Assured Chef and Her Irresistibles
A Biscuit Yarn
My mom was a superb cook dinner. However she by no means measured something. The truth is, we had no measuring cups or spoons, nor did we have now a mixer. Mom didn’t even personal a cookbook, and there have been no recipes she had written down. Our first cookbook was Betty Crocker’s Image Cook dinner Ebook that my sister, Dede, had bought. However by then, Mom had lengthy been braising dice steak that fell aside earlier than it hit the plate, and her slow-roasted leg of lamb might be eaten with no tooth. Certainly, Mom had been realizing her approach across 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 mom and sisters, my mom used her eyes, arms, and style to be taught the habits of components after they’re introduced collectively. She developed a preciseness in textures; how dough felt to the contact, how batter dripped off a spoon, and the way all kinds of meals responded to warmth. Her absolute favourite ingredient was butter. In her opinion, butter made all the pieces style higher. However she knew when to make use of it and when to not, particularly in the course of the Nice Melancholy and World Warfare II when butter was rationed and different types of fats have been cheaper.
Procter & Gamble had an efficient advertising marketing campaign for its easy-to-use and versatile Crisco vegetable shortening. Hundreds of thousands of bakers made their desserts, cookies, and pie crusts with this cheap product, even to today. And shortening is a fundamental storeroom merchandise in foodservice for deep-frying in addition to for frying meals at dwelling. Apart from utilizing Crisco, my mom used bacon grease left over from breakfast. Rising up, one in all my favourite meals was fried rooster and biscuits, which we had for supper on Sunday afternoons after church. Mom would scoop shortening and congealed bacon grease right into a forged iron skillet and warmth it up. Then she’d take rooster items that had been soaking in an egg and buttermilk bathtub in a single day within the fridge, and would double-dip them in salted, paprika-laced flour earlier than placing them within the sizzling oil. She’d lower shortening and bacon grease into flour for her biscuits, too! When it was time to eat, I’d pull aside a sizzling fluffy biscuit, slather on some butter and cargo it up with fig jam constituted of the figs off the tree in our yard. Though I had simply gotten out of church, chowing down 3 or 4 of these mouth-watering biscuits had satisfied me that I had died and gone to heaven.
When Mom was aged, she continued to cook dinner southern-style, with the identical Nice Melancholy thriftiness; she continued to make use of shortening and bacon grease regardless of various dietary traits. And when it got here to her particular sauces and desserts, BUTTER, the culinary love of her life, at all times took heart stage. After I began making biscuits, I may by no means duplicate hers, as a result of I by no means developed her “really feel” for the components; I at all times need to measure all the pieces. I created this biscuit recipe, made with all butter, in honor of my mom’s ardour for butter. These flaky unhealthy boys sit tall, and are incredible for breakfast, lunch and dinner! They make nice shortbread for dessert. Or add savory candy fillings to the shaggy dough—cheddar, dried figs, darkish chocolate chunks, something that pleases. And the way about this? Whenever you’re making cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner, crumble up these biscuits (as an alternative of utilizing bread crumbs) to combine with the crumbled cornbread. Wow! It takes stuffing to an entire new stage!
BTW: It gained’t damage my emotions if you happen to sneak in a bit bacon grease.
Get pleasure from!
xo Cliff
Discover Dad’s Buttermilk Biscuit recipe right here!
And discover the primary installment of Cliff Notes, on Candy Potato Pie right here!
