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Blueberry Biscuits

17 May

I am going to tell you a story about what it’s like to live in Portland, OR.

Last week, an absolutely lovely family moved in down the street from us, taking the place of the absolutely lovely family who lived there before them.  When I stand at my kitchen sink, I have a direct sight line down the street to the house that was being inhabited by the new family.  After I had spent the better part of a day going back and forth to the kitchen sink (you may wonder why I visit my sink so much, and my only answer to you is this: I have a preschool-aged child), watching the new family’s moving fan becoming emptier and emptier, I made the decision to bring the new family a little breakfast treat to greet them the next morning, their first morning in their new house.

Not being a huge fan of eating anything tooth-achingly sweet first thing in the morning, I opted to hunt down a recipe for a nice savory biscuit.  Thinking of the children in the house, it seemed as though something would be needed to make the biscuit a bit more enticing.  I settled on adding blueberries to the biscuits, and began to assemble my ingredients.

I measured, I mixed, and I cut.  As the biscuits were just about to go into the oven, I made the mistake of asking my husband whether or not he thought blueberry biscuits were an acceptable welcome-to-your-new-house gift for a young family.

“Sure,” he said.  “Who doesn’t like blueberries?”

I was about to nod along in agreement when it occurred to me that, you know, someone in that house might not like blueberries.  I hesitated slightly before putting the biscuits in the oven.

“Do you think they might not like blueberries?” I asked him.

Sensing that he may have mistakenly set the terrible wheels of my mind into high gear, my husband backpedaled.  “No.  Everyone likes blueberries.  Everyone.  They’re good.  Always good.”

But then, the path horribly, unrelentingly forged, I began to wonder about other possible problems with the biscuits.  What if someone in the family was gluten intolerant?  Or allergic to dairy?  Or what if the family was vegan?  I could definitely start over and make a vegan biscuit (I’ve lived in Portland for 15 years, so it’s almost a given that I’ve learned how to make delicious vegan biscuits by now), but what if they were non-gluten-eating vegans?  Or what if they only ate organic food?  I had organic blueberries, but I didn’t know if I would be able to find organic non-gluten flour.  This was getting complicated.  I should head to the store and check out the gluten-free flour selection.  I would also need to buy soy milk.  But what if they were allergic to soy?  Okay, I’d buy almond milk.  But what if they were allergic to nuts?  Rice milk?  Hemp milk?

It was right about then that the oven timer went off, effectively causing the hamster wheel that is my brain to come to an abrupt stop.  I took the biscuits out of the oven, admiring the lovely golden-hued tops that were studded with plump indigo berries.

The biscuits were as delicious as they looked, a fact that our new neighbors, unfortunately, never had the chance to learn.  I have a feeling it will take a few more weeks before I am comfortable bringing them any surprise baked goods.  Weeks that I will no doubt spend trying to work subtle food-related questions into everyday conversation without sounding like an absolute loon.

“Yes, the weather is lovely today.  It’s a good day for ice cream.  Ice cream made with milk and cream and probably even eggs.  Real ice cream.  Wouldn’t you agree it’s a good day for real ice cream?”

Blueberry Biscuits

Adapted from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Bible

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3/4 cup cold buttermilk, or cold soured milk

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (unthawed)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, or grease a baking sheet and sprinkle it lightly with 1 tablespoon of cornmeal (to prevent biscuits from sticking).

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar.  Whisk to combine.  Alternately, you can combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to aerate.

Using a pastry cutter, two knives, or in the bowl of the food processor, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs and there are no large butter pieces remaining.  This will take a minute or two if using a pastry cutter, but only a handful of pulses if using the food processor.

Add the buttermilk or soured milk, the egg, and the lemon zest to the flour mixture.  Stir just enough to moisten everything, until the batter just begins to stiffen.  Gently fold in blueberries.  If using the food processor, add the milk, egg, and lemon zest through the feed tube, and pulse just until the dough comes together and it begins to form into one mass.  Knead in the blueberries once the dough has been removed from the food processor.  It should go without saying that you should not pulse the blueberries in the food processor.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface.  Gently knead a few times until the dough just begins to come together.  The dough will still be slightly sticky, but do not handle the dough too much or add too much additional flour, lest you make the dough tough.  Pat the dough into a rectangle roughly 3/4 of an inch thick.

Cut the dough into 2 1/2 inch rounds, using a floured biscuit cutter.  Gently pat scraps of dough together to continue cutting, eventually yielding 12 biscuits.  My cutting sequence produced 7 biscuits from the first rectangle, 3 from the first batch of scraps, then 2 final (slightly misshapen) biscuits from the last of the reformed scraps.

Place biscuits on the prepared baking sheet about 1/2 inch apart.  Bake in the center of a preheated oven for 15 to 18 minutes, until tops have turned golden brown.  Eat hot or slightly cooled.

Makes 12 biscuits.

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Quick and Easy Citrus Crepes with Berry Sauce

6 May

While I am no stranger to the concept of tackling a recipe that may require what seems to some people a ridiculous or unreasonable amount of wait time (although I will defend to the death the argument that granola really does taste best when baked at a low heat for two hours, and that the flavor of bread really does rocket to a whole new level of tasty when started with a sponge), there are times when even I look at a recipe and think, “You want me to set this batter aside for 6 hours before I use it?  Are you kidding me?”

Such was my reaction when trying to hunt down a simple and satisfying recipe for crepes one weekend morning.  Logic may dictate that the more intelligent thing to do would have been to look for an appropriate recipe the evening before (when resting crepe batter in the fridge coincides with resting yourself in bed), but, and I am sure I am not alone when I say this, I didn’t know I wanted crepes for breakfast when I went to bed.  Since, however, I certainly knew I wanted crepes for breakfast right then, I quickly hit our cookbook shelves and started the process of rapidly finding and rejecting recipes.

Alice Waters wanted me to add beer to my batter and let it rest overnight.  Deborah Madison wanted the batter to rest for at least two hours.  Another recipe chided the reader to never—EVER—make a crepe with regular flour, because only buckwheat flour would produce a worthy and authentic crepe.  All of the recipes implored the potential crepe-maker to cook their crepes in a special crepe pan or, at the very least, in a nonstick skillet, neither of which I happen to own.

That’s right.  No nonstick cookware.  I won’t bore you with the reasons why, but about three or four years ago we retired our last nonstick pan and it’s a decision we’ve never regretted.  We have two cast iron skillets (one of which is enameled) and one stainless steel-clad sauté pan and we have yet to find the need for anything else.  But moving on.

Eventually, my crepe saving grace was found in the pages of Joy of Cooking.  Another admission: I have two copies of Joy of Cooking, one from 1985 and one from 1999.  Why, you ask?  Well, because between the years 1985 and 1999, ideas in cooking underwent a huge change, as they are wont to do in any given 14 year period.  The two version of what are seemingly the same cookbook are fantastically different, and there are recipes in both copies that are unique to those particular editions.  Not surprisingly, the crepe recipe in the 1985 version was decidedly less fussy than the one in the 1999 version so, in the end, that’s where I found the winner.

Which is not to say I didn’t still feel the need to do a bit of tweaking.  The recipe you see below is a super simplified version of the one I eventually decided to use as inspiration.  It produces crepes that are light, delicious, and infinitely adaptable.  We ate the crepes with a simple sauce made from a mix of frozen berries unearthed from our freezer, but I would imagine there is no bad way to dress these fellows up—lemon curd, lightly sweetened mascarpone cheese, unadulterated fresh berries, cinnamon sugar, the list of possibilities is nearly endless.  All that time you won’t spend waiting for your crepe batter to rest, you can instead spend thinking up any number of wonderful ways to fill and dress your next special breakfast, which might perhaps happen to fall this Sunday for a certain lady in your life who goes by the name Mom.

Quick and Easy Citrus Crepes with Berry Sauce

Partially adapted from Joy of Cooking 

Crepes

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup milk

1/3 cup water

1/2 to 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon or orange zest

Vegetable oil, for brushing the skillet

Place flour in the bowl of a food processor and pulse half a dozen time to aerate the flour.  Add salt, baking powder, and powdered sugar to the food processor and pulse half a dozen more times to combine.

In a medium bowl, add beaten eggs, milk, water, and lemon zest, and mix to combine.  With the food processor running, slowly pour the milk and egg mixture into the flour mixture.  Allow the mixture to process until combined, about 5 to 10 seconds total.  If you spot a few lumps, don’t worry.  Don’t try to keep processing the batter in order to eliminate all lumps–that will just make the batter tough.

Thoroughly heat a small or medium skillet over medium-low heat.  Lightly brush the pan with a small amount of vegetable oil.  Add a small amount of batter (about 3 tablespoons), pouring it directly from the bowl of the food processor.  Tip the skillet and let the batter spread over the bottom, or use a spoon to very gently coax the batter out into a wide circle.  Cook the crepe until tiny bubbles begin to form and pop on the surface of the crepe.  Flip crepe and cook until underside is lightly browned.

Repeat process with remaining batter, making sure to lightly brush the pan with oil before cooking each crepe.  Crepes can be stacked and set aside, covered lightly with foil, while the whole batch cooks.

Berry Sauce

3 cups mixed berries, fresh or frozen (we used a mixture of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries)

3 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and place over medium heat.  Cook, stirring constantly, until the fruit just begins to fall apart, roughly five minutes.  Transfer mixture to a blender or food processor and puree until about half of the mixture is blended into a liquid and the other half remains slightly chunky.  If you are not a fan of textured sauce, feel free to puree the sauce until it is completely smooth, or until your desired texture has been reached.

To serve crepes as shown, lightly butter each crepe (we used these orange and mint butters), then fold twice into quarters.  Arrange crepes on a plate and drizzle with berry sauce.

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Strawberry Cream Tart in a Gingerbread Crust

1 Apr

Last week it rained for seven days straight.  Now, in this part of the country that type of weather pattern may not be in any way unusual, but that does not erase the fact that it is also unpleasant.  Being as though I have lived here long enough to know that summer comes late to the Pacific Northwest (but also, thankfully, lingers leisurely into the autumn months), I coped with this long stretch of wet and dreary weather in the most reasonable manner possible: I pretended it was summer.

Imagine the days are long and sticky hot.  It’s too hot to turn on the oven during the day, so you wait until the sun sets before you satisfy your desire to bake something.  The heat of the day breaks at around 8PM, but there is a bright glow that lights the sky until well past 9PM.

In the morning, you head into the garden to pick some strawberries.  The berries are warm from the morning sun, and you can smell their sweet juice on your hands as you gather them.

By 10AM it is starting to get warm.  Knowing what the temperature will be like in just a few short hours, you plan ahead and start to assemble a simple cream filling for the tart shell you baked during last night’s reprieve from the heat.  Kept in the refrigerator, the cool cream, topped with fresh strawberries, will prove to be a welcome treat that cuts through the sweltering late afternoon sun.

And that’s how we made it through the week.  Though the berries didn’t come from our garden (we’ve got at least another two and a half months before we see any action in that area), and the days were not anywhere close to being even remotely warm, that didn’t stop us from enjoying this tart any less.  We pretended we were eating it in the backyard as we swayed lazily in a hammock and listened to the soft hum of the sounds of summer.

The good news is that summer will always turn up, even if you have to wait through another soggy and wet season in order to reach it.  The even better news is that you can make this tart now, no matter the season and no matter the weather, and that when it comes to enjoying the tart, there will be absolutely no faking required.

Strawberry Tart in a Gingerbread Crust

Gingerbread Crust

Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons ground powdered ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled butter, cut into pieces

1 tablespoon unsulphured molasses

2 tablespoons cold water

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, salt, and baking powder.  Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly and resembles cornmeal.  Drizzle the molasses and water over the dough, mixing with your fingertips until the crumbs of dough begin to cling together.

Gather the dough together and knead it into a ball.  Press it evenly into the bottom and sides of a 9″ tart pan.  Pierce crust on sides and bottom with fork.  Gently fit a large piece of aluminum foil tightly against the crust.  Fill with pie weights (you can use dried beans or large handful of pennies, but, being someone to bakes a great deal, I like to use these super handy ceramic pie weights) and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the edges of the crust just begin to darken.  Remove foil and weights from tart pan (it’s best to just gather up the foil by the edges and lift the whole thing out, weights and all), and continue to bake the tart crust for 10-15 minutes more, or until crust is firm and darkly browned.

Set aside tart crust until completely cooled, at least 2 hours.  (I let mine cool, uncovered, overnight.)

Strawberry Cream Filling

8 ounces vanilla yogurt (regular or nonfat)

4 ounces cream cheese

finely grated or chopped zest of 1/2 a lemon

12 ounces strawberries, hulled and sliced

In a bowl with a mixer on high speed, beat together yogurt and cream cheese until smooth.  Add lemon zest and stir to combine.  Pour yogurt and cream cheese filling into cooled tart shell.  Refrigerate until chilled and slightly firmed (it will never reach actual firmness, so don’t aim for a sturdy filling), about 2 hours.

When filling has chilled, arrange strawberries on top in whatever manner you choose.  I layered them in overlapping circles, but I promise you that the arrangement of your strawberries will in no way compromise the taste of your dessert.

Optional

If your strawberries are off season, as these were, and not at peak sweetness, you can apply a very light glaze on top of the berries to coax out a bit more strawberry flavor.  Simply toss a couple of large strawberries into a small food processor or blender, along with two tablespoons of water, 1/4 teaspoon of sugar, and a pinch of cornstarch. Blend together until smooth, then pour into a small saucepan set over low heat.  Stir over low heat until strawberry mixture has thickened slightly and just begins to simmer.  Let mixture cool slightly, then lightly brush over arranged strawberries until just covered.

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