Biscuits & Gravy

Don’t tell me you don’t like biscuits and gravy, because I wouldn’t believe you. After all, I used to think I was like you. It all started one morning after a sleepover at a friend’s house in elementary school, when my friend’s mom made biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Biscuits, as in the kind from the can that you have to bang against a counter to open up, and gravy, as in that powdery stuff from a little aluminum packet that you add to water. Now, I wasn’t actively judging the quality of food at that age, but I just didn’t like that breakfast. Not one bit. And ever since then, the words “biscuits and gravy” have repulsed me a bit.

(I hope this doesn’t mean that I was already a food-snob in the making at the age of 8. Sigh, I guess some things are a long time coming.)

Anyway, I have stubbornly clung to that repulsion and have managed to successfully live out the last 13 years of my life avoiding a bite of any and all versions of biscuits and gravy.  Everything changed last weekend, though, when I decided to make Waylon this recipe.

Waylon, so very unlike me, is not new to biscuits and gravy. He grew up on them, and he almost always orders them when we go out to a diner-like place for breakfast (which honestly is pretty much the only type of place we go to for breakfast). He loves biscuits and gravy. Yet when I told him I was going to make them for him, he responded by saying, “Okay, but I have to tell you, if I don’t like them it’s not one of those times that I’m going to keep eating and pretend that I do. Really, I can’t eat bad biscuits and gravy.”

Moving on from the fact that he said he wouldn’t “pretend” to like it (but seriously, pretend?), this made me get some doubts about how much I could succeed with this dish. Maybe it’s just one of those things best left to the professionals—or, in this case, the greasy line cooks. But he loved them. Loved them! And here’s the really surprising thing: I did too. It is salty and fatty and carby and everything good. We ate the biscuits smothered in the gravy alongside some homemade hashbrowns that Waylon made. Everything was so good, so much so that all I can say is please, make these—whether you think you like biscuits and gravy or not.

I should note, though, that I don’t think these are the type of biscuits to make if you just want some flaky, tender biscuits to spread some butter and jam on. These are pure wonder when paired with the gravy, especially because by cooking the biscuits in a  buttered cake pan, the bottoms and tops get a salty edge to them (see aforementioned salt + fat praise). They give a waft of buttery-goodness when you pull them out of the oven, and are pillowy-soft when you break them apart for the gravy. But they would not be my pick for butter and jam (although they are of course not bad with it because c’mon, they’re biscuits). In that case I prefer a softer more delicate cream biscuit like these.

Oh! And one more thing! Just to try and convince you a little bit more, I think I need to point out how easy this all was to make. The biscuits come together in no time and with just one bowl, and the gravy cooks up in the time the biscuits are in the oven. Whole thing took no longer than 40 minutes. So no excuses.

One Year Ago: Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

Buttermilk Biscuits with Pork Sausage Gravy
Adapted from Saveur
Serves 6

Some important notes: First, I used salted butter here and I think you should, too. The melted butter that coats the pan the biscuits are cooked in leaves a salty, crusty taste on the bottom of the biscuits that is just too delicious to pass up. I’ve adjusted the salt content in the recipe to account for this–if you’re using unsalted butter, add about 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon more in the biscuit dough. Also, I used 2% milk in the gravy, and it was great. Whole milk would be fine too though, I’m sure. I’m guessing nonfat might be okay, but you know, why would you have nonfat milk in your fridge anyway?

Biscuits:
2 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) salted butter, chilled and cubed, plus 2 tablespoons salted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Gravy:
2 slices bacon, finely chopped
6 ounces pork breakfast sausage
1/2 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
3 cups milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon cayenne

First, make the biscuits: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Brush a 9-inch cake pan with some of the salted melted butter and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl to combine. Using your fingers, rub the chilled and cubed butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse meal and the butter is in mostly pea-sized pieces. Add the buttermilk, and gently stir together until just combined. Transfer to a floured work surface, and gently pat dough into a rectangle. Fold one side of the rectangle over on top of the other side, and pat back down so the dough is a little higher than 1-inch thick. Dip a 3″ round cutter into a bowl of flour, and cut out rounds of dough. Press scraps together, and repeat with remaining dough until you have about 6 or 7 rounds. Arrange the biscuits in the already-greased pan, and brush the tops with the remaining melted butter. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.

While the biscuits are baking, make the gravy. Over medium-high heat, cook the chopped bacon in a 4-quart saucepan, stirring occasionally, until its fat renders, about 3 minutes. Add the pork sausage and cook, breaking it into the smallest pieces you can with a wooden spoon, until browned, about 5 minutes. Add the flour and continue to stir for about another 2 minutes, or until the flour starts to smell toasted. Add the milk and cream, and bring to a boil. Once a boil is reached reduce heat to medium to bring the mixture to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until gravy is thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add the vinegar, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste–you’ll need to add about at least teaspoon of kosher salt. Stir to combine.

To serve, split warm biscuits in half, and cover (liberally) with gravy.

Tostadas de Tinga and a Jicama-Cabbage Slaw

In my post for Father’s Day last year, I mentioned that my Dad has a specific set of tastes. I’d sum it up as Southern Californian Mexican meets 50′s child nostalgia meets snack-hungry sweet tooth. He loves when I’m around the house because there’s always some sort of treat he can have after dinner, and he asserts that pineapple upside-down cake is an under-rated dessert that is a sad example of lost food trends getting the best of people’s palates. Most food “bores” him, but he’s made a meal out of cereal or cheese and crackers more than anyone I know. Even though he’s not very picky, it’s hard to truly impress him with food.

We don’t really make a big deal out of things like Mother’s or Father’s Day around my house (sorry Mom, Dad), but I liked the excuse this past Sunday to try and cater to my Dad’s tastes for dinner. This year, it meant Mexican food in the form of spicy shredded pork tostadas, a spicy jicama-cabbage slaw on the side, and a white chocolate banana cream pie for dessert.

Sound awesome? It was.

(Well, besides the dessert part. Which is odd, because usually baking as opposed to cooking is the thing I can always rely on—if I’m making something sweet, I usually have faith that it’ll turn out well. But tell that to the pile of cornstarchy-tough-crust-overly-sweet mush of a pie sitting in the fridge uneaten at the moment. It seems like I’m making a pattern of Father’s Day, seeing as last year I served a good dinner with a mushy, falling-apart pineapple upside-down cake. Anyway.)

This tinga doesn’t taste like the regular carnitas you get at the taco truck, but I like that. They’re a little sweet, from the tomato sauce and onions, pretty spicy from the chili in adobo, and completely flavorful, complex, and delicious. And what’s more, they were pretty straightforward and easy to make: you simply boil the chopped and trimmed pork in some water and aromatics until the pieces are tender, saute half of that pork with onions and  to get it crispy and browned, and finally combine it all back together with reserved stock and tomato sauce until it bubbles and reduces down.

I served them on 6-inch corn tortillas that I fried in oil to make tostadas out of them, but next time I’d fry up 4-inch tortillas—6-inches left a little too much room for the juicy tinga to fall all over our chins when we were eating it. Better yet, I’d go ahead and recommend buying the tortillas already tostada-fied from the store actually. Or! Do like I did, and serve some of the tinga on soft just-warmed corn tortillas. Which, you know, obviously takes away the whole “tostada” part of this dish, but whatever. Whatever you do, make sure you serve it with some crumbled queso fresco, some cilantro, and a good squeeze of lime. That part is definitely necessary.

Before I send you off with the recipe, I have to  comment on the slaw that we ate the tostadas with. To cut to the chase, it’s really, really good. I think I loved it more than anyone else at the table, but maybe that’s also probably because I saw how much oil I used to fry up the tostadas and so I was naturally counter-balancing that with some craving for the tangy, spicy, crunchy and always-healthy cabbage and jicama. The dressing, a spicy-sweet mixture with lots of lime juice and jalapeno, was what probably made the slaw for me—I swear, you could serve that dressing on anything.

Oh, and one last thing about dessert: Though I stand by everything I stated earlier about how that banana cream pie went, my Dad still ate a good serving of it by scooping it out and eating it on graham crackers. Because as he says often when he sees a culinary mishap of mine, “it still has all the right ingredients.” And even though I think that all the “right” ingredients are very capable of producing something very “wrong” indeed, I can’t help but appreciate that my Dad’s uncommon food tastes sometimes cause my family to gather around some really great meals. Whether it’s these tostadas, or a pile of cheese and crackers.

One Year Ago: Orange, Currant and Coconut Granola, Chicken Poblano and Cornbread, and Rhubarb Raspberry Crostata

Tostadas de Tinga (Spicy Shredded Pork Tostadas)
Adapted slightly from America’s Test Kitchen Menu Cookbook
Serves 6 to 8

As mentioned above, I wouldn’t feel the slightest bit guilty in buying tostadas already deep-fried from the grocery store. A good brand is Mission, or so I’ve heard. 

3 to 4 pounds boneless pork boston butt roast
2 large onions, quartered
4 garlic cloves, smashed
6 sprigs fresh thyme
kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, diced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons chipotle chili in adobo, minced
2 (14.5 ounce) cans tomato sauce
2 bay leaves

4-inch corn tortillas
1 to 2 cups vegetable oil
salt

queso fresco, crumbled
cilantro, roughly chopped
diced avocado
lime wedges

To prepare the shredded pork, pull apart the pork at the seams and trim the pieces of its fat. It may be impossible to get all of the fat trimmed off, but do the best you can; any fat that’s leftover will translate to chewy pockets of greasy fat when it’s all finished. Cut the pork into rough 1-inch pieces, and combine with the quartered onions, smashed garlic, thyme, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, and 8 to 9 cups of water in a large dutch oven. Bring the water to a simmer over medium-high heat and skim off any grayish foam that rises to the surface. Once the water is steadily simmering, reduce the heat to medium-low, partially cover, and cook until the pork is tender and falls apart when pierced with a fork, about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours.

While the pork is cooking, make the tostadas. In an 8-inch skillet, heat a little more than a cup’s worth of vegetable oil until its hot enough so that a sprinkle of flour sizzles when dropped in. Working with one at a time, fry each tortilla for about 30 seconds, or until its crispy throughout and slightly golden. While the tortilla fries, it helps to hold it submerged under the oil with a metal potato masher. Once each tortilla is done, remove from the oil, place on several layers of paper towels to cool, and sprinkle with salt. The tostadas can be kept at room temperature for up to a day.

Once the pork is completely tender, remove and reserve 2 cups of the cooking liquid, then drain the pork and discard the onions, garlic and thyme. Returning the pork to the pot by itself, mash with a potato masher until very roughly shredded. Be sure to not shred it too much—it will continue to break down before being served.

In a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, heat the two tablespoons of olive oil until shimmering. Add the diced onions and dried oregano until the onions are softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add half of the shredded pork and cook with the softened onions, stirring often, until the pork gets browned and a bit crispy. Stir in the minced garlic and minced chili until it all becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Return the pork mixture back to the dutch oven pot with the other half of the shredded pork. Use some of the reserved 2 cups of pork cooking liquid, about 1/2 cup, to deglaze the browned pork left in the skillet by scraping up any browned parts. Once completely deglazed, add this liquid to the dutch oven with the pork, along with the remaining reserved cooking liquid, tomato sauce, and bay leaves. Bring mixture to a simmer and cook until the mixture is reduced until almost no liquid remains. Discard bay leaves, and season with salt to taste.

To serve, spoon the shredded pork tinga onto the center of each tostada and garnish with queso fresco, cilantro, lime juice, and avocado.

Jicama-Cabbage Slaw
Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen Menu Cookbook
Serves 6

However you slice, shred and cut the red cabbage, carrots and jicama, just try and keep them within the same size range and small enough so that the pieces can actually fit in your mouth.

1/2 cup lime juice, from about 4 limes
1/4 cup sugar
1 jalapeno chili, stemmed, seeds removed, and minced
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 head red cabbage (1 pound), core removed and sliced thin
3 carrots, peeled and shredded
1 pound jicama, peeled and sliced thin
1/2 cup minced cilantro

In a small bowl, whisk lime juice, sugar, jalapeno, garlic, cumin and a 1/2 teaspoon salt. Whisking constantly, drizzle in the oil in a small stream.

In a large bowl, combine the shredded and sliced cabbage, carrots, jicama and cilantro. Drizzle the dressing over the cabbage mixture and toss it all to coat. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve, at least 30 minutes and up to 1 day. Season and taste for salt and pepper before serving.