E-Mail Bag and Biscuits!

AIMEE: We got a special request via email from our friend Georgia who lives in Massachusetts.
Hi! I’ve been looking for a good biscuit recipe. The kind that would go with dinner, with butter or gravy. Lately, I have used jiffy mix ‘cause I have it on hand, but they taste kind of bland and heavy with soda powder/baking powder taste. Yuck. If you run across or try biscuit recipe please let me know. NO hurry.
Thanks for your time and help!
-Georgia
Well Georgia, we aim to please!  It just so happens we had plans to make some baked chicken for dinner Sunday night and what goes better with chicken than biscuits, right?  Well, Kevin certainly thought so and since he was heading to the store on Saturday afternoon, while I was still recovering from the flu, he got all the ingredients we needed.   I somewhat figured that what Georgia wanted was an quick, recipe that could be easily made for a group of people or just one if needed.  Something that didn’t require a whole pantry of ingredients.   I was Google’ing around and found a Youtube video of an old southern grandmother making biscuits.  I thought it was totally endearing (not to mention super important!) that someone had the forethought to video tape their grandmother making a recipe that they are famous in the family for.  So often our relatives pass away, leaving a huge void in our hearts, but in our stomachs as well and somehow we never know exactly how they made that meatloaf, that casserole or those cookies.  Anyway, when I watched this little old lady making these biscuits I was so eager to try them, she made it look completely effortless – and come to find out – it was!
Kevin was not sold on the recipe I had written down from the video I had watched.  He thought maybe there were ingredients missing, or something, but I could just tell he was not happy about making these biscuits in the fashion in which I had gotten from this video.  And listen – I understand!  When you’ve made food before from your own recipe or in school, or maybe your mom taught you – you kind of just want to do it that way forever.  I get it.  But what Kevin doesn’t understand is that, I have never made biscuits from scratch before – therefore I have nothing to lose and everything to gain!  I don’t have that dreaded fear of trying something other than what I have always known a biscuit recipe to be. It simply doesn’t bother me.  So anyway, getting back to dinner time.. the chicken was seasoned and baked and resting and before I knew what was happening Kevin was pouring flour into a bowl and adding things with a grimace on his face.  He didn’t look very happy.  When I realized that he was starting the biscuits without me, I hopped up with my phone to take pictures.  See originally the plan was, I was going to bake the chicken and he was going to do the biscuits.  However, I was taking a much needed hopefully-post-flu marathon nap and he offered to season the chicken for me.  From there, he just took over.  But I was expecting then that I would do the biscuits!  Well, anyway, things weren’t looking good in the bowl and Kevin was looking peeved.  The thing is, he hadn’t watched the video so my little list of ingredients and what to do didn't mean anything to him and he seemed annoyed. So I took over.  Now this is what you’ll need for these insanely simple, easy biscuits:
-Self rising Flour (recipe calls for 8 cups but we only used 4).
-Crisco (shortening)
-Buttermilk (recipe calls for 1 Cup, we used a little more than 1/2 Cup).
Instructions:
-Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
-Sift your flour – if you don’t have a sifter (and don’t worry - we don’t either) just mixed through it well with your hands, try to work out most of the lumps.
-Use the shortening or Crisco to grease a cookie sheet
-Make yourself a well in the center of the bowl of flour – this is where your dough will form. Use a good handful of Crisco to and start to slowly massage into flour
-Then add your 1 C of butter milk slowly, about 1/4 cup at a time mixing it with the flour and the shortening. Be sure to add flour bit by bit and mixing with hands until you’ve got desired amount of dough. Careful not to mush the dough around too much, or you will over work it. When the dough firms a bit, you can make it into biscuits (whatever size you desire – they do rise a little bit).
Drop biscuits onto sheet.  If you like a more tender biscuit, keep them very close together, even touching, on the sheet. For a biscuit that is brown and somewhat crispy on all sides, keep them separate on the sheet.
Lightly press knuckles into top of each biscuit.
Bake for 18-22 minutes – depending on your oven and the size of biscuits.

Next time I fully plan to added some garlic & sharp cheddar cheese into these babies – delicious!  Hope you enjoy as much as we did!
 
xoxo
Aimee & Kevin Ellis
p.s. This is the video that I watched to learn to make these – I wish I had thought of video taping my grandmother making all of her delicious recipes! I highly recommend watching the video before making the biscuits so you can see what I mean about ‘overworking’ the dough – she just does some squishing, but she doesn’t touch it a whole lot – which is apparently very important when it comes to biscuit making!
 

Sauce Pot Sunday - Don't cry over burnt garlic!

AIMEE:  I recently became reunited with my former best friend Nicole from my school days.  We had lost touch and hadn’t spoken  in about 13 years. Since I spend all day on the phone at work, the last thing I want to do when I get home is get on the horn. It's because of this that Nicole & I have been using text messages to catch up with one another.  

Well, last week Nicole & I were texting back & forth about what was for dinner and she asked me if I make my own gravy.  She was appalled to find out that not only have I never made my own gravy but I regularly use pasta sauce from the jar & enjoy it!  I didn’t think that coming from me, this would be a huge surprise, but I guess we've been out of touch so long that she just couldn't believe it.

As a true Italian, Nicole does a lot of her cooking from scratch.  And if she can do it with 2 little boys to care for, than I had no real excuse not to do it myself. She really inspired me to try to make my own gravy and she said she'd help if I needed it.  I decided that I would do just that and chose Sunday to try it out because I knew I'd be home all day to let it cook for several hours.  In the days leading up to Sauce Pot Sunday, I prepared by watching some YouTube videos on how to make your own sauce and then I called my mom for her sauce recipe.  When I was sure I had it down pat, I sent my husband to the store for canned tomatos, beef broth , Italian sausage, and baby back ribs.

I started out with a little olive oil, and chopped garlic in an 8 quart pot on medium high.  We gave 1 white onion a rough chop and tossed it in to saute as well.  Kevin started opening the canned, peeled tomatoes and pureed them. I cut the 5 links of sweet Italian sausage in halves, turned the burner on High and tossed them into the pot, rotating after a few minutes to be sure all sides were brown.  Kevin handed me a large bowl to transfer the sausage over while he unwrapped and rinsed the baby back ribs and added them.  I browned those on both sides & transferred them into the meat bowl as well.

 Lastly, we added a few pieces of cubed chuck steak that Kevin decided he wanted to add to the sauce, so I browned those also.  When all the meat was nicely seared & out of the pot, I looked down and to my dismay, saw that my garlic had turned into burnt, unrecognizable little black dots!  I really wasn't sure what to do.  I called to Kevin who was in the living room watching TV and asked if I should de-glaze the pot a little with the beef broth.   He said I should add the tomato puree first, then the broth - but then in a not-so-sure voice he asked, "What does the recipe say to do?"  I kind of just stared into space.  I hadn't written down any particular recipe. I was checking my text messages from Nicole and using her advice and my own instincts.  But I was already starting to feel that old familiar Food Failure creeping in.  When I was growing up, if I was attempting to cook or bake something and it went awry, I just gave up.  But here I was in my kitchen among all these ingredients in which we spent our hard earned money on, I wasn't going to turn back!  So I added the tomato puree (Three 28 oz cans) to the pot, added a little over a cup of beef broth and several generous shakes from the Italian seasoning container

 By now it was just after 1pm. We partially covered the pot and let it cook, stirring occasionally.  After 2 hours or so, I realized that the sauce wasn't thickening at all. I also noticed that the little black dots of burnt garlic were totally mixed throughout the gravy, and I know for a fact that burtn garlic is not a pleasant flavor.  Kevin and I started looking through the cabinets for something to add that would thicken the sauce a little. I mentioned to him that my mom will sometimes throw a jar of Franco Rinaldi (my personal fave) into the pot to help thicken it up.  We didn't have any of that because Tuttorosso had been on sale the week before so Kevin grabbed a jar of that and tossed it in before either of us could changed our minds.  I was feeling disheartened and still being under the weather from a sinus infection, I decided to leave Kevin to watch the pot while I went to take a nap.

KEVIN:  While Aimee was sleeping,  I took a little taste of the sauce and though it was finally starting to thicken I thought the flavor needed to be enhanced a bit.  So, I did something out of the ordinary ...I improvised while cooking! (I know, shocking, right?  Haha.)  I added more Italian seasoning (about 1 and a half tablespoons), 1/2 Tbsp of dried Basil, and a tiny pinch of crushed red pepper flake.  I know that Aimee would kill me if she saw me adding that to the gravy because she is a afraid of spices, but it needed a little zip.  This wasn't that big of a stretch, since Aimee's mother Kathy uses hot sauce in her own gravy recipe to off set the sweetness of the tomatoes.  The taste was great.  I gave the gravy a stir now and then and kept it partially covered in between.  When Aimee woke up, the first thing she did was check the gravy pot!  She was pleasantly surprised that the sauce had thickened over time and I eyed her carefully as she grabbed a clean spoon and went in for a taste.  I was a little afraid she would notice the kick from the red pepper flakes but instead she said "Mmm!" and smiled at me.  Phew!  I was in the clear and we were well on our way to having a delicious gravy with our fresh pasta ravioli for dinner.

AIMEE:  OK, well, just so you all know - I only found out about the red pepper flakes just now (Wednesday, 3 days later) as we are writing up the blog!  Kevin is very lucky I didn't see him put that red pepper in because there likely would have been an argument over that!  And it's okay because now I can say he was totally right in doing so.  It's a win/win.  Kevin gets to be right and the red pepper flakes worked well in the sauce.   Kevin boiled up the ravioli while I got out our pasta bowls from the cabinet and sliced some Italian bread.  Within 10 or 15 minutes we were sitting down to enjoy our wonderful Sunday Sauce.  It was a beautiful deep red and full of flavor.   Note to Self: Next time don't add garlic until after I've seared the meat.  I'm so glad this worked out, even though there were a few bumps in the road, our gravy was totally worth every cent it cost to make, every hour it it took to simmer and every second of anxiety it gave us!

  Mmmm, buon appetito!

xoxo,
Aimee & Kevin Ellis

Happy New Year folks!

We just wanted to wish you all a very happy, healthy, sweet 2013! 
It’s been a week or two since we blogged but that’s because we were working hard to publish our first blog post as columnists (our intro is here) for Small Bites on www.lohud.com – we finished it up, and have a little note tucked into the post just for you all - you can check it out here.
We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed cooking, baking, making and writing about it!
More to come in the next few weeks..we hope!
Til then, take care of yourselves and we hope your weekend is a TREAT!

xoxo,
Aimee & Kevin