It's Always Beddar With Cheddar - Cheddar Biscuits

I love biscuits...  Especially in the winter.  They just seem to be the kind of food that hugs you while your eating it.  Whether simple Baking Powder biscuits or Buttermilk Biscuits, Spelt or Whole Wheat they are little fluffy bundles of comfort wrapped in a towel at the table.  Which is another thing I love about fresh biscuits.  When they are swaddled beneath layers of cloth to stay warm, and you have to peel back the layers to reach the heavenly disks of warm fluffy goodness, it's almost like opening a Christmas present.   LOVE it!

Biscuits are, in and of themselves, VERY similar to pie crust...  In fact, the only real difference is the leavening; be it Baking Powder or Baking Soda.  Thus the same rules apply... "ALL THINGS MUST BE COLD"! This means, cold flour, cold butter, and cold milk... or buttermilk.  Follow the same steps as you would making pie crust... Work the butter into the flour, add milk (liquid) and stir until a dough forms... Be careful not to overwork the dough, or the biscuits will be tough.  Roll, cut and bake as fast as you can, and you will be rewarded of light fluffy and oh so delicious biscuits.

Cheddar is my favorite addition to baking powder biscuits.  I like to sneak a little Cayenne into them.  Not much, but just enough to lend some subtle heat and kind of warm you from the inside out.  ;) 

Cheddar Biscuits

9 oz (256 g) (2 cups) AP Flour
1 TB Baking Powder
1 tsp Kosher Salt
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper, ground
2 oz (56 g) (4 TB) Unsalted Butter, sliced thin
4 oz (113 g) (1 cup) Sharp Cheddar, shredded
6 oz (175 ml) (3/4 cup) Whole Milk

Preheat the oven to 450 F (230 C) degrees
Whisk the Flour, Baking Powder, Salt and Cayenne together in a bowl.

Add the Butter slices.

Work the butter into the flour with your fingers until the mixture looks kind of like coarse cornmeal.

Add the shredded Cheddar....

Work the Cheddar into the flour as well.

Add the cold Milk.

Stir with a fork until the dough comes together. (it may be a little sticky, but that is OK)

Turn out onto a well floured surface.

Roll to 1/2 inch thick.

Cut 3 inch rounds.

Gather scraps, roll and repeat. (You should end up with 8 - 10 biscuits.)
Place the biscuits on a baking sheet.

Bake for 12-14 minutes.

Swaddle them in a towel to keep them warm.

Consume with copious amounts of butter.

Mangia!!
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Cobbler Gobbler - Blackberry Cobbler

I was originally planning on posting this on CorningWare411, but I realized that I would pretty much prepare this in the same fashion regardless of whether I baked it in stoneware, Pyrex or fore mentioned CorningWare.  Thus, this most humble of comfort foods shall reside on Culinary Alchemy instead.  :)

Cobbler, the un-pie or would that be semi-pie?  Perhaps partial pie? Somewhat sloppy, a little goopy, but oh, so heavenly spooned over Ice Cream.  Yeah.... Childhood memories abound of picking the wild blackberries that grew along the length of the driveway (our driveway was kind of looooooong) and over in the neighbor's back pasture (Sorry, Mr. Uyetake).  Those that were not immediately conveyed directly into eagerly awaiting mouths by purple fingers, would make their way into mom's kitchen.  She would peruse the bounty and announce, "Looks like cobbler for dessert.", at which point we would all perform the dance of joy. (I am just kidding about that last part, but we WERE extremely happy)

Mom's preparation was at once simple to prepare, yet complex in ingredients.  I say this simply because she not only used flour to thicken the berries, but quick tapioca as well.  Quick tapioca is a little different in texture than the normal large, medium, and small pearl varieties.  It's broken up into crystals about the size of Demerara or Raw Sugar.  My assumption is that it allows it to thicken things quicker because it has no outer "skin" like the pearls do.  Then again, I may be wrong.  All I know for sure is that it works really well.  So well, in fact, that I use it in my Marionberry pies too.

Mom's "covering" came in two forms.  It was always a sweet biscuit dough (shortcake), but sometimes she dropped it from a spoon into the prepared berries (like making dumplings) while other times she would roll it out and cut disks to lay on top of the berries.  Either way, it was always delicious.  There is nothing quite like a berry juice soaked biscuit.  I will even go so far as to say that cobbler might even better than pie.  (Maybe) 

Blackberry Cobbler

4 pints Blackberries
1 TB Quick Cooking Tapioca
Juice of 1/4 Lemon
1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
1/4 cup AP Flour
2 TB Unsalted Butter


Shortcake Biscuits (Sweet Biscuit dough)
2 cups AP Flour
1 TB Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Sugar
4 TB Unsalted Butter
1/2 - 2/3 cup Whole Milk (This will depend on the humidity of your flour)

First you need some beautifully fresh and juicy Blackberries.

Wash and drain the berries. (I only do a few at a time, cause I don't want them to get smushed in the the colander.  In the grand scheme of things I suppose it doesn't really matter, but it's a habit.)

Place them in a bowl that will be big enough for tossing.

Sprinkle with the Quick Cooking Tapioca. (don't toss yet)

See, it's all broken up, no pearls here!

Squeeze the lemon wedge over the berries and toss briefly, then set aside to allow the tapioca to absorb any latent moisture.

In a small bowl combine the Sugar and Flour and whisk together briefly, then set this aside as well.

Making the Biscuits...... 

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
In a medium bowl, whisk AP Flour, Baking Powder, Salt and Sugar together.

Add the Butter, cut into small pieces.

Begin working the Butter into the flour mixture, either with fingers or a pastry cutter, until you have a cornmeal consistency.

Add 1/2 cup of the milk to start.

and begin stirring everything together with a fork until all the flour is moistened and a dough forms that "follows the fork around the bowl".  You may need the remaining milk, but you may not.  (Basically, add just enough moisture so that a soft dough forms that will cling to the fork and not the bowl)

Roll the dough out on a WELL floured surface....

Cut 2 inch rounds.

Bringing it all together.....

Sprinkle the reserved Sugar/Flour mixture over the berries and toss everything together.

Pour the berries into a 10x10 CorningWare baking dish. (you can use a 9 x 9 Pyrex too)

Dot with 2 TB of Butter, cut into tiny pieces.

Lay the Sweet Biscuit rounds on top of the berries, leaving a little room in between for the berry juice to bubble up and coat the sides of the biscuits too.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack for 15 minutes.

Spoon liberally over Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and gobble it down.  ;)

Mangia!!
~~

It's Always Beddar with Cheddar - Corn Beef Pinwheels

The weather has turned in San Diego, from sunny 75 degrees to cloudy windy chill for some strange reason. When this happens, I usually crave foods from my childhood. I grew up on a goat dairy in the “wilds” of Oregon in east Multnomah County. For those not familiar with Multnomah County in Oregon, it is situated at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge, bordering Washington. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world but man! I have mentioned it before in a previous post, the winters can be BRUTAL. Corbett is located at the eastern edge of the county, which is technically still in the gorge, on top of the basalt cliffs. Frequent ice storms accompanied by winds that shriek like banshees are the norm. Yeap, just another winter day. This can make traveling to the grocery store a little bit of a challenge for those without ice skates.

Luckily, my mom had a GREAT recipe for those iced in days, and simply raided the pantry for a couple cans of Corned Beef hash, that she always had on hand for just such an emergency and utilizing her delicious buttermilk biscuit dough. This is the same Buttermilk biscuit dough that I used for Biscuits and Gravy a while back.

The Pièce de résistance, however, was the cheese sauce that she always made to top the pinwheels. Thus without even knowing it, I was exposed to Classic French cuisine. She always started with a béchamel and added her dry mustard powder and cheese, making a Mornay. She never called it that, but since I grew up with it, I assumed it was how all cheese sauce was made.
This led to a horrific dining experience when I ordered cheese sauce. I was fully expecting a cheesy Béchamel, but receiving an oily glop of separated processed cheese YUCK!!

Suffice it to say, Béchamel is one of my favorite sauces as far as versatility. You can add just about anything to it… Make Lasagna sauce by adding double the amount of tomato sauce to it. (1 cup béchamel - 2 cups tomato sauce) Simply pour it on top of Pastitsio or Moussaka as is, or add prepared Mustard or chopped Mushrooms and Tarragon to make homemade green bean casserole sans Campbell's. Then there is the hybrid of Béchamel & Velouté that I like to call belouté or véchamel which is EXCELLENT with savory crepe dishes. (Velouté is a Béchamel made with “white” stock instead of milk… the name comes from the root velour or “velvet”, which is how it feels on the tongue)

OK, I need to reel it in, cause I am about to tangent. Mornay is, classically, made of a béchamel in combination with Parmegiano-Reggiano and Gruyere, but Emmenthal can be used as well as Cheddar. For this recipe, if you are feeling a little more Reuben-esque, then by all means, change out the Cheddar for Emmenthal. I am just in a white cheddar mood tonight. (Ya know? I still have not figured out why so much cheddar, on the west coast, is dyed orange with annatto seed) As a side note, Cheddar Mornay is phenomenal over lightly steamed Cauliflower.
Oh, and if you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can always make a batch of Jiffy or Bisquick biscuits; I promise not to look ;)

Corned Beef Pinwheels in Cheddar Mornay

For Pinwheels
3 1/2 – 3 3/4 Cups AP Flour – Plus about 1/4 cup for rolling
1 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Baking Powder (Rumford’s – it’s Double Acting AND Aluminum Free)
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter, melted
1 1/2 cup Buttermilk
2 Cans of Corned Beef Hash
1/2 tsp Black Pepper

Mornay (Chedder Cheese Béchamel)
3 TB Butter (1 1/2 oz)
~1/4 cup AP-Flour (1 1/2 oz) It's better if you weigh it
1/2 tsp Dry Powdered Mustard
1/4 tsp White pepper
pinch of nutmeg
2 cup Whole Milk (Hot)
1 cup (4 oz) Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese (Grated)
2 TB Grated Parmegiano-Reggiano
2 dashes Worcestershire
At least 1/4 tsp Salt but more "to taste" if necessary

Preheat oven to 450
In a large bowl, whisk 3 1/2 cups Flour, Baking Soda, Salt, and Baking Powder.

In a small bowl, mix the melted Butter and the Buttermilk.

Pour Butter/Buttermilk into the flour mixture and stir until sticky dough is formed.

If dough is TOO sticky, add another 1/4 cup of the flour and knead in quickly.
Divide the dough in two pieces.

Turn out 1 piece onto a board floured with about 2 TB of the remaining flour.
Roll out biscuit dough into a 12x8 rectangle.

Spread 1 can of hash evenly over the dough, leaving about 1/2 inch on the far short edge to seal when done.

Sprinkle with pepper and roll up the dough as you would for a cinnamon roll.

Pinch the end to seal, then slice into 8 spirals.

Place in a 9 inch cake pan and set aside.

Repeat with remaining dough ball.
Bake both pans for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the Mornay
Begin heating milk in a small saucepan about 5 minutes before starting the roux.

In a medium saucepan melt the butter over low heat, let it bubble a little bit to remove some of the water.

Add flour and cook, whisking, over low heat until the roux becomes smooth and bubbly. (It will start off lumpy looking, just keep whisking)

Remove pan from heat and whisk in Mustard, Pepper and Nutmeg.

Begin adding the scalded milk while whisking constantly.
Return the pan to the heat and bring just to a boil while stirring constantly, sauce will be thick.
Add grated cheeses a little at a time, whisking until melted before adding the more.

When all the cheese has been incorporated, hit it with a dash of Worcestershire.

Remove from heat and pour over your pinwheels.

Mangia!!!
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