Monday, December 27, 2010

Buttermilk Biscuits and Portobello Gravy

I first encountered biscuits and gravy at Humps, one of the greasy "family dining" restaurants my mom loves to stop at on road trips to the Oregon coast. Oregon greasy spoons are like retro Mystery Spots. They transport the diner back to a time when jello on a lettuce leaf constituted salad and everything came with canned green bean casserole. Our ultimate greasy spoon experience, the one that lives on at family dinners and college plays (cough) and any time we cook coq au vin, was in Dexter, Oregon, not at the coast at all but on the way home from Mt. St. Helens.

When we pulled into Dexter we were starving and tired from a long hike--and a terrifyingly close call on what my mom calls dot-dot-dot roads. The one cafe in town had a giant hand-painted sign declaring, "Deadheads Welcome!" and a lot of cheerful hallooing coming from the bar. Thrilled by the surprisingly leftist local culture, my parents shooed us all into the cafe side of the building, where we were met by a tiny middle-aged lady with a big black beehive and cat-eye glasses. That should have been the first clue.

The second was that nothing on the menu was actually on order except for burgers, fried chicken and the evening special coq au vin, which our hostess whispered to us conspiratorially, "has wine in it, you know, but don't worry, it evaporates." She sighed and looked reflective for a moment. "I sure wish the cook would make something I can pronounce!"

The third was when the two gentlemen who arrived shortly after us ordered "hamboogers."

The fourth was that, despite the welcome sign, there were no hippies in evidence; we were decidedly out of our element.

And the fifth was when our lady of the elevated locks cocked her head toward the kitchen window and hollered, "Velma, heat up the oil!"

All of this is true. And the chicken came with a jello mold on leaf of iceberg lettuce, canned wax beans, and some suspiciously hard biscuits.

But at Humps, although there was no adorable hostess in a fifties pants suit--or any deadheads, there was biscuits and gravy. Lumpy, fatty sausage gravy that congealed quickly on top of rich Crisco biscuits. I had the worst stomachache after that meal, and decided I was allergic to biscuits and gravy, which was probably a good call for my heart but a bad one for my mouth, because my word, biscuits and gravy can be good.

Take tonight's dinner, for example. With homemade buttermilk biscuits and a vegetarian portobello mushroom gravy, this country dish takes a slightly sophisticated turn while staying true to its comfort food roots. I'm not going to lie--this isn't health food (though the gravy recipe is from Eating Well magazine and would be healthy served over mashed potatoes or some lean meat), but it is delicious and perfect for cold nights when its pouring (Portland) or snowing (east coast) and you want something warm and simple to eat with a salad. Or a jello mold on lettuce, your choice.

The biscuit recipe is taken from the FoodDay section of the Oregonian, given to me by my father-in-law, and it's one of the best biscuit recipes I've tried (and perfect biscuits are a minor passion of mine). I think the trick is rolling the biscuits in melted butter, so that both top and bottom get a little crunchy while the inside turns into soft, flaky layers. Be sure not to overwork the dough, and to press down lightly on the flour mixture just after integrating the butter. This creates flaky layers during the baking process.

Note: get the gravy simmering before assembling the biscuits. Biscuits are best eaten fresh out of the oven, so you want to wait until 20 minutes or so before the gravy is done to get started on them. The gravy can be made in advance; unbaked biscuits can be chilled in the fridge for up to an hour before baking.

BUTTERMILK BISCUITS AND PORTOBELLO GRAVY

For the biscuits:

  1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and melt 4 T butter in an 8-in square baking dish. (I just stick the dish in the oven as it heats up.) Set pan with melted butter aside.
  2. In a large bowl, mix 2 C flour with 2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt.
  3. Cut 4 T of cold, unsalted butter into small chunks and toss into the flour. Using a pastry cutter, two butter knives, or your fingers, work the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Gently press your palm against the mixture once or twice.
  4. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in 3/4 C buttermilk. (I found I needed 1-2 more T of milk to make the dough cohere.) Using your hands, mix the dough just until it forms into a ball and leaves the sides of the bowl.
  5. Dump the dough onto the counter and knead no more than 10-12 gentle times before rolling the dough out no less than 1-inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a drinking glass, cut the dough into 2-3 inch biscuits. Gently gather up the scraps to make more biscuits until all of the dough is used up. You should get between 6-9 biscuits per batch.
  6. Roll each biscuit in the melted butter so that each side is buttered, and nestle all of the biscuits into the pan (you want them to touch). Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen and golden brown.

For the portobello gravy:

  1. Finely chop one small onion, two cloves of garlic and 2 medium-sized portobello mushroom caps.
  2. Heat 1 T of olive oil in a pan and gently cook the onion and garlic until soft and translucent, roughly 5 minutes.
  3. Add the mushrooms and saute, stirring occasionally, until they release their juices, around 10 minutes.
  4. Add 2 1/4 C vegetable or chicken stock to the pan, along with 3 T of tamari or low sodium soy sauce and a couple pinches of dried thyme and dried sage. Let simmer for 10 minutes.
  5. In a separate bowl, make a slurry of 4 T water and 2 T cornstarch. Mix until well combined.
  6. Add slurry to the gravy and simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
  7. Pepper and salt to taste.
  8. Split open a hot biscuit and add a couple ladlefuls of mushroom gravy. We ate ours with a raw broccoli and apple salad, but any fresh green veggies will cut the richness of the dish and add some vitamins.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Banana Cranberry Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Ganache


I love birthdays. I don't understand people who hate to celebrate their birthdays, or who hide the day from well-wishers, misanthropically defying community celebration. After all, unless one has a genuinely traumatic memory associated with his birth date (and I did know one such boy), isn't it nice to be alive for another year? And to have a day on which all of the people who love or even just know you celebrate the fact?

This debate came up during the most recent Leadership Meeting at work. In a discussion about how to boost morale around the warehouse, I suggested making a birthday calendar. (Which, incidentally, I thought to be an embarrassingly innocuous suggestion. I just figured that a pizza party and raises for everyone was a pipe dream.) Immediately, half of the lame indie posers I work for asserted that no one would want to participate in this, people hate sharing their birthday, it was a terrible idea, how would they fit into their skinny hipster jeans if they ate cake, etc. I like how no one wondered how this crushing criticism might affect my morale. I also thought the objections stupid.

"Why not make it volunteer?" I asked, "Besides, doesn't the fact that the leadership team won't assert the warehouse as a caring community suggest an origin for the low morale levels?"

One day, prior to speaking, I'll just remove my shoe and sock and insert my foot into my mouth. Unfortunately, at the meeting, I exacerbated my blunder by staring stubbornly at the management team, silently daring them to come up with a better idea.


I won, ironically by dint of the management's genuine lack of interest in employee happiness; the lanky wonders who boss me around all day were too antsy for a smoke to continue arguing. I'll be sure, however, to honor their original wishes by ignoring their birthdays. Which is a shame, because tomorrow someone else will get these cupcakes.

Banana Cranberry Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Ganache
Adapted from How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

This cupcake batter is assembled in one pot, and bakes up with delicious results. The moist little cakes taste like banana bread, with bursts of cranberry and a wonderfully deep, adult dark chocolate lid.

For the cupcakes:

3 overripe bananas, mashed
1/2 C unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 C sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 1/3 C all-purpose flour
3/4 C sugar
1/2 C dried cranberries

For the frosting:

1/2 C dark chocolate chips or pieces(I used Ghiardelli 60%)
100 ml heavy cream
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Put 12 cupcake wrappers into a muffin tin and light mist cups with cooking spray.
  • Melt the butter in a large pot. When melted, pull off the heat and whisk in the sugar, vanilla and mashed bananas until blended. Next, whisk in the the eggs and sour cream until incorporated. Add the salt, baking soda and baking powder, and mix well. Finish by adding the flour and cranberries and mixing until just blended.
  • Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the cupcake tops are golden and springy, and a toothpick inserted into the middle of one comes out relatively clean (a few moist crumbs are fine, you just don't want batter still clinging to it).
  • Let cupcakes cool in wrappers on a rack.
  • When the cupcakes are cool, add the chocolate pieces to the cream and heat to a boil in a saucepan. As soon as the cream boils, remove from the heat and whisk until smooth and thick. You can adjust the texture by adding more chocolate or cream.
  • Using a spoon, frost the top of each cupcake, smoothing with the back of the spoon. It may run a bit, so place a sheet of wax paper underneath your baking rack.
  • Let cool and enjoy! (Or, as I did below, take a gigantic bite while the chocolate's still warm and resign yourself to happiness.)