Monday, September 28, 2009

I Didn't Really Like Breakfast Food Until I Came To The South

The chicken biscuit is quite possibly the perfect food, anytime anywhere. I think it's almost impossible to get a bad chicken biscuit wherever you are, simply because it's such a perfectly conceived food. Chick-Fil-A? Delicious. Gas station in South Carolina? Delicious.
My sister and dad are breakfast food fiends. There was a time growing up when I would always try to order off the lunch menu if we went out for breakfast (eggs used to make me throw up actually...i wasn't picky...my stomach just couldn't handle them for some reason...chocolate too...those were dark dark times). Going to Millie's Kitchen and eating a burger and coffee cake was probably the worst possible thing for your health, but it sure was delicious. The chicken biscuit is like a gateway breakfast food for someone like me. Chicken fried steak...though delicious...is a bit much. Fried chicken on a biscuit? That's the perfect amount of unhealthy in the morning. I do like breakfast foods a lot now...though I'm not really in the habit of eating breakfast on a daily basis. But sometimes on the weekend I get up and cook myself a little something like eggs, or hash browns...or that time I made corned beef hash with leftovers from St. Patty's day.
Since coming to school I've been introduced to the world of the lake house (it's not just a shitty Keanu Reeves remake of a Korean movie that makes absolutely no sense...how do they have conversations back and forth on written letters through a time portal mailbox? RIDICULOUS). I have found that I suck at waterskiing (in my case it's more like watertainting...think about it) and hate getting up in the morning early enough to go out on the boat for the best conditions. I'm much happier getting a bit more sleep and cooking breakfast for everyone when they get back, then heading out later for tubing/jetskiing etc.
I made a promise to myself that I would make fantastic chicken biscuits for all next time I go to the lake. But opportunities for that to happen are quickly disappearing. Still, nothing's stopping me from learning how to make a chicken biscuit.
In the coming months, this blog will prominently feature updates on my project of making a phenomenal chicken biscuit. This is a food that deserves this kind of attention (I've gotta study for/take the boards at some point in there too). I'll be trying out different types of biscuits and testing out all sorts of fried chicken. I'll be devising my own brines, crust methods, frying methods etc. But first let's start with biscuits:

Batch #1: Sweet potato biscuits.

Sure anyone can pop open a can of pillsbury's or mix up some bisquick and make some pretty delicious biscuits. I want something more. Something that's undeniably handmade and special. Let's put some freaking sweet potato into a biscuit:

It starts here:



Baked a monstrous sweet potato for an hour, then let it cool and pureed it silky smooth.
I then used organic whole wheat (mom would be proud) pastry flour...trying to infuse a bit of my California heritage into something Southern. Used baking powder and baking soda, cut in butter, mixed in the sweet potato puree, and used a bit of pourable yogurt to bring it all together. Had to use a glass as a biscuit cutter and the final results are as follows:


Disappointing really. They're too thin, as they don't rise nearly as much thanks to the sweet potato. They're dome shaped due to the very blunt drinking glass mashing down the sides of the biscuit round instead of cutting through...and I'm forced to use a processor to cut the butter in due to my incredibly warm hands preventing me from using that thumb rolling technique that leads to nice and flaky results. The inside looks like this:


Next time I'll mix in the cold sweet potato puree by hand after cutting in frozen butter into the flour mixture, which will hopefully keep some of those big globs of butter intact. I'll make the dough thicker and find a better biscuit cutting device, all while using the ice bath/frozen glove technique I use while making truffles.

Also, almost all biscuit recipes call for more shortening than butter...but I'm not gonna go down that road. Shortening makes for some damn good biscuits (and fried chicken too), but it's an abomination against nature. Screw California though...whole wheat pastry flour is out. I'm gonna go full throttle with bleached cake flour.

And for no particular reason...one of the sexiest things you'll ever see:


The Chick-Fil-A nuggets party platter.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Why are you still here?

The other day I noticed that I've had this blog for over four years now. I don't think I've ever been able to keep something up for this long, and a lot has happened in four years. I went back and looked at my first posts for fun, and realized that my blog content has changed a lot over the years. When did this food blog stop being about making fun of people and start being about...well...food? What happened? Maybe it's because I started dating...but even now that I'm not I still am a lot friendlier than I was before. Perhaps it's because the only people I ever interact with now are my classmates, all of whom are pretty terrific people. I genuinely like the four people that actually read this blog and don't end up here accidentally, but I never foresaw that anyone would actually read this thing.

And when did I stop making fun of my sister? Is it because it's just way too easy to make fun of someone pushing thirty who's unmarried and living with her parents? (hahaha...still got it)

Is it time to change my blog title?

Not yet...aside from the four aforementioned "serious" readers (and admit it, you're only here as a break from facebook), the majority of the people that land here on my blog are absolute morons who are brought here by google. I've already talked about the people who come here with the google search "foods i don't like," (it leads to more specific results than their first attempt that included "and i'm too much of a complete idiot to know myself and am expecting google to tell me"). Let's take a look at some of the most recent keywords that have landed here:

tempura soba
shrimp tempura soba - it didn't work, we're not dating anymore. Make something else you asian fetishist creeps.

pseudoplastic foods
food pseudoplastic - Try wikipedia for your third grade science report next time you punk kids.

Hamptons dinners - if you can't afford to have a personal assistant look this up for you, you shouldn't be eating there. Get a job.

im fucked for the mcat
i hate the fucking mcat
i fucked up the mcat - Hope you enjoy dental school.

I like I Don't like grammar food - you're beyond help.

i don't like restaurant food - don't go to a restaurant jackass.

Whew...that's better.