Biscuits Baby!

Over the holidays, I was invited to a baby shower for the daughter of Susan "Fake It Til You Bake It" fame. The daughter is a childhood friend of Rachel's and it's her first baby. A celebration was clearly in order.

Susan was a bit flustered when I called her to see what I could bring. It was the holidays after all. "Call Johanna," she said. "She's the one in charge."

So I dutifully called and while I had hoped to bring one of the 3,000 holiday baked goods/chocolates already made, desserts were not what she needed. Nope, what they needed to go with the four different (and I might now add, fabulous) homemade soups and country ham was biscuits.

I had actually never made biscuits before (yes, I know that's unusual but my family is really not a bread family in general so they haven't been on our radar much — a trait that is apparently a bit of an anomaly based on my frantic internet reading about biscuits after I got off the phone with Johanna) but I blithely said, "sure." And then headed online.

Where I learned that there are approximately one million ways to make biscuits and I immediately began to feel just a teensy anxious because, after all, I was making these for Susan (yes, other people would be at the party but anyone who is reading this and who knows Susan understands exactly what I mean when I say I was making them for her. Click here to get an inkling of what I mean.) And all of this was before I got an email from someone else attending the party who said that Susan didn't want to bother me herself but would this person please let me know that the biscuits must be bite-sized.

The stakes were clearly high.

Among the many decisions to be made were buttermilk vs. milk, the quantity of baking powder and butter vs. Crisco (or shortening, which really is one of the world's best euphemisms for something that is otherwise just plain disgusting to ponder — lard). I went with milk because I am tired of buying a quart of buttermilk and having the rest go bad (someone should make pints) and Crisco. The Crisco part was hard, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, what IS that stuff anyway? But I don't have a machine and I know firsthand how hard it is to make crusty things without one (read one of my many pie failure posts here) and so I thought I'd see how Crisco does with my new pastry cutter.

The answer is wonderful. Much much easier. And the biscuits, Susan proclaimed, were "wonderful." Crisis averted.



Basic Biscuits

ingredients

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup milk

method
Mix flour, powder and salt together; cut in the shortening. Add the milk and then roll out to 1/2 inch. Cut with a biscuit cutter. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Chicken and Peaches. Yes Peaches. Oh and Bacon

Janet here:

I was looking for something to make that said summer but didn't involve grilling. I also didn't want to spend all afternoon making it. It was too darn hot.

So I started thumbing through my cookbooks and found what I wanted in Rachael Ray's Look + Cook. (I reviewed it here if you want to more about it.) I had never made anything that combined fruit with chicken so I was intrigued. We grilled some green beans (okay, so we grilled one thing), and mixed them up with some diced shallots, olive oil and mustard. I'm here to say, it was a damn fine meal, I'm not going to lie.

Glazed Chicken and Peaches
with cheese and bacon biscuits
serves 4

Biscuits


ingredients

Jiffy biscuit mix. Yup a box of biscuit mix. You can certainly make them from scratch but these were just fine.
one cup of grated sharp cheddar
about 2 tablespoons bacon bits

method
Mix the biscuits according to the box, and then mix in the cheese and bacon.
Bake in oven following the box directions.

Chicken

ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
2-3 large peaches, halved or thickly sliced
juice of 1/2 lemon
3 boneless chicken breasts
salt and pepper to taste
1 shallot choppped
1 tablespoon dried ginger or 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and grated
3/4 cups chicken stock
a little more than 1/3 cup peach preserves
2 teaspoons hot sauce
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

method
Melt the butter with the lemon juice. Add the peaches to the skillet. Cook about 10 minutes until peaches are tender.

While peaches are cooking, put some EVOO in a pan and add the chicken. Cook about 10 minutes each side until tender. Take off the heat, put on a plate and cover.

In the pan that held the chicken, add a little more EVOO, chicken stock, peach preserves, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce. Cook until thickened. Put the chicken on a plate and cover with the glaze. Serve with biscuits and dig in.