I made these yesterday morning for breakfast before meeting family friends for lunch at Pulino's. The biscuits were a wonderful start to the day, Pulino's was disappointing (spotty service and lettuce aswim in a vinaigrette whose chief ingredient was water - both anomalous in the McNally empire, of which I am otherwise a great fan), and we had very good time talking to someone I practically grew up with but hardly knew.
Anyway, the biscuit: Flour, baking powder, butter, rubbed in until it looks like fine sand (I remember my mother teaching me this when I made scones. I think seeing it done is important). Some milk. Baked till golden. I have no recipe for it yet because I have been measuring them by sight, figuring out how they work.
The dough, once it has been pulled together, is suggestively soft and alive and delicate, as though too much touching will ruin it - and it will. I cut out the shapes with my remaining thin green glass, from the wonderful French kitchen shop on Mott Street, below Prince, closed sooner after 9/11.
I prefer calling them biscuits, now. The American word has so much rich, buttery, emotional history. Women are forever whipping up batches of hot biscuits in novels and stories and films of the South. Because the biscuit is an English (and consequently South African) scone. There is no difference, except in how - and why - they are eaten:
Biscuits are breakfast and lunch and dinner. Scones are tea. Biscuits are black eyed peas and ham and grits and coffee-laced gravy...Biscuits are a foundation. Scones are ornament. Biscuits are coffee. Scones are tea. Biscuits are sliced ham and early morning on the prairie. Scones are jam and thick cream and an English church at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
Sometimes, scones are Clifton beach at tea time in winter, with teapots and China cups.
But that was a long time ago.
Now that I'm thinking about biscuits, I wonder about quotations. I am sure Cormac McCarthy must have a few. And Faulkner. I shall start searching. If anyone stumbles over a nice one, please send it this way.
Y'all come back real soon, now, y'hear?
Quote me: I'd like a hot buttered biscuit, please.
ReplyDeletexo jane
You know what I noticed and liked: how brilliantly colored your milk container is. We don't have anything that colorful here on the west coast. At least not in the regular markets. Wonderful images and colors. I blew it up so I could look at it in detail.
ReplyDeleteJane - I often quote you :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Teri - the 'milk container' is my coffee cup :-) and if you hunt through antique shops, junk shops, I bet you'll find some. But I think this one came from Anthropologie.
PS Teri- for a better look at the cup:
ReplyDeletehttp://66squarefeet.blogspot.com/2010/09/breakfast-tray.html
I could handle a biscuit like that this morning- late night last night.
ReplyDeleteCoffee for me right now, I'm going to take the presure as high as I dare on the espresso machine, see if I can press through the most viscus coffee yet, nice caffeine hit.
god you maker a biscuit break sound good.
ReplyDeletealso, i love your restaurant reviews.
you leave soon don't you?
they look divine - any tips on how to stop eating them all in one day?
ReplyDeleteExcuzo - I think food is butting into the terrace and flowers blogspot, not so? ah - but it is hard to keep them apart!
ReplyDeleteRob, I dream of an espresso machine. Partial to the stovetop espresso maker, and we can even make viscous, but not that g*^$%$*^%d viscous!
ReplyDeleteBonbon, si, Monday...eep.
Marijks. That's the tricky part, but at breakfast I'm not very hungry just one is fine. Um...it's WINTER here, look at my blog manifesto: I declare reguit with my readers that there will be food :-)