NY Times: Southern Cooks Use Premade Biscuits

And some of the best barbecue joints serve canned sweet potatoes and flavorless storebought dinner rolls. Just because these foods have authentic uses doesn't mean they're any good.

I sure do want to try some Sister Schubert rolls now, though.

Day 4: Carolina Food Only

I'm settled in now after a few days of tumult. Tonight we ate:

• Biscuits made from Adluh Self-Rising Flour, Caw Caw Creek bacon drippings, and Happy Cow Creamery milk
• Pink eyed peas, already hulled, from Rosewood Market. I cooked them with a little bacon fat, a garden okra pod, and water, with a piece of bacon crumbled on top at the end.
• A caprese salad of garden tomatoes, garden basil, and Happy Cow Creamery mozzarella

Lawson thought the biscuits tasted too bacony, but I thought they were fine -- I've not eaten a lot of biscuits in my life, so I don't really have a standard. I'll eat one tomorrow with fig preserves and decide whether the bacon interferes with that treatment.

Last night we drank a bottle of Biltmore Estate red table wine, which was actually really decent. At $11, however, it was way out of my wine price range. You know those lists of The Best Wines Under $25? Yeah. I have a personal cap of $8, with occasional forays up to $10 if I balance those out with enough $4 bottles. Do I appreciate fancier wines? Yes. Are some of those $7 wines really good? Yes. $25 my foot. But anyway, yes, North Carolina wine was pretty tasty.

Creamed Mushrooms with Chives

I found the perfect recipe for all those mushrooms. It was from the big yellow Gourmet cookbook, the one I talked you out of asking Grandma for. Very few things I've made from that book have been as good as I think they should be. It's got design flaws -- the recipe titles are printed in pale yellow on white paper, so they're really hard to read -- and is huge but not authoritative; it's just a bunch of recipes, not a reference book. But tonight's recipe was pretty wonderful, so it's partially redeemed.

Here's my version of Creamed Mushrooms with Chives, adapted for two people and the stuff I had on hand:

- 1 pound cremini mushrooms, thickly sliced
- 2 tablespoons butter

Saute over medium-high heat for 10 or 15 minutes, until most of the liquid subsides. Add:

- 1 small onion, or half a regular onion

Saute another 5 minutes or so. Add and simmer for 10 minutes or until it thickens slightly:

- 1/3 cup half and half (I never have cream on hand but we always have half and half for coffee)
- 1/3 cup chicken stock
- 1 or 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Add salt and pepper. At the end, stir in:

-1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives

I served it on your whole wheat biscuits. Because the oven is broken I baked them in the toaster oven, which seemed to work fine.

It tasted like essence of mushrooms and was not too creamy. And oh, I ate such a big pile of sauteed spinach.

Chicken and Dumplings on Two Continents

Tonight I made chicken with dumplings. I used to make this dish in the Azores 25 years ago; I was a less experienced cook then and the only cookbook I brought in my suitcase was the small paperback edition of the Better Homes and Gardens (red checkered cover). The chickens I bought there included the feet, which I dutifully boiled to make stock. The market in Ponta Delgado, on the main island Sao Miguel, was fresh and interesting: it had no imported goods, only what was available in season right then and there. I bought round slices of firm white fish and cooked it only to find it was conger eel (tastes like chicken, only snowy white and tough, with lots of little bones). We could buy big cabbages and cauliflowers, and excellent sausages. On a sad note, Dad was stuck there once for Thanksgiving when the rest of us were back in Colorado, and he had liver for Thanksgiving dinner. This story depresses me every time I hear it.

This time I used boneless skinless chicken thighs, my current favorite for any long-cooked chicken dish. First I browned onions, carrots, celery, green pepper, and then the chicken in a mixture of butter and olive oil; I deglazed with white vermouth; added chopped fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (really); then added water, salt, and pepper, and simmered for 45 minutes. I made dumplings from my Whole Wheat Biscuits for 2 recipe:

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 tablespoons milk

and dropped them onto the simmering stew. Cooked covered for 10 minutes and uncovered for 10 more.

With it we had collard greens and a plate of sliced tomatoes with chopped basil, olives, sliced green onions, and a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil.