Tuesday, March 9, 2010

cheddar-rosemary biscuits with sake-sausage gravy and a pickled pepper puree

cut 1 1/2T. of bacon drippings and 1 1/2T. lard into 1c. of sifted bread flour. added to the dry mixture: 1 1/2t. baking powder, 1t. salt, 1t. coarse-ground black pepper, and 1t. of fresh chopped rosemary. gently mixed a little bit of milk and 1c. of coarsely shredded sharp white cheddar into the dry ingredients, and then enough heavy cream to make the dough the right consistency (being careful to not over mix and incorporate the blobs of fat from the bacon and lard into the liquid, the consistency for the biscuit dough is similar to the consistency of the baked biscuit, should not change shape after placed on the baking sheet). dropped three globs onto a buttered baking sheet, then placed on a middle rack in a 435-degree oven until the bottom was nice and brown and the top started to develop some color, probably about 15 or 20-minutes.

heated a skillet containing a little bit of olive oil. added a finely diced half of an onion to the hot skillet. cooked the onion until slightly tender, added four sliced-up homemade sausages. let the sausages brown for a bit, but not fully cook, then added a cup or so of cheap-ass sake, a pinch of salt, pepper, korean chili flakes, hot pepper flakes, fresh thyme, and marjoram. let the sake reduce for a few minutes, then added a splash of stock, 2T. butter, 2T. of flour, and stirred until well-incorporated. hit the gravy mixture with a healthy splash of heavy cream, and a few dashes of hot sauce, then let reduce until the proper muddy consistency.

poured a heaping puddle of heart attack over the flaky biscuit, topped with a squirt of homemade pickled pepper puree.

[note: as i was editing the photo, i realized that unless you know and love biscuits and gravy, this probably looks like a pile of vomit...it's really hard to make this dish look appetizing. also, taken with a friend's camera, wish that i had my lens for this one, natural light finally.]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tastiest vomit I had ever had!...up to that point.

kelly minx riordan said...

that's the problem i always have serving or shooting biscuits and gravy. so tasty. so aesthetically unpleasant.

Jen McCully said...

This looks great! I definitely want to try this one.

Something that generally helps dishes such as this photograph well is the addition of something colorful to reduce the monochromatic look of the food...like a sprinkle of sliced green onion, sprig of parsley, something of that nature. Perhaps even if you had reserved some of the sausage/onion mixture before making the gravy, and sprinkled that on top...