Biscuits and related matters

Since my last post had no recipes, I'll include three today.

Biscuits. A staple of southern cookery. Truly glorious if prepared well, and utterly abysmal if done badly. The two recipes that follow are the best I've come across. Good luck.

Biscuits

4 handfuls of self rising flour-White Lily please
1 fistful of lard-shortening will do, but lard has a better texture and flavor
"enough" buttermilk or clabber or blue john or pet milk or, well, there are a lot of options.

By handful, I mean as much flour as you can scoop up with a slightly cupped hand. By fistful, I mean about a half a handful. As to "enough", it depends on the liquid used and the looseness of dough you prefer. I like a loose dough, so I generally push mty fist into the well of flour and fill up the hole. It works perfectly. You will want to experiment.

Work the lard into the flour, add your liquid, and bring together into a dough. Use a butterknife, it does the job better than a fork. I tend to break off pieces of dough and roll them in my hands, but if you want to roll them out, feel free.

Bake at 485 for 13-16 minutes till just done.

Biscuits 2

1 sifter full of self rising flour
5 spoons of lard (a tablespoon, like an actual serving spoon, not the measuring spoon, heaping)
enough liquid (see above)

Prepare as above.

If these instructions are useless to you, try White Lily's website.

Two fun recipes with biscuits:

Butter Roll Pie

1 making of biscuit dough, rolled out into a big rectangle. Spread with softened butter (real butter), sprinkle liberally with cinnamon and sugar. Roll up and cut into rounds like cinnamon rolls. Place cut side up in a baking dish, and pour over a custard mixture (1 qt. milk, 1 c. sugar, and four eggs with a dash of vanilla. This is a loose suggestion as to quantity, you may need to make more custard. It always takes more than you think you'll need.) and sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at 350 till done. 45 minutes or so. Serve chilled.

Biscuit pudding

A mess of biscuits. (I like to use fried biscuits for this. Just panfry the biscuits rather than baking them.) Break into small pieces and soak in the custard mixture above for a few minutes. Pour into a baking dish (a little cinnamon wiouldn't hurt.) and bake at 300 for 45 minutes to an hour till set. Serve with ice cream.

Mater's Restaurant and Catering Jackson, Alabama-A Review

Small towns in south Alabama are not expected to be centers of gastronomic glory past the basic repertoire of meat and three vegetables, nonetheless, it is disappointing to leave a restaurant with grave concern that the kitchen staff would likely screw that up as well. Mater's, for all its pretensions, is simply the most mediocre dining establishment in Jackson.

Perhaps I expect too much, but when I am faced with a menu littered with spelling and grammar errors, misuse of culinary terms (braised in olive oil and steamed in wine, really?), and dish descriptions that make me wonder whether the "chef" has ever tasted piccata before attempting to cook it, I really have to ask if it's worth the 17.99 price tag. For half that I can buy frozen dinners that will at least taste like the dishes I associate with the names "chicken marsala" and "seafood alfredo." t

I must concede that the "italian" food they are serving is an improvement over their hamburgers (which seem beyond the abilities of the "chef") and french fries (soggy and brown). Though the "chef" should be ashamed of himself for leaving his diners with the impression that his food is what any of those dishes are actually supposed to taste like. The service, at least, is slightly better than it used to be.

I wouldn't be so upset if there were not several small changes that would so dramatically improve the food. A little decoration (the tables look like a cafeteria), frozen french fries (hand cut should be better than the ones at Burger King, not vastly inferior), someone who knows what the word "medium" means, a basic italian cookbook, a proof reader, and completely new staff, and Mater's would become the nice establishment it's pretending to be.