Buttermilk Cheddar Jack Biscuits

Cheesy Buttermilk biscuits are the perfect winter comfort food. Even if you didn't grow up with them, they somehow still remind you of home. 

The last few days have reminded me of a scene from a D Movie with Woody Harrelson. He plays a bank teller, who after five long years at a pointless job, is offered twelve new responsibilities, a fifty-five cent an hour raise and the realization: After five years, this is his life. He proceeds to spend odd amounts of time in the desert being bitten by lizards with poor palettes, and in seeming insanity robs the bank and quits.

I went home that night, walked through my bright red front door, up the stairs that lean to the right, and into my room the size of a chihuahua’s doghouse. Then it hits me: After three years, this is my home. The sinking hardwood floors, the cabinets hanging lopsidedly due to a top bracket that has given up on holding on for dear life, the peeling deck, decaying trees that fall and shatter my white picket fence are my home, and I haven’t even so much as decorated. I haven’t even unpacked all my boxes.

I’ve been living like a college kid but with none of the perks. No sleeping in late, no skipping classes, or ignoring your homework to tan by the pool. No 2 am snowball fights, or sliding down the hill by the library on the trays from the cafeteria. Undoubtedly most of you studied in college, worked for a grade and other things I can’t even think to name because I didn’t do them. I was studious in my own way, I had notes on cassette tapes that I would fall asleep listening to in the afternoons. I got amazing grades for the amount of effort that I rarely put in.  

How I could live in a place for three years and not accumulate more decoration than the pair of Ed Hardy glitter tights hanging from a broken mirror? I have helped Butchie move and decorate twice in the last three years, yet it hadn’t crossed my mind to do the same in any of the eight places I have lived in the last nine years.

Instead of robbing the bank I’ve raided the basement. The perks of the revolving door of roommates is that your basement becomes a treasure trove of forgotten ages.  Crawling around an unfinished basement of spider webs and boxes I found two items, a desk IKEA looks down upon, and a secretariat desk straight from the 1970s still smelling of orange shag carpet, which I coveted all the more for it. After a half hearted attempt to see if it belonged to anyone currently living in our home, I stole it.

I discovered who the patrons of a Home Depot are in a city known for hiring out such work. Mainly construction workers clearly pleased to be on an outing instead of painting while some rich stay at home socialite tells them the color of paint is too beige, instead of focusing on petting her lap dog and planning a garden party as she ought to be doing. I like the Thursday morning Home Depot crowd. I know I don’t belong to them, but for a moment I’d like to fancy that I have a real project to do in my home, instead of buying spray paint to give my new desk a color to match it’s 1970s scent.

After three years, I have stolen a piece of furniture with drawers. My clothes are not in IKEA boxes, and I have my pathetic old paintings hanging on my walls, and a bedspread that matches a stolen secretariat desk, now wearing granny apple green spray paint.  I have officially moved in to my home. I probably should have robbed a bank and bought a new home, but it’s hard to muster that kind of energy in the Winter. 

Buttermilk Cheddar Jack Biscuits

3 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup shredded cheddar jack cheese

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in large bowl to blend. Using a pastry blender cut  3/4 cup chilled butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal.

Add buttermilk, and cheese. Stir until evenly moistened.

Using 1/4 cup dough for each biscuit, drop biscuits onto baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart, or roll out on a floured surface until ½ inch thick  and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Bake until biscuits are golden brown on top, about 15 minutes. Cool slightly.

Rosemary Parmesan Crostini

The New York Times may have called this recipe a biscotti, but a biscotti it is not. Antonio Mattei would not approve. I'm re-branding this as a good crostini base instead. 

I didn't intend for this post to be so much of a critique of a recipe, but it is what it is. Happens to every baker. Have you ever been thoroughly confused by a recipe? A biscotti with no sugar? Calls for an equal amount of egg whites and yolks? Walnuts instead of a more traditional pine nut, despite the Parmesan and rosemary? I accept that American biscotti is incredibly different than Antonio Mattei makes it (who I think of as the godfather of biscotti), and I do love a recipe renaissance, with new and inventive twists, BUT, I also have an issue with misnomered food. With this recipe the NYT strayed a bit too far and wound up with a an entirely different product. Biscuit, yes, but biscotti no.

That said, it's like most take out Chinese food. It's good food, just not good Chinese food. This recipe makes for a good biscuit, just not a good biscotti. I do however love it as a crostini base. So far I've been using it to go with a cream cheese and artichoke spread. (Tons of flavor!) It's also been a really great dipping bread for lemon flavored olive oil.

With all this said, I am now about to set out to make a more traditional rosemary-parmesan biscotti. The idea is just too good to let go.

Enjoy!

Rosemary-Parmesan Crostini

As adapted from the New York Times

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional for kneading

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

1/2 cup toasted pine nuts

5 eggs

1/2 cup water

Olive oil spray

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, Parmesan, pepper, rosemary and pine nuts. Whisk together 4 of the eggs and the water. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the egg mixture. Stir to combine.

Lightly flour your hands and a work surface; turn out the dough and knead until smooth. Divide the dough in half and shape each piece into a 2 1/2-inch-thick log. Spray a baking sheet with the olive oil and place the dough logs on it. Whisk the remaining egg and brush it over the dough. Bake for 35 minutes.

Let cool for a few minutes and then cut the biscotti on the diagonal into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Place on the baking sheet cut side down, using 2 pans if necessary. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake until browned, about 20 minutes. Let cool completely.