Nurturing my inner... eye of the beholder

Not every weekend can be a hotbed of creative brilliance in my home.  (Who can take that kind of pressure!)  Yesterday I bought some fun imported snacks, so to balance my unique treats outflow of cash, I decided not to spend any money today.  Instead, I would go "shopping" without leaving my condo - in my freezer, fridge and pantry.  I was determined to make something out of already purchased items.  And that, I found out after my perusing the frozen tundra of the ice box and the long forgotten outer reaches of the cabinets, added up to chili.  But a tweaked version of my original that I posted last October.  Slightly off recipe because I didn't have kidney beans, so I used giant white beans.  No green pepper, but I had an orange one.  Out of green chillies, yet a fresh jalapeno had been sitting around getting lonely.  So I threw it all together in the crock pot and set the dial for about six hours total time.

I can't very well blog about a dish I already made.  So I poked around the freezer a little longer and found a bit of bacon and some shredded cheddar.  I decided I would make biscuits!  After all, they are the perfect complement for chili.

Bacon Cheddar Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick of butter
1 cup of finely shredded cheddar cheese
3 strips of bacon, diced, cooked and drained
1 cup of buttermilk (I used the powdered stuff)

Why would you buy biscuits in a can when it's SO super easy to make them from scratch?  Make these and you too will be saying the same thing!

When I bring a package of bacon home, I immediately divide it into three slice portions, wrap them in foil, put them in a plastic bag and freeze them.  That way, I can take out just what I need per recipe.

One package, premeasured by me.

Bacon is easier to cut when it's frozen.  So instead of defrosting it, I took it right out of the freezer and diced it.  It made for nice clean cuts.

I didn't want large pieces in my biscuits.

Into a saute pan on medium I tossed them in and cooked them until they were slightly brown, carefully making sure they didn't get too crispy or burnt.  I was going for more of a meaty flavor in the biscuits than a burned bacon taste that might be okay if I was eating it straight up next to eggs.

The lower heat setting helps it to cook and
stay just a little chewy.

There was one thing I knew I had to have at home in order to make tasty biscuits though and that was buttermilk.  It's not always easy to find at the store, so I bought powdered buttermilk in the baking section.  It lasts a lot longer than the liquid version, which is good for someone like me who doesn't always go through supplies that quickly.

It's really handy to have it in your fridge.
Good for pancakes or fried chicken.
(So I hear.)

Four tablespoons of buttermilk powder plus one cup of water equals one cup of regular buttermilk.  It's brilliant, I tell you!

It looks a lot like flour, but slightly yellow.

Into the bowl went all the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, salt and buttermilk powder.

Varying shades of ecru and white.

And this is the key to flaky biscuits - cold butter.  It will get trapped in the dough and as it melts, create pockets.  I took the butter out of the fridge at the last minute, sliced it into some pieces and then cut it into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter.  For around $5.00, a pastry cutter may be one of the best tools you ever buy.  (And it beats having to cut butter into flour with two knives.  Trust me, I've done it.  Spend the five bucks!)

When it becomes the texture of sand, or
looks like little pebbles, then you've got the
right consistency.

Last items I added once that crumbly mix of flour and butter was ready, was the cheese, cooked bacon and water.

That's the flavor boost right there!

When you're making these yourself, and I know you will, you'll want to follow these instructions.  Mix the whole lot of it together with your hands.  But don't over mix it.  You'll want the butter to stay cold and not be melted by your body heat.  It will be a soft, slightly sticky dough.

It looked good, so I hoped it would taste
as good. (This is what happens when an
amateur makes up her own recipes.)

I did half think of rolling it out and cutting the biscuits with a cutter, but then I thought I'd rather have hand-dropped, more rugged looking biscuits.  So I divided my dough in half, then half again and each quarter I broke into three pieces.  That way I had exactly twelve from the batch.

I dropped each small ball of dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and made them roundish.  Leaving plenty of space in between for them to expand as they baked.  Then I stood back and delighted in their abnormalities.  A good day's work.

They sort of remind me of the ones you get
at that well known seafood chain restaurant
that I will refrain from mentioning by name.

Into a 400 degree oven for 23-25 minutes or until slightly browned and cooked all the way through.  Giving me ample time for the commentary I'm sure you've grown to expect by now.

I've been watching Kirk Douglas' 1956 movie "Lust for Life," where he brilliantly portrayed mentally tortured painter Vincent van Gogh. Most young actors I see can't compare to the talent of the actors of those days. Watching Mr. Douglas in his prime as a robust, young man, vibrantly play such a talented, yet inwardly tormented artist just gave me pause to really look at what I create and marvel in its imperfection.  Art really is everywhere and beauty is subjective. You may see him as an artist that every person is familiar with because his work is on everything from tote bags to coasters, but no one really recognized, or appreciated, van Gogh's talent within his lifetime.  He tried so hard to explain the passion and emotion he was expressing in his dramatic use of light and thick paint strokes, but his contemporaries just couldn't see what he could see. They focused more on his madness and flighty behavior, than his true ability.

One quote that hit me hard from the movie was when his friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin critically said to him, "All I see when I look at your paintings is just that you paint too fast." And van Gogh responded quickly and with strong conviction, "You look too fast!!!"



My favorite Van Gogh painting.
"The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum"


Maybe that's our problem. We've gotten to a time when we look too fast. And we bypass too much beauty. I may only be making some simple biscuits today, but I am choosing to look at each one as a thing of beauty. Of lumpy peaks and hollow valleys with endless shadows and interesting forms. Made by my own hands. Today was not a day for boring standardization and uniform monotony. It was one of manual composition and free-flowing expression. In dough.

Now to take my creations out of the oven!

Picture perfect in their imperfection.

They had a delightfully crispy exterior and inside they were light and flaky.  Just as I had hoped.  (Uh, I mean planned for with stunning precision.)

Don't you just love the natural, craggly nooks?

Sure, it may be a little overkill, but to make it extra over the top perfect, I needed just a little pat of butter to melt on my delicious biscuit.

Should I come clean now and tell you I ate
two of them?

Four hours later and it was dinner time according to my stomach, so I spooned out a bowl of chili to eat with my biscuits and left it to continue to simmer for another two hours to thicken up a little bit more.

The biscuit was the star tonight, so
it gets in the forefront of the shot.

Most regular people won't cook a different meal every night for an entire year.  There are plenty of great dishes to repeat or to revisit and change up a little.  What can be new and different though are the side dishes and accompaniments.  Tonight bacon cheddar biscuits, perhaps jalapeño corn bread next time!  Whatever you make, it's never trivial.  That which you create with your hands will always be a work of art.