Cooking in the Black Belt

We’re early enough in the history of this column that it seems fitting to go ahead and rip off one of many bandaids that need to be addressed. For all my personal distaste for disclaimers, I feel it necessary to start off with a very important one to keep in mind going forward: I’m not a refined cook. Maybe all this hesitancy stems from typical reactions one gets down here when you bring up something sacred. The sacred object here is biscuits. Honestly, there’s only one bread I love more than a biscuit and it’s cornbread. Both are the backbone of Southern food going back generations. It’s for that very reason that apprehension arises. Everyone has a certain way of doing things, and before I get into how I’ve had biscuits over the years, I want you to know I ain’t taking anything away from you. My way is neither the highway, nor the only way. At Hardee’s you may order a Monster biscuit, whereas I always get a chicken biscuit, and still some of you may think I’m breaking a law by buying a biscuit in the first place. My great grandfather, Douglas, was in the Pacific theatre running supply ships for the U.S. Navy during WWII, raised two kids, started a carpentry business, built countless houses and Baptist churches across the nation. Yet he ate his biscuits the same way he did when he was a little boy working on the farm. He would poke a hole in the middle, just through the top, and fill the little well he’d made with honey. One of the only stories I remember him telling me directly was how he’d get in trouble for sneaking extra biscuits throughout the day, hiding underneath the dining table with the honey jar, pulling a biscuit from his pocket. I tried it myself one time and even though I didn’t get in trouble for it, it somehow made the experience of eating a biscuit a little more special.

On What Qualifies as a Biscuit

Now I’m not as esoteric about exactly what biscuit qualifies as a biscuit, but I will say if it came from a can, I usually skip it. My friend Phillip, who’s from Germany, confused me one morning when he kept saying he saw some “breakfast buns” in the fridge. It tickled me to death to see him pull out a can of whop’em biscuits. However, since I know some of you are esoteric about what qualifies, I’m going to offer you two of my personal favorite biscuit recipes. First I’ll start with the ones I grew up eating the most and will shamelessly prefer ’til I leave this earth:

Lyin’, Cheatin’ Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 2–2 1/2 cups Pioneer Buttermilk Baking Mix
• 4—6 Tablespoons Crisco or lard
• 1 cup whole milk or whole, cultured buttermilk

Instructions: Cut Crisco into dry mix thoroughly. Make a well in the center of the mix, adding the milk a little at a time while incorporating the mix. Once a dough comes together, sprinkle more mix onto a rolling surface. Turn the dough onto the floured surface and delicately work together, folding the dough like an envelope about three times. Press the dough into an even rectangle slightly smaller than your baking pan. The dough may be thick, which is perfect. Cut into even squares with a butter knife and place onto a well-greased baking pan. You want the biscuits slightly touching each other. Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and brush with melted butter. It’s important that you use Pioneer Baking Mix, again not to be too esoteric. However, the buttermilk powder that’s in Pioneer Baking Mix gives these biscuits a distinct, almost sweet flavor. My favorite way to have these has always been a generous pour of Alaga syrup and a bit of butter. This is more of a feel-as-you-go recipe, where you may not need all the milk or all the mix — it really just depends on how it comes together. My grandmother would just toss some mix into a big bowl, grab a small handful of crisco, and eventually splash in some skim milk with such ease. In my adult years, I’ve inherited a little snobbery about the kind of milk I use, and skim milk is not one of them. You could use butter-flavored Crisco, I suppose, but why mess up a good thing? These make square biscuits, egregiously dubbed “sqiscuits” since apparently everything has to be named. For me, I was told it was the most economic use of the dough — no scraps, no waste. There’s a number of ways I’ve encountered to address the excess dough. Some say freeze it and collect the scraps for pie crusts. Some cut the biscuits out and leave them with the scraps, baking it all together like a pull-apart bread. “Thimble Biscuits” were a sweet way for young ladies to get their hands in the biscuit scraps and have something for tea parties. If you really are not keen on a square biscuit, I’d suggest just pressing in the corners lightly with your fingertips. Voila! You have a normal-looking biscuit.

Buttermilk Biscuits

For those of you wanting something more traditional, fret not. This recipe is one I use more often than the previous recipe, because it’s easier to find more uses for self-rising flour than Pioneer Baking Mix. This recipe comes from Kathryn Tucker Windham’s Southern Cooking to Remember. I can’t begin to tell you how often I reach for this recipe book or what an invaluable resource it is, highlighting the traditions of cooking and eating in the American South. Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 teaspoon soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 Tablespoons shortening
• 3/4 cup buttermilk

Instructions: Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in shortening with two forks until mixture has the appearance — but not the texture — of small white gravel. Pour buttermilk in all at once. Mix gently. Transfer dough to a floured surface and knead tenderly six to seven times. Roll with a floured rolling pin to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut to desired size (big for hungry families, smaller for company, thimble-size for doll tea parties), place on a lightly greased baking sheet, and bake at 450 degrees until brown. You could skip the soda and salt if you used 2 cups of self-rising flour, and I have. To me, these end up quite similar when it all comes together. Obviously, with these you can proudly hold your head up and say, “Yes! They are homemade!” However, in a world where just about everything comes off an assembly line, if your hands worked it, it’s homemade to me. Sometimes, I think we let these notions of how things should be done cloud our ability to appreciate how things can be done. A biscuit is a biscuit to some. To others, it’s a sacred thing that requires the strictest reverence. Generally, I prescribe to the philosophy that biscuits should be quick, simple, and satisfying. Biscuits were thrown on the table at the last moment, right after you heard “Amen.” Biscuits filled the stomachs of men who tilled acres of prairie land and women who dirtied their aprons with floured hands. They have become as synonymous with the South as fried chicken and Hoppin’ John — there’s even a slew of biscuit-centered restaurants that consistently have lines out the door. For me, nothing beats the ones that come from the hands of someone you love. Maybe that’s the secret ingredient.