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Breakfast and Brunch

chicken on flying biscuits

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boone and i have a road-trip tradition (if you can call it that). if it’s 10:31am OR if we’ve just passed an exit it’s a given that i’ll turn to him and say, “hey, we should get a chicken biscuit.” which sets off a crazy craving for one AND is at that moment, totally impossible.
i have the worst timing.
just thursday we watched adam richman’s (of man vs food) new travel channel show as he searches for the best sandwich in america and he highlighted a chicken cheddar biscuit from time out, some chapel hill, nc establishment and ever since we’ve been dying for this perfect southern breakfast combo. since we were having folks over for brunch this weekend to watch the olympics we decided to try to make one ourselves. we used a chicken recipe from some show on CMT that promises to help folks recreate fast food staples (BTW, whoever thought “country music and fast food, that’s the PERFECT combo” is definitely encouraging obesity AND making hank williams senior and johnny cash turn over in their graves). to top it off, we pulled out my favorite atlanta cookbook (the flying biscuit) for their world-famous biscuit recipe. no lie, it was a giant mouthful, but pret-ty delish.
What you need for the chicken:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
3 cups peanut oil
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
2 1/2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons salt
What you need for flying biscuits:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons granulated sugar (3 tablespoons for the recipe, 1 for the topping)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/2 cups light cream (or 1 1/2 cups half and half if you can’t get light cream)
1/3 half-and-half
What to do:
for the biscuits, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together. cut the butter into small chunks. work the butter into the dry ingredients until its all about the size of small peas. smushing the flour and butter together feels wonderful, so just relax and enjoy it.
 

 

make a hole in the center of the dry ingredients and butter and pour in the light cream (or half and half) and stir it using a circular fashion until all the ingredients are wet and sticking together, “until the dough comes together in a sort of sticky ball.” don’t over handle it, but put it on a floured surface and knead it lightly until into a ball, then roll it out using a lightly floured rolling pin to about a 1 inch thickness. use a 2″-3″ cookie cutter to cut the dough.  (turns out i don’t have a cookie cutter, BUT a wine glass or plastic cup works just the same)

 

brush the tops of the biscuits with half and half and sprinkle the sugar on the top. (now, i didn’t do this last part since I wasn’t sure about the sugar and chicken, but if you’re making authentic flying biscuits, then it’s a must.) once this is done, bake the dough at 350 degrees for 20-23 minutes until golden brown.
For the chicken, i’m turning things over to boone, since i had no hand whatsoever (which is why there isn’t one single prep photo. oops.) anyway, here goes.
Boone: heat the peanut oil in a deep skillet to 400 degrees, this takes a long time, so it’s best to start here. then, cut the breasts in half and (if you’re smart, pound them to be a bit flat and make it easier to eat). to make the batter, mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. beat the egg and stir in the milk in a separate bowl.  submerge the chicken in the egg mixture, then drop it into the dry batter and coat the entire breast. fry in the oil and cook for about 8-10 minutes until golden brown. perfect.

 

ok, i’m back. once the chicken is done and the biscuits are baked, cut them in half and make your sandwich…the time-out version calls for cheddar cheese melted on top, so if you’re feeling decadent, you can go that route. serve with fruit or roasted potatoes and ta-da!
   
 doesn’t looking at this make you feel as fit as our olympic swimmers or divers?  i know… me too. 😉

 

Blueberry & Peach Crumble

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ina garten is my cooking hero. no…scratch that. outside of my own immediate family, ina garten is my cooking hero. now, don’t get me wrong, i think that the fantastic bloggers over at smitten kitchen and bake or break are pretty fantastic, and i’m a big ole fan of Lynne Rossetto Kasper at the Splendid Table on APM, but something about Ina Garten’s recipes and style really resonate with me. For her, food is a way of showing her love, her care, her respect for other people.the Barefoot Contessa has this great way of balancing simplicity with detail. to me, this, and creating something that gives joy, tastes good, and brings people together, is what food is all about.

this summer crumble recipe from the barefoot contessa blends freshness, simplicity, love, and togetherness in just the right way. i’d decided to make the crumble in the first place because boone and i were both going out of town and i had a huge pile of peaches that were all on the over ripe side of ripe, a huge bag of fresh blueberries from my aunt’s farm in south mississipi, plus we were heading to a dinner party for some friends who’d just moved into a big old farmhouse. i was running a little behind schedule and decided i’d wait to bake it until i got there…it was so easy that i pulled it together and we were only a few minutes late. as far as the baking goes, it was too bad they’ve got an antique stove and oven combo. it turns out the stove works perfectly but the oven…not so much. anyway, that just meant that i saved the crumble, baked it at my house, and served it to boone as a going-away brunch before he left for a week long trip to NC, then took the rest over to a pal and new neighbor. it was a hit.
the next time you’re looking for an easy-peasy dessert, try this one on for size.
Blueberry & Peach Crumble
Serves 6 to 8-ish (depending on how hungry you are)
What you need: 
For the Fruit:
4 to 6 ripe peaches
1 cup fresh blueberries (mine were fresh but I’d frozen them the day before)
2 tsp grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup stevia (or 1/2 cup sugar)
1/4 cup flour
For the Crumble: 
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 cup stevia
1/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 pound (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

What to do:

Preheat the Oven to 350, and then get your stockpot out and boil some water. cut an “x” in the bottom of each peach and then drop the peaches into the boiling water for 30 seconds or so, and pull them out with tongs and drop them into ice water or cold, cold water..Let them cool briefly. The immersion will help you easily peel the skin off, which helps with texture and flavor. They’l start slipping and sliding everywhere, so be careful as you cut them into smaller wedges. (I sliced from top to bottom and the pit came out pretty easily.)

 

grate the lemon zest, and then mix the peach slices, blueberries, stevia, flour, lemon zest and lemon juice together and pour into your baking dish. my hero suggests using ramekins, an idea i LOVE but one that just didn’t work since i needed to transport them.
 

after you’ve prepped the fruit, it’s time to make the crumble. y’all, this was so crazy easy.. i’m a dough moron (meaning that rarely does pie dough or pizza dough or bread dough EVER turn out like i want it to, but this was too simple to mess up)
basically, you cut the butter into little pieces then mix it with the flour, brown sugar, stevia, and salt using your paddle attachment on your mixer. i smushed it around with my hands a little bit for good measure, but once everything was combined and rolling around in little pea-sized balls, i knew it was ready to go. i took the dough-peas out of the mixer and smushed them again into flat little pieces, then laid them on top of the fruit until in covered most of it. (of COURSE you could do something fancy with cookie cutters if you felt so inclined, but remember, i was pressed for time and not really into that sort of thing, anyway.)

 

Bake the crumble for 40 to 45 minutes at 350 until it’s bubbly and brown, and serve. Honestly, i’m of the school that pie NEEDS vanilla ice cream to “cut the sweet” but this was just the right amount of sweet and fruit, so it didn’t even need it.besides, my weight watchers commitment is totally on a backside with leading a teacher retreat, moving to a new town and house, going to a 4th of July BBQ, and attending a week long conference in LA so i couldn’t in good conscience have this crumble AND ice cream for breakfast.
but you could. 😉

 

 

French Market Beignets

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this weekend was a big alumni party at the hopson commissary (which, btw, was the first location we scouted for our wedding 2.5 years ago) with  lots of drinking, and talking, and dancing. we ended up with five wonderful friends staying with us after the party, and what kind of southern hostess sends her friends away without breakfast? the bad kind, which, if you ever call me know that “them’s fightin’ words.” but of course, if it’s true I want to know so i can fix it. 😉
annnnnyway, going out and drinking is synonymous with a visit to New Orleans, so it just makes sense to look there for the perfect hangover brunch. 🙂 enter French Market Beignets.
until i met boone, i actually just bought the Cafe du Monde mix at the grocery store (and it’s SUPER easy to find in south Mississippi, where i grew up) but boone’s mom, a master baker, shirley, makes beignets from scratch every single Christmas morning as one of their most treasured family traditions and serves them on BEAUTIFUL milk class plates. merry christmas to us!
anyway, since we did Christmas in the Delta, boone didn’t get any beignets (because the recipe in the Joy of Cooking is awful. DO.NOT. TRY. IT.) but after called boone’s mom for the recipe before our friends came to town and were in dire need of brunch, we had the perfect chance to fix that.
if you’re wondering, making them from scratch is pretty simple, and so, so, so delishy.
French Market Doughnuts (call them Beignets and they’ll taste better)
Adapted from the Junior League of New Orleans Plantation Cookbook
 
What you need:
1 pkg (8 oz) yeast
1/2 cup warm water (just above your body’s temp)
1 egg beaten (at room temp)
4 Tbs sugar
1 C evaporated milk (each can is 11/2 C)
3 C Flour
Vegetable Oil (11/2– 2″ deep)
Powdered Sugar in a plastic bag
Note: you have to let this sit overnight, or at least for several hours, so plan accordingly!
What you do: 
Mix water and yeast by sprinkling the yeas on top of the warm water. Add 2 Tbs of sugar until the yeast rises and doubles (about 10 minutes). It will froth and bubble.

Add the other 2 Tbs of sugar, the egg, and the milk, then add in the flour one cup at a time so you can actually stir it. When you’re finished, the dough should be wettish ( a quote from Boone’s mom). at this point cover the dough and refrigerate it overnight so it rises.

it will be beautiful and much bigger.

Dump the dough onto a floured surface (obviously), and roll it out about 1/4″ thick.

 

using a knife or a pizza cutter (Cafe du Monde’s suggestion),  cut the dough into 2 1/2″ squares.
Heat the oil to 350 to 365 degrees (use a candy thermometer or your very own fry baby, which we DO have, but isn’t getting very hot these days) and then drop the dough into the hot oil to fry it. (boone put 3 in at a time, and that seemed to work well. They should flip over by themselves, BUT we used thongs when they didn’t.

 

dry the beignets off on a paper towel, then drop them into a bag of powdered sugar and toss. you won’t be sorry.

serve immediately so they don’t get cold… coffee and fruit are the very best things to pair them with in my opinion. but you don’t have to take MY word for it. 😉

this is jess’s plate by the way. does she have a possible future in food styling? i think so.

garlic grits souffle

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in high school my best friend, megan, and I fell in love with some boys from staten island, ny we met on a school trip to atlanta and were appalled to learn they’d never TRIED grits before. ever. que’ horrible! they made a special trip to ihop to remedy this situation since it was their first time visiting the south, but HATED them. everyone with taste loves grits, right?
it turns out that they thought grits were like cream of wheat, so they put JELLY in them. arg. the romance was doomed from that moment on.

for any of you out there who either have never tried grits OR tried the basic ones multiple times and never liked them because they were bland, or had a weird texture, or used some other crazy reason to dislike them, then try this. now. seriously. generations of mississippi women in my family have relied on this recipe, and it’s currently THE christmas morning brunch staple at my house. 🙂 alas, one of the ingredients is un-findable since kraft stopped making it, but i have it on good authority you can make a decent substitute OR find some other version if you look hard enough. are you ready? because this is heaven…

garlic grits souffle adapted from gourmet of the delta
what you need:
5 c. water, salted
1 c. quick grits
1 roll kraft garlic cheese (if you stockpiled it in your freezer before they stopped making it) if not, use 1/3 package of velveeta cheese product + 2 cups extra sharp cheddar + 1 tsp garlic powder)
1 stick unsalted butter
1 c milk (or, if you’re adventurous, 1 c heavy cream)
1 egg, beaten

what you do:
stir grits into boiling water and cook until done (this is what the recipe book says, but from many, many years of grits making, i’m going to tell you that you should slowly stir in the grits little by little so they don’t clump, then turn the heat waaaayyyy down for 2-3 minutes until the liquid isn’t really visible. this means they’re probably done). Cut the velveeta into pieces and shred the cheddar, then stir into the grits with the garlic powder and butter.

whip the egg and fold it into the grits after they’ve cooled a bit. Move the grits to a buttered casserole dish, and then bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

here’s what it looks like when it has finished cooking…all puffy and souffle-like. make sure to eat it IMMEDIATELY if you want everyone to enjoy your excellent souffle handiwork, it falls pretty quickly after taking it out of the oven (typical) so just make note.
i made this on christmas morning for my fam, and TOTALLY forgot to take an after the oven picture. sorry, folks…this image is courtesy of the dallas morning news.

 

however, i didn’t forget to take a photo of us eating it the NEXT night. ta-da! garlic grits, or cheese grits souffle… (shown here with venison and spinach souffle, but it’s also DELICIOUS for brunch with grillades, or as the other half of shrimp and grits).