Best Buttermilk Pancakes
It’s the weekend. And that means breakfast at home.
This weekend? A favorite… pancakes.
My parents often made pancakes on the weekends when I was growing up and it was always felt like such a treat. The pancakes came from a quick mix in a yellow box, and until I left for college, I thought that was the way everyone made pancakes. In fact, they are still the pancake that I compare all other pancakes to!
These buttermilk pancakes are my current from-scratch favorite. I like to add fruit to the inside (and outside) of my pancakes to help alleviate the guilt of eating cake (smothered in real maple syrup) for breakfast. But the cakes are light, fluffy, and oh-so-addictive. The hardest part about making pancakes is not eating all of them as I cook them (two at a time on a medium-sized saucepan is not quite efficient enough for my empty stomach in the morning)!
Today I added a few fresh blueberries and lemon zest. It was a perfect way start to my Sunday.
Salad of Leftovers
This salad was the end result of a little cooking game I like to call: food tetris.
You know how you often buy ingredients for a particular dish or meal, but you don’t use up the whole carton, package, or bunch? What do you do with the leftovers?
I really really get a kick out of using up every last drop in the carton, the last chunk of cheese, those last few (wilted) leaves of herbage, or that brown banana that is attracting all those flies into another meal or dessert. It satisfies not only my unwillingness to waste food (a habit ingrained into me by my Asian parents, who constantly reminded to me to eat every grain of rice remaining in my bowl no matter what because when THEY were young, sometimes the ONLY thing they ate for dinner was just rice), but also satisfies my love of puzzle-solving. One of my favorite past-times as a kid was fitting together hundreds of tiny puzzle pieces to form the picture of a jungle scene filled with exotic animals or a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night (while watching All My Children and Days of Our Lives during summer afternoons). When I learned how to use a computer, I played Tetris tirelessly for hours and hours, relishing the feeling of seeing rows upon colorful rows disappear if I stacked all the pieces in the most efficient configurations.
I get the same satisfaction now when I pack things so that every corner and space is filled or utilized so that everything is packed in the smallest amount of space possible, whether I am packing a suitcase for a trip, or the trunk with groceries and other odds and ends, or a moving van with ALL my possessions. This freaky need for utmost efficiency and also presents itself in my kitchen too, I try to cook dishes or bake items that use up whatever is left from previous meals in order to use EVERYTHING that passes through our kitchen before it goes bad. I don’t succeed all the time. But I did with this salad.
I had one cob of grilled corn, a little more than a cup of plain couscous (the other half had been made into a tasty tabbouleh salad), a handful of cherry tomatoes, some almost-too-far-gone-to-eat spinach, and a few other odds and ends (some feta and pistachios). I made couscous patties by mixing what I had with more chopped parsley and an egg, and then pan-fried those suckers. They ended up better than I expected- crunchy on the outside and the individual grains still providing some crunch on the inside, which made for a wonderful textural addition to this salad. The dressing is a simple and versatile buttermilk dressing, flavored with fresh basil. The salad actually ended up so tasty (and filling!), an added bonus to a successful game of food tetris!
Mango and Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Panna Cotta
It is estimated that up to 90% of Asians suffer from a decrease in lactose tolerance in adulthood. Both my parents are lactose tolerant; my dad is so intolerant, he has basically identified which common grocery ice cream brands use real dairy or artificial ingredients based on the intensity of stomach discomfort and length of bathroom time required after ingestion. (TMI? sorry.) Taking these two gems of information together, I’ve come to realize that the odds are against me; my carefree days of chugging glasses of milk, buying J.P. Licks ice cream by the pint, and creamy pasta dishes are numbered!!
Of course, only now that the countdown is on, I have fallen (and fallen hard) for a cool and creamy LACTOSE-FILLED dessert. What a cruel world!
Panna cotta is made by simmering sugar, milk and/or cream, and gelatin, and allowed to cool until it is set. The texture is amazingly custardy, but without the egg-y flavor. It’s simple and clean-flavored by itself, but can also be gussied up with all kinds of sweet accompaniments- fruits (fresh, poached, macerated, puréed, compotes), caramel, chocolate, nuts, streusel, cookies. I love recipes with lots of different variations because it gives me a great excuse to try the recipe out several times to figure out what combination I like best!
This panna cotta recipe is so amazing (and easy!), I really can’t wait to try it again. The addition of real vanilla bean results in a most beautifully vanilla-infused custard- without the somewhat cloying aftertaste that can come from using extract. And who doesn’t love little speckles of vanilla sprinkled throughout their dessert?! The buttermilk also adds a really pleasant tang that adds such complexity to the flavor. I made a mango purée on the bottom, but in all honesty, this panna cotta is better on its own (or with less purée or milder-flavored fruits) so that you can really enjoy the vanilla and the buttermilk. I know I will be having many more of these because not only are they great cool treats for hot summer days, but also because if that tragic day ever arrives when I realize my lactase has finally failed me, I REFUSE to make this with Lactaid.
The Buttermilk Biscuit Experiment
My love for biscuits began with those blessedly buttery arterial cloggers from KFC. I liked them best drizzled with a bit of honey (does anyone know if it was even real honey?) from those plastic condiment packets (like ketchup). For asian people, my family loves them some fried chicken. My 92 year old grandpa STILL asks for KFC once in awhile! When I was in middle and high school, we ate KFC every other week or so, alternating with Round Table Pizza or frozen lasagna, on nights when my mom was too busy (driving us to various lessons or practices) to cook dinner. I have no idea if the KFC biscuits even hold a candle to those found in the South, but since they are my first nostalgia-tinged memory of a biscuit, they are what I have compared all biscuits to since then.
I was on the hunt for the perfect, fluffy, flaky, buttery biscuit recipe. Certainly there is no shortage of recipes online with every possible permutation of ingredients and ratios: buttermilk vs. cream, baking soda vs. powder, butter vs. lard vs. shortening vs. some combination of both, etc. I wanted to try these two recipes, one from Alton Brown because he is the most entertaining food experimentalist and there is evidence of scientific reasoning behind his recipes, and this one (buttermilk biscuits for the soul) because… well, did you click on the link to see these babies??!! If you did, you are already on your way to the kitchen or the grocery store to buy more butter to try those sky-high flaky biscuits!
One of the warnings that I see time and time again in recipes for tender, fluffy baked goods with high butter content (i.e. pie crusts, scones) is for goodness sake, DO NOT over-work the dough!!! I take this to mean do not over-knead, which results in developing glutens (the elastic connections between the proteins in the flour that give breads/baked goods their structure) thereby making the final product tough, or over-handle the dough, because warm hands and excessive touching will prematurely melt the butter chunks and prevent the creation those airy pockets of baked fluffyness. These two recipes differ a bit in terms of their handling: Alton calls for a few folds of the dough with minimal handling, whereas the “soul” recipe seems to advocate the opposite, requiring a thorough (and perhaps therapeutic?) beating of the dough with a rolling pin after each fold. I halved both recipes because I know myself well enough to know that if I baked 2 dozen butter biscuits, I would have ended up eating ALL 24… BY MYSELF….
I realize that this is not the best controlled experiment to determine which ingredients or method contributes to specific characteristics of a biscuit, as there are too many slight variations between the recipes, however my little experiment DID yield a favorite biscuit and strategy for how I will alter the recipe for my next batch of biscuits. The Alton Brown biscuit (on the right in the picture) rose quite a bit and was fluffy on the inside with a crisp outer texture, but the butter flavor was not very pronounced. The “soul” biscuits (on the left) were definitely MORE flaky and tender than Alton’s inside and outside, though did not rise as high, probably because I was greedy and tried to make 2 more biscuits out of the same amount of dough. This recipe contained twice as much butter which contributed to the increased tenderness and resulted in that awesomely buttery taste that I found Alton’s to be lacking, and the multiple beatings and folds before shaping the biscuits made wonderfully soft flaky layers.
Both biscuits were most heavenly the day they were baked, warm with a bit of jam, or MORE butter and a drizzle of real honey.
Alton Brown’s Southern Biscuits
adapted from the Food Network
makes 1 dozen (I halved the recipe without a problem.)
2 cups of all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons shortening
1 cup buttermilk, chilled
- Preheat oven to 450 F.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder and soda, and salt. Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs (the faster the better, you don’t want the fats to melt.) Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky.
- Transfer the dough onto a floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5-6 times. Press quickly into 1 inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2 inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough. Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working as little as possible and continue cutting.
- Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 15-20 minutes.
Buttermilk Biscuits for the Soul
adapted from Brownies for Dinner, via Homesick Texan
makes 10-12 biscuits
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup or 8 tablespoons) butter, cold
3/4 cup buttermilk
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Mix together all of the dry ingredients.
- Using a pastry blender or your fingers, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until it resembles pea-sized crumbs.
- Make a well in the center of the butter-flour mixture and pour in the buttermilk. Stir until the flour is just incorporated but the dough is sticky and loose.
- Pour dough onto a floured surface and knead for about 1 minute. The dough should be smooth and no longer wet. (Sprinkle the surface with more flour if the dough is sticking).
- Shape the dough into a ball, and hit it with a rolling pin, turning it and folding it in half every few whacks. Do this for a couple of minutes. [Better than a therapy session]
- Roll dough until it is 1/4 inch thick and then fold it in half. Cut out your biscuits from the folded dough using a round biscuit cutter.
- Place on a baking sheet lined with a silicon mat or parchment paper so that the biscuits are slightly touching so that they will help each other rise up instead of out.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.
