Tag Archives: cheese

Easy Drop Biscuits – Maple-Bacon and Feta-Green Onion

So, I found instructions on Pinterest for no-recipe biscuits, and felt inspired (thank you, Posie Harwood – http://food52.com/blog/10148-how-to-make-yogurt-biscuits-without-a-recipe).  It involves dumping unmeasured amounts of flour, baking powder and glops of yogurt in a bowl and mixing them together, and then adding whatever else you like – I love that!  It also had rolling and cutting biscuits, which seemed to be more work than I was interested in.  So instead, I just dolloped the biscuits onto the baking pan to see how they’d go.  They are certainly not picture-perfect-Martha-Stewart biscuits, but I’m not exactly a picture-perfect-Martha-Stewart chef, so it all works out okay in the end.

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Here is my adaptation of the recipe, in two versions – Maple-Bacon and Feta-Green Onion:

In a big bowl…  Start with as much flour as you would like biscuits.  Take your baking powder and pour in a lil’ shake of it, and then take your salt and pepper shaker and give two shakes of salt.  Mix up these ingredients and wiggle a little while you do.  (You don’t actually have to wiggle, it just makes this more fun).

Now, take a big thing of yogurt – I like vanilla, even for savory biscuits – and let a good sized glop or two fall in.  Mix this stuff up and add some milk too, until it is thick and gloppy but not quite runny like pancake mix (if this happens, add more flour).  See the above Food52 website for pictures of what the consistency should look like.

For MAPLE-BACON (aka. Breakfast-in-a-Biscuit):

-Cook up some bacon beforehand.  You can use leftovers from brunch, or if you haven’t had brunch today, bake it in the oven.  If you have extra bacon grease – pour a little in to your biscuit mixture to add flavor.

-Add a healthy pour of maple syrup.

-Crumble up bacon into little bits – more than you think you’d need.

-Mix it all together!

For FETA-GREEN ONION:

-Pour in as much feta as you’d like. Feta is great because as it cooks in the biscuits, it creates little air pockets that are delicious when you eat them!

-Add chopped little green onions.

-Add a handful of cheddar cheese, too, if you’d like.

-Add in a little oregano, garlic powder and fresh basil.

-Mix mix mix.

Then, drop the mixture onto baking pans or cookie sheets – I use two spoons and drop as much mixture as I would cookie dough.  Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes.

YUM!

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SLI’s Potato-Kale Gratin

Ok, so my friend SLI gave me a cookbook for my birthday last year – a cookbook that she wrote for me.  It’s a great story, and I’ll tell you the whole thing someday (or put it in my book!), but today is not the day for a story, today is a day for a recipe.

Here is my interpretation of SLI’s Potato-Kale Gratin:

Ingredients:

-1.5-2 lbs thin-skinned boiling potatoes (I use butter potatoes)

-1 bunch kale

-1/4 cup olive oil and 2 cloves minced garlic (or Wegman’s Basting Oil, with basil and garlic already in it)

-1/3 to 2/3 cup bread crumbs

-1/3 grated Parmesan cheese

-1/2 cup mozzarella and/or white cheddar cheese

-optional: oregano, thyme, basil

Instructions:

Ok, first off – and this is totally optional – I toast my own bread crumbs.  It’s kind of a pain, but I tried it the first time because I had a concern over the ingredients in store-bought bread crumbs, and I found that it added a lot, taste-wise.  So now I do it all the time.  Take a couple slices of wheat bread, crumble them up into little pieces, and bake them on a cookie sheet for around 10 minutes (or until they look toasty but not black) at 350.  (You can always make extra for next time and stick them in the freezer until you use them again).

Next, preheat (or maintain) the oven at 350.  Boil a large pot of water, and also prepare an ice bath in a big bowl.  Slice the potatoes ¼ inch thick (using a knife or mandoline) and then add them to the boiling water for around 5 minutes.  Drain the potatoes, dump them into the ice bath (and stir them around a bit to make sure they all get cold), drain them again and let them dry – you can blot dry with paper towel.

Cut off and throw out the spines from the kale (this means to cut off the leafy bits from the middle bits).  Wash and cut the leafy bits into ½ thick ribbons (so, length-wise – you’re not making salad, you’re making “ribbons”).

In a big bowl combine the olive oil, garlic, and some herbs (or you can use the basting oil here).  Add the kale and mix it all up with your hands.

Take a 9×12 rectangular casserole dish, or whatever other oven-safe dish you like.  Layer the kale, then potatoes, then mozzarella/white cheddar cheese, then bread crumbs, as many layers in this pattern as you can fit.  I like to end with parmesan cheese on top. Sprinkle some herbs on top too at the end.

Cover with a top or aluminum foil or a cookie sheet, and bake for 30 minutes.  Bake for another 15 minutes, uncovered.

 

YUM.

 

 

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