With Thanksgiving coming up my thoughts have been centered around cooking and one of the things that I’ve been wanting to try are Grandma’s biscuit recipe. So this weekend I thought I’d give it a shot. I have never made biscuits before and I’ve never seen them made either, so I didn’t have high hopes for the results of my labor. As long as the biscuits came out edible, I would be happy.

Everything was going smoothly until it was time to add the lard. That stuff is a gooey mess and my Grandmother’s recipe said was “Sift dry ingredients ^cut until mixture resembles coarse crumbs” The “cut” appeared to be an addition that was made at a later date. Using a fork, I tried to mix everything together, but it wasn’t going so well. I re-read the instructions and seeing “Sift” made me think that I had to use a sifter, which I didn’t think was a good idea. I couldn’t imagine lard going through a wire mesh very well.

The add-in of “Cut” didn’t help things either because I didn’t know what “cutting” was in relationship to cooking. The only image I could come up with is that of a knife fight in some back alley of a 70′s B movie where some punk threatens the hero by saying, “I’m gonna cut you sucka”. So I did the only thing I could think of, which is to use by old standby of diving in head first. I dove both hands into the bowl and began working the lard into the flour by hand. Yeah, not such a good idea. I think there was more lard on my hands than there was in the flour, but I finally saw a few crumbles and decided I was done.

Next was the buttermilk. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any buttermilk. All I had was 2% milk and some cream, so I added a little cream to the milk and used that instead. Everything seemed to go as planned from that part forward. I mixed in the milk, rolled out the dough and cut out the biscuits. I greased the baking pan and began baking about 18 biscuits. I checked their progress and in about 10 minutes they were done.

Well, “Done” is a relative term isn’t it? Allow me to clarify. The biscuits were as browned as I wanted them to be, however they didn’t look so much like biscuits as they did cookies, so I can’t say that explicitly that the biscuits were “done”. Anyone walking up and seeing me pull the tray out of the oven wouldn’t have said “Oh yum, biscuits”, but rather “What are you cooking?”, or “Oh yum, Andalusian flat bread skipping stones!”

Pouring them onto a plate, I picked up the phone and called my Mom to ask her expert advice on where I went wrong. My first question was “what the hell is cutting?” She explained it to me and that helped a lot. Knowing that I needed pastry blender, or could have stayed with the fork if I had known what the heck I was doing, gave me some clue as to where I went wrong. When I described the fact that my biscuits looked like they needed some Viagra, Mom instantly said, “You probably worked the dough too long.”

That’s the thing about cooking – it’s not all about the recipe. Part of the process in learning how to cook, is picking up the little nuances and techniques that come along with it. Of course that only comes from cooking itself and having others help you along the way. Having Mom explain to me a little bit about how you don’t work the dough too long was the real key to why my biscuits were so flat. I’m sure my handling of the “cut” didn’t help either, but I kneaded the hell out of that dough, so I worked out all the gluten and that’s all she wrote.

So how did they taste? Not so bad surprisingly. I ate 3 or 4 just to get the taste and to see what worked and what didn’t. Overall the taste was pretty good, it was just too dense. I had made bread of some sort, but it certainly wasn’t a biscuit. Holly came downstairs later and said she smelled something good. She guessed that I had cooked biscuits so I suppose that’s a good sign that I got close to the mark. To her credit, Holly also ate one.

Today I’ll head to Bed Bath & Beyond to get a pastry blender and to the grocery store for buttermilk and then I’ll give it another shot. Since this exercise wasn’t total humiliation like when I tried to make french bread (that’s another story all together), I’ll keep working at it.

So I did what I always do when I’m at a loss for a menu – I went to Food Network.com. I’ve garnered a lot of excellent recipes from there and it’s the first place I turn to when I’m looking for something new. I found that they had a whole section devoted to Thanksgiving and with it a whole range of recipes to choose from.

Since the meat choice is the centerpiece of the dinner, I figured that was the first thing to nail down. I’ve done pheasant and quail for past holidays, but I thought going with the traditional turkey would be fun this year. So the next step was to determine which way to cook it and that led me to wide array of choices, but I was able to narrow it down somewhat and was down to two choices: Italian Style Turkey (Roasted with Fennel Spice Rub), or Deep-Fried Turkey.

What was nice though, is that once I make a decision on how to prepare the Turkey, there is a whole menu already associated with each recipe. That certainly makes it easy to plan the whole meal. The problem is, they both sound delicious and I can’t decide which one to go with.

Southern Thanksgiving
This menu was from the “Southern Thanksgiving” episode of Paula’s Home Cooking, by Paula Deen. She’s known for her diet-killing delicious southern recipes, so I know that each dish will be finger-licking good.

The menu includes the following:
   » Deep-Fried Turkey
   » Southern Cornbread Stuffing
   » Giblet Gravy
   » Fancy Green Beans
   » Canned Cranberries
   » Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cakes

Now you may be thinking that Deep-Fried Turkey isn’t a traditional southern dish and you’d be partly right. Deep-Fried Turkey is a relatively new way of preparing turkey, but it has become a staple in Louisiana (where I’m from) over the past 10 – 15 years. In other words, it’s not that uncommon, but I don’t know that I’d call it “traditional” either. Regardless of it’s status as a Thanksgiving tradition, it is mighty tasty.

Nouveau Fancy
This menu came from the “Relaxing Thanksgiving” episode of Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello. I’m not familiar with Michael Chiarello, but his recipes sounded delicious. I also didn’t know how to label this menu, but since it’s something that I’d expect from a fancy restaurant, I labeled it “Nouveau Fancy.”

The menu includes the following
   » Whole Roasted Turkey with Fennel Spice Rub
   » Panettone Stuffing
   » The Definitive Mashed Potato with Roasted Garlic
   » Yams with Toasted Spice Rub
   » Cranberry Citrus Dressing

A lot of new flavors and ingredients, which sounds like fun. I love a good spice rub and two of the recipes include that, so it’s very tempting. The only item missing from the menu is a dessert, but I could do a tiramisu, or even borrow the Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cakes recipe from Paula Deen.

A Gastronomical Decision
Having it narrowed down to the two menus should have made my decision easier, but it didn’t Both menus sounded great and both would offer a challenge and still be fun to make. Looking them both over, I was plagued with questions.

Will the Southern menu be too “been there done that?”

Will the Nouveau Fancy be too adventurous and over the top?

I’ve never done a fried turkey before, will that add too much stress and difficulty to the meal?

The Roasted Turkey calls for two turkey, which means I’ll have to adjust the recipe, could that mess things up?

Are the Fancy Green Beans too fancy?

What the hell is Panettone anyway?

Will Mal and Inara ever kiss? Whaa!?! ???

The Obvious Answer… Both!
If I had an army of people to feed, then the obvious answer would be to do both. That’s not reasonable, nor would I even attempt it even if I had an army to feed, but it would allow me to try both. Then it hit me, maybe I could do both! I could do the Southern style for Thanksgiving and the Nouveau style for Christmas.

Christmas will probably be spent here in Nashville with only Holly and I and my Mom if she’s in town. All three of us are fairly adventurous “foodies”, so the Nouveau menu would be better served with us three. Holly’s Grandmother is fairly choosy on what she likes to eat, so a more traditional menu would be more to her liking. So the dilemma is solved and I get to try both menus!

It’s hard to believe that I could spend so much time thinking about what I’m going to eat in 3 weeks, but I’m from Louisiana – that’s what we do. As the old joke goes…

You know you’re from Louisiana when you sit down to eat and the topic of conversation is food you’ve recently eaten, the food you’re eating now and the food you plan to eat in the future.”