Warm Apple Pecan Crumb Muffins!

Fresh from the oven! Julie just finished baking some apple pecan crumb muffins from Ken Haedrich's book,
"Country Breakfasts -- Four Seasons of Cozy Morning Meals." This book isn't in in print any longer but is available used from Amazon. I really like Ken's books. They're written for the home cook, by a home cook, and aren't pretentious and don't call for unobtainable ingredients or equipment. This book is from before the beginning of the 'Chef's are Rock Stars' period, which is probably my favorite food era.  After interest in good food, locally sourced ingredients and craftsmanship had really picked up, but before the 'every show on TV is a cooking contest' mania.  Early to mid-90s... I used to love arriving home from work and knowing that it was the right time of the month to expect my copies of Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Choclatier, Chile Pepper Magazine, Saveur... good times.

Anyhow, these muffins are quite yummy. Yes, we had to sample a small bit to make sure they were worthy of being blogged about on CCC. The hardest part was not finishing the sample!

To wrap up this post, I'll quote from the introduction of Ken's book. This snippet conveys the true spirit of the book and makes me sad that for most people, breakfasts like this are distant memories or never happened. Nobody has, or takes, the time. The family meal, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner is a lost art.

"Almost from the moment I began telling folks I was working on a breakfast book, I started to hear echoes of my own voice confirming a suspicion that I have held for a number of years: that for many of us breakfast is still the most important -- and beloved -- meal of the day. We may have grown accustomed to frozen waffles and instant coffee or count Dunkin' Donuts on our list of early morning rituals.  But in spite of all that, we still long for the personal touch of an egg cooked just so, freshly brewed coffee, and the warm cozy feelings we get sitting down to eat real, fresh food with our family and friends."

Well said, Ken, well said.

Sweet Gravy Love

What happens when you have buttermilk biscuits left over, and it's a cool, rainy Saturday? You get up and make onion gravy for your southern wife! So easy and so, so delicious!

Simple to make:

Just toss some peanut oil  (about 4 tablespoons) in a skillet, add a chunk of butter (about 3 tablespoons) and get the oil smoking hot.  Slice a white onion into paper-thin sections (I used my groovy Shun knife) and dump the onions in the skillet. Keep an eye on them and bring them a light golden brown. Add some crushed garlic (how much is up to you), some cracked black pepper, a touch of red pepper and cook for another couple of minutes. Add about a teaspoon of Kosher salt and stir.

Add flour in tablespoon increments until it looks right... yeah, I know, that's not much of a guide but this is a totally 'by feel' sort of thing. You'll know when it's right. Not too wet, not too clumpy... Once the flour is cooked in, deglaze with a good splash of white vinegar. Now it's time for the milk.

Pour in milk in 1/2 cup increments (don't worry about measuring, just go for it) and stir well after each addition. Keep adding milk until the gravy is the consistency you prefer. I like mine thick but not gloppy... some folks like theirs really thick, others prefer gravy to be on the runny side. Whatever makes ya happy!

Let the mix simmer for a few minutes, taste for seasoning (always, always, always taste before serving!) and serve over split and toasted biscuits. Homemade gravy and from-scratch buttermilk biscuits... this will knock your socks off! 

From-Scratch Buttermilk Biscuits

What happens when I get up at Oh-Dark-Thirty and feel like rocking something out in the kitchen: fresh buttermilk biscuits, brushed with melted butter and served with Dijon mustard and slices of smoked ham. I must admit these were some mighty tasty biscuits! Took all of our restraint not to eat the whole batch in one sitting.  These are super-simple to make: just White Lily flour, butter and buttermilk. Plus a whole lotta Southern love. :-)

Since the subject of my upcoming Kindle eBook will be natural yeasts and whole grains, I thought it appropriate to post a picture of the little guys that make it all possible. Say hello to my yeasty friends! These are yeast cells from a raisin yeast culture that I've been maintaining for over a year. I've used this culture countless times to grow a mother, convert the mother to a 'chef', turn the 'chef' into levain, and the levain into wonderful bread. In a few days I'll show you how to start your own natural yeast culture and begin your journey into the fascinating world of baking without commercial yeasts.  Have patience, my children, and the Yeast Priest will reveal his secrets!

For those of you that are science geeks, the image was made by staining yeast cells with methylene blue. The microscope is an Omano (http://www.microscope.com -- great people!), the camera is a Nikon D5100 with the Omano 'CamAdapter' kit, and I used ControlMyNikon (http://controlmynikon.com) software for image capture. The final shot was cleaned up and tweaked using Adobe's LightRoom 3.

You can't have BBQ without Brunswick Stew, so Julie dove right in and cooked us up a batch. This was her first Brunswick Stew and I have to say she hit it right out of the (Fenway -- Go BoSox!) Park. She suggested pulling about a pound of 'Q off the smoker about 8 hours into the process and incorporating it into the stew. What a great idea!  This was no doubt the best Brunswick Stew I have ever had, and no squirrels were harmed in the making. Although given their abundance in our yard the next batch of stew might just have have some squirrel!

There was a huge batch of stew -- always seems to be the case, I think it's a requirement that Brunswick Stew be made in gallons -- so we put up a bunch in the freezer. Julie and I had to laugh thinking about her Mama buying stew from the local fire departments and freezing it in those styrofoam cups... Mama never took the stew out of the styrofoam... she just popped it straight into the freezer, plastic drink lid and all. Never seemed to hurt the stew and we always got excited when we spotted one of those cups sitting on the counter defrosting. We miss you, Mama!

We broke out the smoker last weekend and invested the time in producing an authentic Eastern North Carolina-style BBQ. Low, slow and pit cooked over direct heat. Just a few hickory coals under an 8 pound Boston Butt, with the temp held at around 225'. Took about 9 hours but check out the results! The top image is about an hour into the process -- the red pan holds water to keep things moist. The bottom pic, well, that's Mr. Brown Goes To Town! Look at all that Outside Brown! True 'Q enthusiasts know that Outside Brown is the best part and the only way to get real brown is to cook over direct heat. It's a lot more work to make sure you don't burn your meat -- remember, LOW and SLOW -- but the end result is sublime. I knew I had done good when my neighbor took a taste and literally jumped back two feet. His eyes got real wide and he said "Man, that's MOIST! That's the BEST 'Q I've ever had!' And he's a big smoker and BBQer, so I took that as a real compliment. Sadly, this batch is long gone. Gonna have to fire up the smoker and make us some more!

We're BACK! Hard to believe it's been a couple of years since I first started this blog. I went into the process with great enthusiasm, but with almost no feedback or comments coming in I soon grew bored. I've finally realized that I need to get all this culinary energy OUT of me or I'll explode and this blog is the perfect outlet.

First off, shouts out to a new book we've added to our collection of 850 and growing...  Callie's Biscuits and Southern Traditions: http://www.amazon.com/Callies-Biscuits-Southern-Traditions-Heirloom/dp/1476713219 We just received this book last Friday and already have fallen totally in love.  We made the maple-glazed pork loin last night, and was it ever good!  We didn't have the called-for white potatoes so we substituted sweet potatoes, which turned out to be a really happy thing. The recipe called for cooking the dish in a cast iron skillet and then covering with foil prior to baking in the oven. We used our trusty Lodge dutch oven instead.  375 for an hour and (insert moans here) we were grooving on the best Sunday dinner we've had in a long time. Highly recommended.

We haven't had the time to try other recipes from the book yet, but from what we've seen so far I'm sure they will turn out perfectly.  We sent a comment to Carrie Morey, the author, and she promptly responded. That's a first for us and we tip our hats to Carrie and her crew for great customer service. If she's planning a second book I'm going to be first on the wait list!  Five stars, recommended without reservations. Don't pass go, get on Amazon and, as they say here in the South, 'Git y'all a copy!'