Biscuit

USING ROASTED PARSNIP PUREE as a base and adding a few fresh herbs results in rich but still light and flavorful biscuits.

According to Scott, a biscuit should be crusty and golden brown on the top, with an interior that is soft, light, and tender. Purist that he is, he makes them with freshly rendered lard and recommends making your own fresh baking powder: Measure and sift together 3 times, 2 parts cream of tartar and 1 part baking soda. Make it in small batches, store in an airtight container, and use within 4 weeks. A sweetened version of the biscuit dough makes delicious short-cakes to serve with whipped cream and sliced ripe fruit or berries and is great for making cobbler (page 127).

Cream biscuits are melt-in-your-mouth delicious on their own for breakfast, served with Fried Chicken (page 347) and savory stews, for desserts baked in a cobbler with juicy fruit (see page 178), or in the classic Strawberry Shortcake (page 365).

I’ve given an American Southern staple an Italian spin with the addition of Parmesan. The cornmeal makes these biscuits sturdy enough to pack on a picnic, and you can stuff them with smoked salmon (my fave), sliced turkey or ham, or even grilled veggies. Hot out of the oven, they are pretty terrific with just a bit of lemon butter.

This is my cross-cultural take on a frequently served Swedish snack. If you’re making the North African mantecaos specifically for this dish, you might omit the cumin, but I think they’re more interesting with it. You can also make these with standard biscuits, in which case they’re pretty simple.

These biscuits take me back to my days at The Bag Lady. I would put a couple of these in each lunch container for an extra treat! They are wonderful.

My brother Bubba confines most of his cooking to his charcoal grill, but he does come into the kitchen quite often to bake up these great biscuits.

These biscuits have become one of our signature items at The Lady & Sons Restaurant. Everyone really looks forward to us bringing them out, whether it be after they are seated or while they are waiting in line.

PAT I have a confession—when I was a kid, I would jump my grandmother’s neighbor’s fence and pluck peaches from Mr. Johnson’s trees. I figured that there were so many of those little darlings hanging from Mr. Johnson’s trees he surely wouldn’t miss a few. Looking back on it, you could say those peaches helped me develop an appreciation for the simple pleasures life has to offer. Over the years, we’ve grown fond of grilling sweet fruit. (Yes, we do “grill everything.”) When you add the smoky flavor from the grill to the sweetness of the apricots and peaches, well, you are talking about a different kind of dessert from the shortcake you’re used to. Ours also calls for biscuits (talk about a Neely spin on things!). And the turbinado sugar is just a fancy name for sugar in the raw . . . like me!

Angel biscuits are so easy to make that they’re often called “bride biscuits.” They have three different types of leavening, so they always rise up fluffy and tall.

Southerners take sausage and egg biscuits for granted. They are just about everywhere in the South—we make them at Foster’s, and you can even buy them at country convenience stores, where you might find a stack wrapped in cellophane in a basket by the register. If you haven’t already had sausage and egg biscuits yourself, I hope this recipe will make you a convert. For extra flavor, cook the eggs the way my dad did, by frying them directly in the sausage grease left in the skillet rather than using butter. Feel free to scramble rather than fry the eggs if you prefer.

With the airiness of dinner rolls and the flaky, buttery layers of traditional biscuits, angel biscuits—which get their extra lift from a little yeast—truly deserve their celestial name. I add chopped watercress for its mild peppery flavor and a pop of color.

Growing up, my sister, Judy, and I coveted one simple dish above all others for breakfast: hot biscuits topped with lightly mashed strawberries and lots of sweet butter. I use a dead-simple recipe for cream biscuits adapted here from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

As anyone who has actually made biscuits from scratch will tell you, they are fast and oh-so-easy—no culinary wizardry required. Of course, you needn’t go out of your way to divulge that fact when serving these rich, flaky biscuits to a chorus of oohs and ahhs. Sometimes, certain things are better left unsaid. Serve warm with lots of sweet butter, honey, molasses, or jam.