Misadventures in Baking, Part 1

I can spend countless happy hours in the kitchen stirring a roux into chocolate brown perfection and minding a gumbo that’s chock full of the freshest ingredients I can find. But when it comes to baking, all bets are off. Baking requires a level of precision that confounds me, as I am more of an improvising, pinch-of-this-and-a-dollop-of-that style cook. Baking is a science, for crying out loud, and I, for one, am a “C” student in that subject.

But my goal is to get better. And what follows is one of my first attempts down that road.

On Christmas Eve we had smoked pork tenderloin and fresh green beans sautéed in olive oil and shallots. I felt all that savory needed to be counterbalanced by something a little sweet, so I envisioned sweet potato biscuits as the perfect -- and very regional -- accompaniment. My hope was that whatever I pulled from the oven would be as melt-in-your-mouth good as the buttery, fluffy biscuits Chef Scott Peacock turns out on fried chicken night each Tuesday at Decatur’s Watershed Restaurant. But that’s not exactly what I got. Perhaps a more baking-savvy blogger can read this and give me some tips on how to get there though.

Here’s what I did:

Armed with a copy of LSU AgCenter’s Serving Louisiana, I referred to the Sweet Potato Biscuits recipe on page 153.

Here are the ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening
1 cup mashed cooked sweet potatoes
6 tablespoons milk

Here’s what you do:

1. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix well.
2. Cut in the shortening until crumbly. I didn’t have shortening handy, so I figured Plugra -- which is, in my opinion, the butter of champions -- would work just as well and used it instead.
3. Stir in the sweet potatoes and milk. Me, I got in there with my hands too, kneading it until the ingredients were well incorporated. See?

4. Knead the dough lightly on a floured surface, then roll out until it’s ½ inch thick. Cut it with a biscuit cutter.

5. Arrange the rounds on a lightly-greased baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 1 dozen biscuits.

Here’s what I think:

Using butter instead of shortening might have been one of my first mistakes, as my mother told me after the fact that it cooks faster than shortening and could be part of the reason why the bottom of my biscuits cooked too quickly. The recipe yielded a biscuit that was borderline cookie-like in texture; it wasn’t the light, airy and buttery creation I envisioned. And perhaps I should have sprinkled in some brown sugar or cinnamon because the sweet potato taste was virtually nonexistent.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to take what I described above and turn it into an airy, sweet biscuit, please send them my way. I will publish whatever yields the best result.

Luck and Wealth in the New Year

For me, January 1 is about endless bowl games, half-hearted promises to clean the house, a mental fog earned by staying up as late as possible the night before, and the quintessential Southern New Year’s meal – black eyed peas, smothered cabbage, corn bread and a bit of ham. Eat all this and you will not only be lulled into a fairly sizable food coma, but part of a tradition that is said to bring any eater wealth (that's where the cabbage comes in) and good luck (that's the black-eyed peas).

When I was a little girl, I remember how my mother used to have the peas and cabbage simmering on the stove by the end of lunchtime, guaranteeing that for the rest of the day my sister and I would dread the thought of eating vegetables slow-cooked in pork for dinner. Mom always cautioned us against turning our noses up at her handiwork; if we didn’t eat this, she said we’d have a pretty miserable year.

“Me? I’m not taking any chances,” she’d say, taste-testing a spoonful of black eyed peas before sprinkling a bit more salt into the pot. Full of youthful bravado, my sister and I decided we would take every chance possible to avoid what seemed to be a none-too-appetizing meal.

As I grew older and, one would hope, wiser, I decided that a little bit of ritual never hurt anyone, and in doing so, I came to enjoy what generations of people in my family have eaten on January 1. Though I failed to cook these dishes last year (and 2007 was about as unlucky as it gets), I made a point of doing it yesterday, serving myself a big heaping plate of this salty, comforting goodness.

And I have to say: I’m already feeling pretty lucky, thank you very much.

Here’s what you’ll need to feel lucky too:
1 package of cornbread mix, or ready-made cornbread
1 baked ham or slices of country ham

for the cabbage and black-eyed peas
¼ cup of vegetable oil
½ package of diced cooked bacon, smoked ham or sausage (preferably andouille, if you can find it)
2 onions, diced
1 head of cabbage, cored and chopped
chopped garlic to taste
1 pound of black eyed peas
1 cup of chopped green onions
cooked long grain rice
parsley
black pepper
cayenne pepper
salt
Tabasco
water

Smothered Cabbage
1. Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium heat, then add ½ of the cooked bacon, onion and garlic. Stir until the onions are translucent.
2. Add the cabbage to the pot, and up to three cups of water. Stir the mixture, cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for a half hour.
3. Uncover the pot and season to taste with salt, pepper and cayenne. Add ½ cup of chopped green onions before covering the pot and allowing it to cook for another 30 minutes or until fork tender.


Black-Eyed Peas
1. Combine the peas, onions, garlic, 1 quart of water, salt, black pepper, Tabasco and diced bacon in a large heavy pot. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low until the peas are tender, at least 45 minutes.
2. Stir in parsley and ½ cup of green onions and cook about five more minutes.
3. Serve hot over white rice. Here’s what it looks like on a plate, piled high with cabbage, cornbread and country ham:

Welcome to Sauce Piquante!

Sauce Piquante is a food blog written by a 35-year-old Louisiana girl who lives in the Greater Atlanta area with her husband, her sassy toddler and a bipolar hound mix. Though the author has made a living reporting and writing stories for a variety of national publications, she has not penned a word about her one great passion – food.

That changes today.

But first, a few things you should know:

The author is not a professional chef. She has degrees in journalism and history, which means she is only qualified to give you a run for your money on Trivia Night at your local bar. (By the way, you’ve got first round…) So why read this? Why not read it? The author knows some pretty good kitchen tricks, thanks to an endless array of zealous roux-making relatives, assorted cooking classes and a willingness to sit in the kitchen and learn from her mistakes.

This blog is not necessarily about all things Southern or Cajun/Creole/Louisiana, even though the author’s culinary worldview was formed by a childhood of eating gumbos, jambalayas and etouffees. At Sauce Piquante, you’ll see some Asian and African fare, some Latin and Southwestern dishes, even some European and Middle Eastern cuisine, too. Why? Because classic Southern food is not just packed with global influences, but cosmopolitan Southerners – those happy-go-lucky folks thought to be eating nothing more than gravy-soaked this, or super-smothered that -- are embracing dishes from all over the map. Here we hope to explore that vitality whether it’s expressed in a soul food tapas restaurant in Atlanta or a Lebanese bakery in Baton Rouge.

The recipes you’ll see here are the author’s best approximation of what she does, chop by chop, sprinkle by sprinkle, and so forth. After all, she views recipes as a suggestion, not a mandate, so laisser les bons temps rouler.