Corned Beef Hash

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A confession: One of my guilty pleasures is corned beef hash.

The kind that comes out of a can and looks like dog food. I know, right?

Whenever my wife and I go out to breakfast at our favorite diner – or anywhere for that matter – I always order the same thing: Corned beef hash and eggs over easy with Greek toast. It’s become sort of a running joke between us that someday I will order something else, but that day has never arrived.

I just love the way corned beef tastes, especially when it’s all mixed up with the eggs and the hash browns. Health food, it’s not. But I could eat it every morning if I wasn’t afraid I would die of a heart attack before I turned 50.

After this weekend (St. Patrick’s Day, remember?), I found myself with some leftover corned beef and potatoes. So I thought, why not try to make “healthy” corned beef hash? At least healthier than the kind that comes out of a can.

Chef’s tip: In most restaurants that serve breakfast, the corned beef hash they sell still comes out of a can. They are just really big cans.

Anyway, it turned out delicious, although it didn’t hold together the way the canned stuff does. I think if I had a meat grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid, I would have put it through the grinder to get that kind of consistency. But the flavor was still superior to the canned version and the crispiness as perfect.

So a belated happy St. Patrick’s Day to everybody. Now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with all this cabbage!

Corned Beef Hash

1/2 lb corned beef, cooked

2-3 red potatoes, cooked

Fresh cracked black pepper

1 TBS sunflower oil

1. Chop corned beef until fine. Cut potatoes into small dice size. Combine in mixing bowl and season generously with black pepper. You probably won’t need to add any additional salt because the corned beef already has a lot of salt in it.

2. Put cast iron skillet on the fire. When hot, add oil. When smoking, place corned beef hash in pan, being carefuly not to splash yourself with the hot oil. Use a spatula to form a rough patty shape.

3. Fry corned beef over medium heat until bottom is brown and crispy, about 3 minutes. Carefully flip patty with spatula then fry other side until brown and crispy. Remove to plate lined with paper towel to remove some of the grease, then transfer to serving plate.

I made hash browns out of the leftover red potatoes by passing them through a box grater, seasoning them and then frying them until crispy in a cast iron skillet. The corned beef hash and hash browns can be made ahead of time and kept warm in a 200F oven if you are making breakfast for a big group of people and want to make eggs to order.

What sort of guilty pleasures do you indulge yourself in every once in awhile? Share your story in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

 

Meat Free Mondays – The Ultimate Vegan Burger

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How do you define the ultimate vegan burger?

Is it the one with the best flavor? Is it the one with a texture closest to a hamburger? Is it the mouth feel?

Sadly, most commercial vegan burgers I’ve tried fail on all these criteria. They tend to be firm like ground beef, but sometimes they can be rubbery. Plus, store-bought vegan burgers are designed to appeal to the broadest audience, so they often lack any complexity of flavor.

I’ve been playing around with different vegan burger recipes trying to find one that has both the right texture and a lot of flavor. The biggest challenge has been finding a recipe that holds together without becoming crumbly when you cook it.

Ground beef has fat which binds the burger together, but vegan burgers tend to be low-fat or fat-free. Mashed up beans make a good binder, but they also can make the vegan burger taste pasty. Freezing the patties prior to cooking them will hold them together in the skillet or on the grill, but the burgers will still be crumbly once they are on the bun.

This recipe has plenty of flavor, plus it is made in the food processor. That combined with the beets make it bright red so that it actually looks like ground beef.

But it was still kind of crumbly. I thought the oatmeal would bind it better — and it did absorb a lot of the liquid — and the end result was delicious but could still be improved.

I served it with an Israeli couscous salad, which is pretty much the same recipe as the quinoa salad I made the other day, except I used Israeli couscous instead of quinoa, I used rice wine vinegar instead of lemon juice in the dressing, I included diced beets (which sort of stained it red), and I topped it with crumbled Gorgonzola. It was delicious.

Israeli couscous is just like regular couscous — both are made with granules of toasted pasta –  except the granules are much larger. Plus it’s from Israel.

Vegan Burger

3 cups brown rice, cooked

1/2 cup oatmeal, dry

1/2 cup lentils, cooked (okay, I used canned!)

1/2 cup carrots, rough chop

1/2 cup red onion, rough chop

1 medium beet, cooked and peeled, rough chop

1/4 cup celery, stem and leaves, rough chop

1/4 cup button mushrooms, sliced

2 TBS low-sodium soy sauce

3 cloves garlic, crushed

3 tsp Dijon mustard

3 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp fresh cracked black pepper

1. Place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until combined, then run the food processor until the mixture has the consistency of ground beef.

2. Remove to mixing bowl. Portion and shape into 8 oz patties and place on a sheet pan lined with wax paper. Cover with a second sheet of wax paper and place in refrigerator overnight. This helps the patties to firm up so they won’t fall apart when you cook them.

3. Cook in a cast iron skillet or on the grill until cooked through. Serve on whole wheat buns with burger set ups — red leaf lettuce, sliced tomato and sliced red onion – and big kosher pickles on the side.

Have you found a great vegan burger? Help us out by sharing the recipe in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Seafood Fridays – Grouper

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Grouper always reminds me of family vacations in Florida.

That’s because my parents used to have a condo on Siesta Key, which is near Sarasota on the Gulf Coast, and grouper is very common on restaurant menus in that area because it is plentiful in the Gulf.

Grouper is one of my favorites because it is from the sea bass family. It is firm fleshed like mahi mahi or even tuna, yet its meat is slightly sweet and still flaky.

I find grouper to be one of the most durable fish to cook. It is most commonly deep fried, but it also will stand up to grilling, like salmon or tuna. Most importantly, it is delicious.

Grouper is a very interesting fish. In comes in a lot of different varieties and can be found all over the globe. In the Gulf, it is sometimes called jewfish and can grow up to 700 lbs. Yet it is commonly caught with a fishing line under bridges and in narrow creeks.

Fun fact: Groupers are born and mature as females, then become males when they grow older. They also have no muscular bones, so they are easy to fillet, although the skin is extremely tough and difficult to remove.

Because grouper meat is so chunky and can withstand a lot of cooking, it is used a lot in stews and chowders. It is also commonly found in bouillabaise and paella.

In Florida, we most commonly ate grouper that was deep fried or grilled and served on a sandwich. So that’s how I prepared it for this recipe. I served it with a chipotle aioli, quinoa salad and braised mustard greens.

There are two ways to make the chipotle aioli: The easy way and the hard way.

For the hard way, you use a food processor to blend one egg yolk, one TBS of lemon juice and just a touch of Dijon mustard together, then slowly add 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil until it is emulsified into a mayonnaise, seasoning it with salt and pepper. Then you fold in 3 TBS chipotle salsa.

For the easy way, you just mix one cup of mayonnaise (preferably reduced fat) and the chipotle salsa. Most of the restaurants serving chipotle aioli make it the easy way, in my experience.

The grouper is simply sprayed with pan spray, seasoned with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper and then grilled until done. It was served on whole wheat rolls.

Here’s the recipe for the quinoa salad:

Quinoa Salad

2 cups water

1 cup quinoa

1/4 cup red onion, small dice

2 stalks celery, medium dice

1/4 cup cucumber, peeled and seeds removed, medium dice

1/3 cup parsley, chopped

3 radish, small dice

2 green onions, sliced thin

1 jalapeno, ribs and seeds removed, small dice

1 clove garlic, crushed

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup EVOO

1. Bring water to a boil and whisk in quinoa. Return to a boil, reduce heat and cover. Cook 12 minutes. Turn off and let sit 15 minutes so all the liquid is absorbed. Remove cover, fluff with fork and let sit until it’s at room temperature.

2. Combine cooled quinoa with onion, parsely, cucumber, radish, green onion, celery and jalapeno in a mixing bowl. Juice lemon into a separate mixing bowl, add garlic, then slowly whisk in EVOO until emulsified into a dresssing. Season with S&P, then fold into the quinoa salad. Season salad with S&P, then refrigerate at least 30 minutes so the flavors can meld together.

Are there any foods that remind you of your family vacations? Let us know what they are in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Avocado Chicken Salad

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For some reason, I keep encountering South America lately.

For example, I recently saw this recipe on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” where it was being made at La Caraquena, a Venezuelan restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia. They called it Sifrina and it looked so delicious I just knew I had to make it right away.

Then, I saw these amazing plans for a solar-powered waterfall that will serve as the symbol of the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. How awesome is that thing?

rio olympics, 2016 rio olympics, 2016 olympics, solar city tower, renewable energy, pv, solar energy, pumped water storate, waterfall, RAFAA, eco design, sustainable building, green design, self-sufficient architecture, eco skyscraper

Next, my older brother just returned from a vacation in – you guessed it — Columbia, which is in South America. This can’t be a coincidence!

Whatever the reason, I’m glad South America keeps coming into the picture because it’s a continent that many Americans know little about, but which has incredible culinary treasures for us to explore.

Among them is this recipe for avocado chicken salad. Avocados, especially when made into guacamole, is one of my wife’s and my favorite foods. This little fruit — which is sometimes called alligator pear in the South — is the perfect combination of creamy richness and healthy vitamins.

Even though avocados grow on trees, they are high in monosaturated fat, which accounts for about 75 percent of the fruit’s soft and lush meat. As a result, they blend well with chicken and suspend the flavors of the other ingredients perfectly in this salad.

Plus, avocados are good for you. They have more potassium than bananas, and are rich in Vitamin B, Vitamin E and Vitamin K. They can lower your cholesterol, reduce hypertension, help prevent diabetes, and may even prevent you from getting cancer!

When buying avocados, you can determine their ripeness by gently pressing on them. If they give just a little, they are perfectly ripe. If they don’t give at all, they are underripe and can be ripened quickly by putting them in a sealed paper bag for a day or two. If they are squishy, they are overripe and unusable.

Avocado Chicken Salad (Sifrina)

3 ripe avocados, peeled and seed removed

Juice of 1/2 lime

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cooked (about 8 to 12 ounces)

1/4 cup red onion, small dice

1 jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed, small dice

1 medium tomato, seeds and ribs removed, diced

1 TBS mayonaisse

1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Sea salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Dash hot sauce

1. Place avocado and lime juice in mixing bowl and mash with potato masher until smooth. Add chicken, mayonnaise, onion, jalapeno, tomato, cheese, and hot sauce and fold together with spatula.

2. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to taste, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes so that the flavors can meld together. When you are ready to serve, use an ice cream scooper to scoop a generous portion of the sifrina onto whole wheat burger buns.

Although avocados usually turn brown due to oxidation fairly quickly, the lime juice prolongs this process and this stayed fresh in my refrigerator overnight with little to no reduction in quality. I served mine with oven-roasted sweet potato fries.

An aside: I just returned from a relaxing week’s vacation in Los Angeles, where my younger brother and his wonderful new wife live and where I ate like a sultan! I swear, we ate our way across that city and I probably gained 10 pounds, but it was so worth it! I will write a blog soon about the incredible food I enjoyed on the West Coast, but it’s also great to be back home.

Pork and Grits

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I’ve only started using grits in my cooking recently, but I’m glad I discovered them, even if it is belatedly.

Probably because I was raised in the North, I never had much exposure to grits. About the only time I remember hearing about them growing up was when Flo, the sassy waitress on the TV show “Alice”, would tell people, “Kiss my grits!”

Grits are most definitely a Southern thing. Up north, people generally eat cream of wheat or oatmeal instead of grits. The closest thing we have is polenta, which like grits is made of corn meal but unlike grits is not treated with alkali.

It is one of America’s oldest foods, having been first introduced into the culture by Native Americans.

While grits are most typically eaten as a breakfast dish, they are starting to show up as part of dinner entrees. Shrimp and grits, which is a Louisiana dish, is now on many restaurant menus nationwide

Grits can be made either sweetened or savory. For breakfast, I prefer to make them with half milk and half water — this is known as Charleston-style – add a tab of whole butter and sweeten them with honey.

As a dinner side, I make grits will all water, butter, salt and fresh cracked black pepper and usually a lot of Parmesan or Romano cheese. You can use grits anywhere you would use polenta and the results will be delicious.

Pork and Grits

1 pork tenderloin, about 1-1/2 lb

6 TBS grits

2 cups water

Sea salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

1/4 cup Parmesan and/or Romano cheese

2 TBS whole unsalted butter

1/4 cup Teriyaki sauce

1. Turn on grill (I used an indoor grill because it’s still wintery here, but an outdoor grill — gas or charcoal — is preferred). When hot, spray pork tenderloin with pay spray, season it generously with salt and pepper and throw it on the oiled grill. Turn occassionally so that all sides are marked, then reduce heat, move the tenderloin to a place on the grill where there is indirect heat, and let cook until done, about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the t-loin. Remove from heat, cover with foil and let rest for at least five minutes before slicing.

2. Bring water to a boil, add a dash of salt then whisk in the grits. Reduce heat and simmer until grits have thickened, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. When finished, remove from heat and fold in butter and cheeses with a spatula. Balance at the end with salt and pepper because Parmesan and Romano already contain a lot of salt and you don’t want the grits to be too salty.

3. To plate, pile the grits in the middle of a plate or bowl. Pour the teriyaki sauce on the bottom so that it pools around the grits. Slice the tenderloin at a bias and then shingle along the sides of the grits.

I usually serve this with some sort of steamed green vegetable such a green beans, broccoli or Brussels sprouts, depending on what looks good at the market.

Programming note: I will be going on vacation for the next week, so there will be no new blogs until about March 15. Hope you all have a great week and I’ll see you when I get back!

Meat Free Mondays – Spinach Artichoke Flatbread

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Flatbreads are like pizza in the same way paninis are like grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s pretty much the same thing, except a little classier.

I like flatbreads on a number of different levels. For one, they are a lighter alternative to heavy pizza, making them perfect for outdoor dining or a light appetizer.

For two, they are really inexpensive to make, but people are willing to spend money on them. In some restaurants I’ve worked, flat breads were a popular seller and they only had about a 12% food cost. Compare that to the industry average of 27% and you can see why they are an appealing item to put on a menu.

Plus they are very simple to make because you usually don’t make the flatbread yourself. In most places, I’ve bought lavash bread, which is a Middle Eastern bread that is sort of like a cross between a pita and a tortilla.

In this recipe, however, I found these wonderful spinach tortillas. They gave just the right flavor to this flatbread, plus they crisped up wonderfully in the oven. It was like eating off of giant spinach-flavored crackers.

One of my favorite appetizers of all time is spinach and artichoke dip. The flavor of this flatbread reminded me of that dish, with its tart artichoke, iron-rich spinach and sweet grated parmesan.

But the beautiful thing about flatbreads is that you can make them with anything. I’ve used pulled barbequed chicken, beans and corn, even flaky fish. They are pretty much fool-proof and a consistent crowd pleaser.

So now that the weather’s warming up and soon we will be able to dine outdoors occasionally, start thinking about what kinds of flatbreads you can make for your family. They are fast, easy, inexpensive and, most of all, delicious.

Spinach Artichoke Flatbread

2 spinach tortillas

1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed

1 can artichoke hearts, drained and rough chop

4 oz crumbled blue cheese

1/2 cup fat free blue cheese dressing

1/2 cup fat free ranch dressing

1/4 cup grated parmesan

1/2 cup green onions, sliced thin

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Lay tortillas out on sheet pan and spray with pan spray. Flip and spray other side. Bake in oven until crisp, about 10 minutes. Remove and let cool. This can be done up to a day ahead of time.

2. Combine ranch and blue cheese dressings in a mixing bowl, then brush mixture on the bottom of both tortillas. Arrange spinach, green onions and chopped artichoke hearts in an even layer, then sprinkle with blue cheese. Finally, sprinkle with parmesan.

3. Return to oven and bake until slightly browned, about 12 minutes. Cut into four large peices for an entree, or eight smaller peices for an appetizer and serve immediately.

What kinds of dishes do you make when the weather starts to get warmer? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Seafood Fridays – Orange Roughy

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At some point during Lent, my mother would always make orange roughy. It is a white, firm-fleshed fish that has a slightly sweet flavor to it and tastes not at all fishy. I would look forward to it because it was always a big improvement on fish sticks.

I had never heard of it until the early 1980s, but soon we would have it a several times per year.

Later, as an adult, I would occasionally buy it to make for my family. It’s not super expensive — although not nearly as cheap as farmed fish such as tilapia — but I would always find it frozen, never fresh.

I found out later that it’s because orange roughy is a deep water fish that is harvested in the North Atlantic around Iceland and also in the Pacific around Peru. It has to travel too far to be sold fresh at my neighborhood grocery store.

Interesting fact: The fish was renamed orange roughy in the late 1970s for marketing purposes. Its former name was “slimehead” due to the mucuous membranes that run through it’s head.

Ironically, it was given its more marketable name as part of a US National Marine Fisheries Service program to promote underutilized fish species to make them more marketable. Now the species is on many government and environmental groups’ endangered species list. It used to be one of the most popular fish to harvest around Australia and New Zealand but less than 10 percent of the original population and fishing for orange roughy has been sharply limited.

Also, orange rough can live up to 135 years. And they are not orange, they are brick red when alive. Their flesh only turns a pale orange after they are dead.

Image DetailSome grocery stores refuse to sell orange roughy because it is not a sustainable fish. That means once it’s gone, it’s gone. It can’t be replenished because it’s a deep water fish.

What’s more, orange roughy are caught through a method called “trawling”, in which heavy nets are dragged across the ocean floor. This causes a lot of damage to the ecosystem and is putting other kinds of sea life at risk, such as sea coral. Seafood Watch, an US sea life watchdog group, has recommended that consumers avoid buying orange roughy because of its growing scarcity and because the damage deep sea trawling does to the underwater environment.

I have a suggestion for saving the species: Change their name back to “slimehead”. No one is going to serve up a platter of slimehead on a Lenten Friday.

I’m not going to post a recipe for orange roughy because now I feel bad about having made it. Now that I know about how endangered it is, I doubt I will be making orange roughy again anytime soon.

 

Cupboard Casserole

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Last week, I wrote about a blogger, My Vegetarian Kitchen, who was trying not to buy any more food until she used up everything she had in her kitchen.

This wonderful blog post continues to inspire me. So I decided to try to create at least one meal without having to go buy anything new.

This experience is similar to the way restaurant owners sometimes try out potential chef candidates. They are given a “black box” full of ingredients and given the task of creating something original and delicious. They are given no advance knowledge of what the ingredients will be.

I’ve always enjoyed those kind of tryouts, so I was looking forward to this experiment in my own kitchen. The only problem was I didn’t have much lying around: some frozen ground turkey, a half a bag of egg noodles and not much else.

I tore my cupboard apart, dismissing those items that simply wouldn’t work — a can of lentils, half full bags of assorted grains and beans — until I found a couple that would, such as a can of peas and a lone envelope of Mrs. Grass Onion Soup Mix.

The refrigerator was pretty sparse as well, but I did manage to find half an onion and half a green pepper, as well as some partially full containers of fat free cottage cheese and sour cream.

I used these ingredients to whip up what I told my wife was ”Cupboard Casserole”. It actually turned out pretty delicious, especially since I made it out of essentially nothing. It wasn’t good enough that I would put it on a restaurant menu, but we enjoyed it and saved some money at the same time.

Now, if you will excuse me I have to go grocery shopping.

Cupboard Casserole

1/2 lb ground turkey

1/2 white onion, medium dice

1/2 green pepper, ribs and seeds removed, medium dice

1 jalapeno pepper, ribs and seeds removed, small dice

1 TBS extra virgin olive oil

1/2 bag dry egg noodles

1 cup fat free cottage cheese

1/2 cup fat free sour cream

1 can reduced fat cream of chicken soup

1 envelope Mrs. Grass Onion Soup Mix

1 can peas, drained

1 dash Worcestershire sauce

1 dash Tabasco sauce

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1. Cook egg noodles according to package instructions, about 7 minutes. They should be slightly undercooked so that they will absorb some of the liquid while the casserole is cooking. Drain and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process.

2. Meanwhile, put cast iron pan on fire. When hot, add oil. When smoking, add onions and peppers. Cook until onions translucent, about three minutes, then add turkey, using a spatula to break it apart into small peices. Cook until turkey is browned, about five minutes, then remove from heat and let cool.

3. Preheat oven to 375F. In a mixing bowl, combine egg noodles, turkey mixture, cream of chicken soup, the onion soup mix, the sour cream, cottage cheese, Worcestershire and Tabasco and blend together with a spatula. Season to taste with salt and pepper then transfer to a casserole dish. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, cover and bake for 35 minutes. Remove cover and bake another 10 minutes.

What kinds of meals do you make out of whatever you have lying around your kitchen? Share your story in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Wine on Wednesdays – My Wine Education

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I learned at a very early age that most people don’t know anything about wine.

In fact, it was when I was 16.

That's me on the left at about the time I worked at my Uncle Tony's store, with my mother and brother, Kevin

That's me on the left at about the time I worked at my Uncle Tony's store, with my mother and brother, Kevin

That’s when I started working at my Uncle Tony’s liquor store on the South Side of Chicago. It was an enormous liquor store built in an old supermarket at the intersection of two very busy streets. It was smack dab in the middle of a hard-drinking Irish neighborhood that was mostly cops and firemen. Plus the precinct across the street was dry.

In other words, Uncle Tony made bank.

My job was to restock the shelves and help customers find what they needed, including wine.

Obviously, at 16 I had very little experience with wine (other than perhaps the occasional Boone’s Farm or Richard’s Wild Irish Rose), but I quickly started to learn the difference between cabernets and merlots, between sparkling wines and champagnes.

At first I was astonished when customers would ask my opinion about certain wines. I mean, come on! I was only 16! But I learned fast and soon I found myself starting to look forward to being able to help people understand and appreciate wines.

Most of Tony’s customers needed a lot of help. While they all knew what beer they liked (Hint: It was always Old Style), picking up a bottle of wine for a special occasion left most of Tony’s customers flustered.

I remember one guy who kept asking where we kept our clear wine. Clear wine? He meant white.

Others would come looking for a wine called “CHAB-liss”. What they wanted was chablis.

Although I didn’t drink wine back then, I occasionally would enjoy a liebfraumilch or a good French champagne when we had “staff tastings”. That was the beginning of my lifetime love affair with wine.

At Tony’s there were two days per year that the store made as much money as all the other days of the year put together: Christmas Eve and the day of the South Side Irish parade.

Wine sales were brisk on those days, but so were liquor sales, beer sales and sales of everything that wasn’t nailed down. At the end of both of those two days, it looked like a plague of locusts had descended on the store and eaten it clean.

New Year’s Eve was another big night. I remember one New Year’s Eve, after a very busy night I helped close up the store before going to a party. On the way out I bought a case of cheap Andre champagne (yes, very illegal, but the store is now closed so I think the statute of limitations has expired. Also, Uncle Tony was not aware of this. Sorry, Uncle Tony!).

As the midnight hour chimed, I walked into the party with a case of chilled champagne on my shoulder handing out bottles to my friends. Since Andre only sold for $1.50/bottle back then, the cost of being a hero was only $18!

Tony sold the store in the early ’90s and some other people ran it for a few years before it was torn down to make room for a parking lot for a cultural center. But helping people select wines in those busy aisles was where my journey of enjoying wine first began.

Buttermilk Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

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With Spring right around the corner and winter in its final days (hopefully), the time has come to rev up the diet and exercise program.

But before we do, I wanted one last fatty indulgence that I could enjoy before breaking out the scale and lacing up the running shoes. And there’s nothing more unhealthy for you than buttermilk biscuits and country gravy.

The simplest and most comfortable of comfort foods, buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy is reminiscent of a bygone era, a time when people could enjoy this super heavy breakfast without feeling guilty the rest of the day.

While that time has past, the appeal of this delicious, non-nutritious breakfast has not. Other than how good it tastes, the only other positive thing I can say about it is that it is actually inexpensive to make, with the sausage being the only ingredient that costs more than just a few pennies.

This was so delicious and so indulgent that I could almost hear my arteries filling up as I ate it. But it felt like the most appropriate way to mark the end of winter and the beginning of a new season.

Buttermilk Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

For the biscuits

3 cups all purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup Crisco shortening

1 TBS butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 450F. Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then add the shortening, a clump at a time, mixing it in with a biscuit cutter or just your hands. When it is all blended, slowly mix in the buttermilk just until a smooth dough is formed. Don’t overmix.

2. Flour a work surface then flatten out dough with a rolling pin until it’s about 3/4 inch thick. Use a cookie cutter to cut dough into circles, then lay them out on a sheet pan sprayed with pan spray.  Brush the tops with melted butter then bake for 18 minutes. Let cool a little before serving.

For Sausage Gravy

1/2 lb bulk breakfast sausage

2 cups fat free milk

2 TBS butter

3 TBS all purpose flour

Sea salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

1. Put cast iron pan on the fire. When hot, add the sausage. Use a spatula to break into smaller peices and cook until browned, about five minutes, stirring frequently.

2. Heat milk in saucepan until simmering. In a separate saucepan, melt butter then whisk in flour to form a roux. Cook together until roux turns a light brown, then whisk the roux into the boiling milk and cook until milk thickens to gravy consistency, about 3 minutes. Stir in sausage and season with salt and pepper to taste.

To plate, pile biscuits in center of plate then ladle a generous portion of sausage gravy over the top. If you need me, I’ll be over here having a heart attack.

What kinds of foods do you eat when you want to indulge yourself? Share your story in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!