One of the unique challenges of food photography is trying to make a beautiful photo of a delicious dish that just simply doesn't look very appealing. Think oatmeal, but without the added visual interest of currants or nuts or anything. Result: something resembling kindergarten paste. Or take as an example a big pot of chili (which can be, but isn't always beautiful) or something like tripe (not that appealing to me in general, and certainly not attractive. For me, this challenge is embodied by (tragically) perhaps my favorite food. I find myself longing to blog about, but unable to make beautiful the food I would very likely request for my last meal on Earth.
I speak of the mighty Biscuits and Gravy.
Many of my more East-Coast-Cosmopolitan friends have wrinkled their eyebrows at the mere mention of such an odd invention as Biscuits. With Gravy. "What kind of gravy?" is the inevitable question. My inevitable, inevitably unsatisfying answer? "Good gravy."
Fig. 1. Good gravy.
Sunday it had decided to remind us, weak as we are, that winter is not yet over. Gale force winds and driving snow chilled me, my husband, our puppy to the bone and made it difficult to keep the house warm. The windows rattled. My teeth chattered. It was time for some warm-making food.
So, in need of comfort and general foodstuffs, we trekked to the stout and steady Zipcar and made our way to the Super Stop and Shop (It is material for another blog post altogether, but this is a beautiful supermarket. It was our first - and definitely not last - trip there.) I was lingering in the Pork section of the meat aisle, considering the merits of tackling another roast when I spotted it: the Jimmy Dean sausage that I haven't found elsewhere. (Is this a rare thing in New England? Don't you sometimes just need a big tube of peppery, delicious pork sausage?) I picked up one of those delicious pounds of flesh and, in the spirit of quickly attaining comfort food, scooped up another tube, this time of Grands! Homestyle Buttermilk Biscuits (the kind where you have to explode the little cardboard tube before baking the goodness).
Home I went and cooked up perhaps the Best Biscuits and Gravy I've ever had. After only minutes of simmering, crackling, bubbling goodness, my whole house smelled peppery and rich and like my childhood. Here's how I did it. Please pardon the pictures. Biscuits and Gravy is not one of the supermodels of the food world, but it is one of the finest dishes there is.
Biscuits and Gravy - roughly as my mom would do it.
1 lb. Jimmy Dean (or other
unpretentious) sausage
1/2 c. (ish) all-purpose flour
1 qt. (ish) milk
1/4 c. half and half (I use the fat free stuff)
generous salt and pepper
1 tube ready made biscuits (or you can make your own, overachiever)
1. Prepare the biscuits as directed. Put them into the oven.
2. Squeeze the sausage out of its tube into a good, heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Squish it around until it is more or less evenly distributed and broken into smaller pieces over the bottom of the pan. Brown it quite thoroughly (but don't burn), while stirring more or less constantly.
3. When the sausage has browned and released it's juices (read: grease), spoon some flour over it and stir. The idea is to coat all the sides of the sausage, but not too heavily. The measurement is VERY APPROXIMATE, due to the different levels of greasiness, different actual volume of sausage, etc. etc. Use your own good judgment. Also, pepper at this point, but not too much.
4. This is where my mother says "And this is the MOST IMPORTANT STEP. You must BROWN the flour or it will taste RAW." (Her emphasis) Basically, cook the flour-coated sausage until it's more brown than white and the little crumbly bits where it's just flour and grease turn almost crispy. Stir very frequently to be sure all the sides brown evenly. My mother also always says, "You will think it's burning, but it's not."
Fig. 2. "You will think it's burning, but it's not."
5. Start adding the milk. This is another very approximate part of the recipe and depends on a) how much flour you put in, b) how much gravy you need, c) how long it cooks before the biscuits are done. Now, I'm personally partial to a thicker gravy, so I use slightly more flour and slightly less milk and I cook it slightly longer so the milk also browns a bit and it reduces rather drastically. Continue adding milk until you think the consistency looks good to you.
6. Stirring frequently to prevent skin forming and bottom of the pan burning, bring the gravy to a slow boil and allow the milk to reduce and thicken. If it thickens too much, add more.
7. I added some half and half at the end to thin the consistency a bit without reducing the richness. You can do this, too, if you like.
8. TASTE IT. You may want to add more salt and pepper at the end (It's difficult to predict the saltiness of the sausage). I like my gravy quite (probably dangerously) salty. But your taste is up to you.
9. To serve: Break two of your biscuits open (i.e. separate the top from the bottom). Do not cut them. That's the coward's way out. If you don't burn your fingertips a little bit, you haven't earned your biscuits and gravy. Pour a generous amount of gravy over the biscuit halves. Eat with a fork. I also find it delightful to pair this with a sweet-tart beverage. Orange juice is delicious, as is cranberry.
Fig. 3. NOT Kindergarten paste.
Figure One. The Hipster Photo Shoot. Dan and I did a little photo shoot while living in Berlin. He wore a fedora and we set up in the garage of our apartment building, where the architectural details and graffiti are fabulous and it was almost completely dark.
Figure Two. Liz in the wild. Smith Senior Year (2004). We were in pursuit of interesting photos for the Yearbook. There are also many photos of Kelly.
Figure Three. Peeling posters in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Also from 2007.
This morning, we were in the mood for hangover food and, having a car at our disposal, hied ourselves hence to Sofra, where we indulged in not one, but two rounds of delicious food. Try the Shakshuka next time you're there. It's divine.
All in all, it's been a pretty great day (and night). Much love to all who attended and imbibed. Now if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to go snack on some Moroccan style goat cheese that I brought home with me.
And this is my little hot puppy. Posing nicely for the camera. She needs a haircut, but I am loath to lose her big fuzzy bear paws.
In other news, I've been doing a good deal of for-fun reading and I have two EMPHATIC recommendations for you: 1. All Over Creation, by Ruth Ozeki and 2. Commencement, by J. Courtney Sullivan.
Today: Three very happy packages arrived - food processor, ice cream maker, and film processing supplies, oh my!
The only photos I've taken today have been analog - I finally got a new battery for my trusty old Mamiya and, oh, I've got big plans for her. So, in the spirit of at least uploading one photo every day in an effort to make myself be creative at least part-time, I give you last night's dinner. Nothing fancy, just some light buttery pasta with veg and a good, big, fat salad. 
Rosemary Focaccia - The Book also provides suggestions for substituting parmesan, sage, or olive and thyme. They all sound delicious.
Figure One. Scones are better in Ireland. So is the butter.
Figure Two. Guinness is good for you.
Figure Three. When asked the question "Would you like a bit of cream with your raspberry crumble," say yes.
Figure Four. When making a sandwich, good bread is obviously a necessity (good Irish brown bread, in this case). Also highly recommended, however, is shredded cheese instead of sliced.
Figure Five. Even if it doesn't look like much, fish and chips is truly a memorable meal when you're near the sea and have lots of salt and vinegar at your disposal.
Figure Six. If you ever find yourself in Kenmare, County Kerry, go to Mulcahy's. Order the pork.
gorgeously. (See the pre-batter photo, as the post-baking result wasn't as pretty as it was delicious.) The clafoutis was dessert for a rather decadent dinner involving lasagna and a newly invented cocktail.
pan is full. If you've ever seen me packing a suitcase, you understand the method I find useful to employ: pour in more goodies and apply pressure until it all fits. Just be prepared to get a little dirty. Finish this layering process with a layer of noodles, then sauce, then a cup of mozzarella and the final 1/4 c. Parmesan. Then cover the lasagna with oiled aluminum foil and bake for 15 minutes at 375. Remove the foil and continue baking for 25 more minutes until bubbling and brown on top.
them is, in my opinion, Cookbook. She tweets entire recipes in the allotted 140 characters, with the help of a battery of abbreviations and sometimes curious punctuations. This epicurean Morse code is sometimes difficult to parse, but the effort of condensing them and eliminating all those pretty words seems herculean. Anyway, over the weekend the following popped up in my feed: 
Figure 1. My sweet little "Bell Boy" pepper plant! Near the top you see two teeny little peppers and at the bottom, one bigger one! The biggun is about two inches long and about an inch in diameter.
Figure 2. One of the meaty little Peonies I bought yesterday.
Figure 3. The meatier of the two Peonies I bought yesterday.
Figure 4. And look what they did today!
Figure 5. You can imagine how I'm ogling these sweet little green buds. And the actual snappy blooms aren't bad either.
Fig. 1. Photobooth pictures were taken.
Fig. 2. Rooty trees were ogled.
Fig. 3. Just maybe the happiest place on Earth was visited.
Recently, the puppy and the hubby and I played host to a dog called Snoot - Lucy's best friend from puppy-hood who tragically moved to California with his human, whom we shall call Ishmael. Ishmael came over to visit Snoot one day and I cooked a little feasty goodness for lunch. So very lovely to see this good friend and his gorgeous dog. Ishmael calls himself a Vegetarian of Convenience, so we decided to be a little inconvenient and eat fish (which he adores and which you all know is a recent project of mine).
What you see there is the end - it was so good I forgot to take a picture of the whole dish before diving into it - of a small green salad topped with some olive oil, some SERIOUSLY good Balsamico, and one plump, moist, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, gorgeous scallop* with a little ribbon of prociutto. The salad was simple. A few mesclun and butter lettuce leaves, oil and vinegar, and that's it. The scallop was almost that simple. I wrapped the prociutto around the scallop and tossed it in a pan with a little olive oil (loose ends of the prociutto on the bottom for starters) and cooked it til it was golden brown on that side (about a minute?) and about 30 seconds on the other side (just til it started to brown). This resulted in a little crispy edge on each bite, but a creamy just-done middle. Delicious.
I drizzled a casserole dish with olive oil, then placed a half-pound cod filet (cut into two servings) into the pan. I drizzled the fish again with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, some thyme and rosemary. Then, I chopped garlic and two roma tomatoes and sprinkled them over the top. I squeezed half a lemon over the fish and sliced the other half. I placed the slices on top of the fish and sprinkled capers over. Then I baked the fish until it was flaky. I served with steamed broccoli and buttery cous cous. Delish.
On this plate:
Figure One. Daffodils from Russo's and the little red calendar that could.
Figure two. I am not an egg fan, but I have taken a fancy to bagel breakfast sandwiches featuring scrambled egg, sharp cheddar, and rosemary ham. This one had the extra benefit of avocado.
Figure three. The Fraktail. This is a drink I made in honor of the end of a particular television show that I came to adore. Recipe adapted from the "Creole Lady Cocktail" in Old Mr. Boston's De Luxe Official Bartender's Guide (1951 edition). 
Figure four. Sofra. This is a very surprising little lovely middle-eastern bakery and coffee shop. They serve the most astonishing and delicious things.
Figure five. The delicious Mezze platter I had for breakfast (outside) on the first warm Sunday of 2009. From left to right: Bean plaki - braised with tomato, garlic and green peppers; Moroccan carrot salad (harissa, ground ginger, olive oil, and vinegar); smokey eggplant with pine nuts; Armenian bean and walnut pate (red kidney beans, walnuts, butter, olive oil, and pomegranate molasses); Moroccan style goat cheese with almonds, raisins, and cilantro. Also, flatbread with black sesame seeds.
Figure six. Lucy had a visitor. Gerta came to stay for a long while.
Figure seven. After making a beautiful pork shoulder, I used the leftovers to make a gorgeous pork ragu served over creamy-dreamy polenta. Recipe from Fine Cooking.
Fig. 1. Good gravy.
Fig. 2. "You will think it's burning, but it's not."
