Issue #240: Biscuits from Heaven
Cooking “with” Friends, A Great Home Cook, Yeast-Enhanced Angel Biscuits
Happy New Year to all.
I was thinking about my friend Evelynne the other day, with whom I’ve lost touch. But out of touch doesn’t mean out of mind. I was making Eveylnne’s Angel Biscuits. And whenever I am cooking a recipe from someone I know and love, whether or not they are still with us—my mother’s latkes, my friend Dano’s liptauer, my sister’s piri piri chicken, my friend Bonnie’s challah French toast casserole, all of which I’ve made in the last few weeks—I feel like I’m connecting with them.
Evelynne and I met more than 30 years ago at the James Beard Foundation over a giant tin of caviar. The crowd of gastronomes gathered in Beard’s historic house for some guest-chef dinner or another had mostly been escorted to their tables, but a kilo of glistening fish eggs beckoned from the open kitchen. The chef gave us the nod. Unwilling to pass up an opportunity to heap embarrassingly large spoonfuls of caviar into our mouths at will, Evelynne and I lingered behind, laughing at the foolishness of those who sat down.
When we finally did arrive at our table, we were seated near each other. Over tales of roast suckling pigs and brioches mousseline, we became fast friends. Eveylnne had been gifted a membership to the Beard Foundation by her colleagues to mark her 25th anniversary at New York University, where she was vice president of equal opportunity employment and public affairs at the time. In the course of her long career in the school’s administration, she helped save the historic Astor Place subway station and revived Washington Square Park. The only thing that surpassed her love of New York City—“If I hear a siren, I still run to see what’s happening,” she confessed, having grown up in a small, sleepy town.—was her love of cooking.
I had never met a home cook as passionate and proficient as she. When Evelynne first invited me over to her humongous NYU apartment at the corner of East 8th Street and University Place, she walked me through her closet of kitchen equipment. I felt like I was wandering through the aisles of Dehillerin, the beloved 19th-century kitchen supply store in Paris. Cake strips and pasta forms, piping bags and brioche tins, roasting pans and blow torches. There was nothing she didn’t own, nothing she hadn’t attempted to cook, and many things she mastered. I was so impressed.
Later, we hosted a giant potluck in that apartment to kickstart the creation of my first cookbook, Cook Something, an invitation for GenX to get in the kitchen and cook. For the party, Eveylnne prepared a five-pound batch of her famous pickled shrimp and produced a stunning savory hors d’oeuvres cake comprised of brioche layered with smoked salmon, caviar, and smoked chicken, that she decorated with whipped cream cheese to look like a wedding cake. Victoria Spencer reviewed the party and Amanda Hesser reviewed the book, both favorably for the New York Times.
When Evelynne retired from NYU she had to give up her amazing apartment, so she moved out of the city to a home on a large piece of property in Newburgh, New York. She joked about offering parcels of her land to young white hipsters who were already heading to the Hudson Valley to farm and frolic so she could invert the race dynamics of sharecropping. Eveylnne planted an impressive garden and foraged for many things. I recall here researching old recipes for marshmallows that started with the mallow plant, which she found growing by a creek on her land.
Although I visited her in the country a couple of times, without a car and before the faux closeness brought by texting and social media, we lost touch. In writing this piece, I sent emails that bounced back. The two phone numbers I have for her ring unanswered.
Still, Eveylnne is never very far from my heart. The other day, a new friend in New Hampshire told me my (actually Evelynne’s) pickled shrimp recipe was a hit over the holidays. And I not once but twice in the last couple of weeks, I made Evelynne’s Angel Biscuits, once as a topping for a chicken pot pie that will be how I top my pot pies evermore. When I look at my own batterie de cuisine and scan through the thousands of photographs on my phone of foods I have cooked, I realize she and I have grown more similar, closer still. She remains an inspiration. Had I been given the option, I would have offered her my spot on Epicurious’s list of the “100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time.”
Heavenly Biscuits
Like most of the best biscuit makers, Evelynne never used a recipe for hers. She once showed me how she made them by feel, rubbing the fat into the flour by hand, dribbling the cold buttermilk in while she pushed the mixture around with the back of a fork to avoid overworking the dough, pinching them off to shape into rounds so she didn’t waste anything. My guess is that if you measured what she did the ratios would remain constant from one batch to the next.
These Angel Biscuits were not Evelynne’s everyday variety, as they require a chilled rest of at least 12 hours before baking so the yeast can do its magic. But the principles of handling the dough gently and not overworking or wasting any of it are the same. What’s more, you can make them up to a day or two in advance and bake them off when you want to serve them, advance prep being something I always appreciate. The biscuits would traditionally be topped with benne seeds, a close African relative of sesame seeds that arrived through the forced migration of enslaved Africans to the southern United States. As a country, as humans, we are still reeling from that horrible part of our history. As cooks, we have much to thank those who came for. You can also use sesame seeds. Often, I just leave them plain.
RECIPE: Evelynne’s Angel Biscuits
Makes 10 to 12 biscuits
2 ¾ cups cake flour or soft wheat flour (such as White Lily or other low-protein, spring wheat flour), or 2 ½ cups bleached all-purpose flour mixed with 3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into cubes, chilled
½ cup lard or vegetable shorting, or additional unsalted butter, chilled
Scant 1 cup buttermilk, plus extra for glazing
1 tablespoon benne or sesame seeds (optional)
Begin at least the night before you intend to bake the biscuits and up to a day or two in advance. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, yeast, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to blend. Add the chilled butter and lard. Using two knives, a pastry cutter, your hands, or a food processor fitted with the metal chopping blade, cut/rub the fats into the flour mixture until the whole thing resembles coarse crumbs. Dribble in the buttermilk, and using the back of a fork, push the mixture back and forth to form a soft, shaggy dough.
Turn the dough onto a clean work surface, scraping the bowl clean. Knead 4 or 5 times, no more, just until the dough coheres. Pat it into a disk about 8 inches in diameter and ½-inch thick. (Alternately, you can make it a rectangle to cut square biscuits.) Place on a clean plate, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 8 hours and up to two days.
When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Remove the biscuit dough from the fridge. Cut the dough into biscuits using a round cutter or sharp knife dipped in flour. Press the scraps together and cut additional biscuits. Transfer the biscuits to the parchment-lined pan. Brush with additional buttermilk and sprinkle with benne or sesame seeds, if using. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until risen and browned. Serve warm.
What a beautiful post Mitchell. Really felt the emotion in your lovely words.