My brother Brian is in town for the weekend from Seattle, and in the spirit of sibling rivalry, I suggested that we have some sort of cooking competition. We somehow settled on biscuits. I'm not sure why I thought I could take him on, since I've only made biscuits once before. My brother, on the other hand, claims to be a pretty good biscuit maker. His recipe is posted to his blog.
We couldn't just eat biscuits for dinner, so inspired by the Williams & Sonoma catalog I recently received with a shout-out to New Orleans on the cover, I decided to try making etouffee (not buy more stuff from W&S).
Etouffee, as I mentioned in my new year's resolution post, is a Creole dish that I love but have never tackled before. It's simple enough: make a roux of oil and flour, add in some chopped onion, celery, garlic and green pepper. Sweat the veggies for a bit, then finish off with cayenne, Cajun spices, parsley, tomatoes and some liquid (I used bottled clam juice) to get it all simmering just right. Throw in some shrimp when the veggies are finally tender. You end up with a lusciously rich gravy that you "smother" over some rice (hence, the French word etouffee means 'smothered' or 'suffocated').
Brian assisted with a tasty side of okra and tomatoes, and homemade banana pudding with pound cake. We were sure to be in pain later.
But let us not digress from the biscuit competition. Each cook was equally distracted with other dishes to pull off, but admittedly I had the home court advantage. I did warn him that I had no self-rising flour and my oven was a little cold. Also, I had no pastry cutter, the nifty tool used to cut butter into flour for biscuits and pie crust.
Brian's technique was impressive, choosing to freeze his butter, then grate it before incorporating with the flour. I thought I'd use my food processor, but at the last minute I panicked and decided instead to just break the butter with my fingertips and roll it into the flour. This is NOT the best way to incorporate butter into flour, from my limited knowledge of the subject, since the heat from your fingers is likely to melt the butter, which is not a desired outcome.
The goal of any pastry dough (again, limited knowledge here) is to coat each tiny grain of butter
with flour, so that when your pastry goes into the oven, each bit of butter melts and forms the flaky layers that we all find so appealing in the likes of croissants and other buttery delicacies.
Brian and I used equal amounts of flour, but I decided to use only 5 Tbs. of butter to Brian's 8 Tbs. (a half stick). We both used buttermilk. Aside from technique, the only other departure of note was that I used more baking powder, and I cut my biscuits into traditional circles, unlike Brian's squares. The squares don't leave you with annoying scraps of extra dough, however.
The biscuits came out in separate batches, but we had three volunteers on hand, armed with butter and jam, to test each entry, hot out of the oven.
The most satisfying part of the biscuit eating experience for me is going to separate the biscuit and having it flake apart into two perfect halves. I don't mean the way Pillsbury canned biscuits flake like layers of onion skin. There is something eerily wrong with those biscuits. But my biscuits didn't give nearly as easily as Brian's did, though his tasted drier.
Brian quickly revealed his secret was the fold the dough over on itself in two layer before rolling it out to achieve that perfect break.
Form aside, the group (Brian included), came to the conclusion that Brian's biscuits had the buttery flavor advantage, but they were too dry compared to mine. I was declared the winner.
The victory was anti-climactic for me. It's hard to feel supreme when you know the guy sitting next to you has been making cream puffs and pies since he was 15, and he didn't have to look at recipe for his biscuits, while you did. But the competition wasn't so important as the superb meal that followed.
Recipes we used:
Shrimp Etouffee (note - the extra 1/2 stick of butter at the end is not necessary)
Okra and Tomatoes (note - we substituted coriander for cardamom, and used frozen okra)
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