Call me spoiled, call me uncultured, but I’m beginning to loathe travel. Don’t get me wrong: seeing new sights, experiencing new parts of this American landscape is something I try not to take for granted.
Still, I find myself telling some stranger I meet along the way who is taken aback by a “Thank y’all,” that I can’t wait to nail my feet to the driveway. In fact, I said that very thing to Lynne Lance on our way out of the National Newspaper Awards in Detroit, Michigan, this past Friday.
Admittedly, I’ve been quite fussy over the duration of our road trip. John was sick earlier in the week with some indiscernible, late-summer cold. My immune system is usually ironclad, but I was overdue for a cold, I suppose.
Anyway, I was growing tired of short-order menus: chili cheese coneys, hamburgers, every variation of fried potatoes. At one point, in my congested exasperation, I yelled to no one in particular, “Why is it so impossible to find a piece of fruit in the city?”
All this frustration comes from being somewhere unfamiliar and, at times, hostile to inhabitants both native and temporary. Cities, as I’ve come to realize, are a lot of hustle and bustle, which proves difficult for anyone but me to keep up with…and even I have my limits.
Thankfully, these Yankees know the value of hot tea, which is just as ubiquitous as sweet tea for us. I’d always heard that growing up. “Oh, they don’t do sweet tea like we do down here. It’s all hot up there, with nothing in it.”
One such place we visited was an establishment called LaFayette Coney Island, which sold chili and cheese on either coneys, a “loose hamburger”, over fries, or by itself.
Naturally, in my NyQuil-induced brain fog, I asked for a doughnut and coffee.
When I met a man from South Dakota earlier this month in New Orleans, he told me about a series of drinks referred to as a “Cloudy.” Basically, take any two-part drink (rum and coke, vodka and Sprite, etc.) and just thin it out with some water.
When I tell you it sounded like the most boring way to have a cocktail, I hate to inform you it confirmed all my suspicions.
Well, imagine my surprise when my coney coffee came with a swirling cloud of cream. Free of charge. So was the doughnut, though, so what am I complaining about?
On our way home from Detroit, we pulled off I-75 into Perrysburg, Ohio, (site of Fort Meigs) to get a late breakfast at a place called Bob Evans, which kept popping up alongside the usual interstate exit eateries, such as Cracker Barrel or a Burger King combined with a Sunoco gas station.
Bob Evans, for those unfamiliar with his work, was a family restaurant that has recently gone corporate. You know what that means: frozen, bland, institutional.
It was the first time I’d ever had a hexagonal biscuit, otherwise called the “Farmhand Biscuit Sandwich Platter.” In reality, an RC Cola and a Moon Pie would’ve been just fine with me given the choice between the two.
Yes, yes, this is all so terribly tacky of me to go on complaining like this, but having these rather bland imitations of the buttermilk biscuits I hold sacred had me pining for a dish we had back on that New Orleans trip.
You see, our friend Aaron celebrated his birthday in May at a little restaurant called Mosquito Supper Club. The restaurant itself is a family-style situation, with shareable plates and a seasonal tasting menu that ebbs and flows with the bayou’s bounty.
The philosophy of this joint is to offer guests a glimpse into the flavors of growing up amongst shrimpers, boatmen.
When John booked us a seat at the bar earlier this month, I went in with no expectations, only knowing I needed to save room for plenty of courses.
Well, we couldn’t have asked for a better time. We met two girlfriends who were on their way to New York City from Los Angeles, enjoying their own Great American Road Trip. It felt very much in line with the atmosphere of the place: an intimate house party with lots of comfort food.
Anyway, I noticed they were selling two cookbooks and I (being a recipe columnist and all) couldn’t pass up the opportunity to avail myself of both of ’em.
As we were thumbing through recipes, our bartender told us that the first course we’d be sharing was in the first cookbook, Mosquito Supper Club, authored by the head chef Melissa Martin.
That first course? Sweet potato biscuits served with Delta Biscuit Company butter.
If you’re wondering why that particular butter is so special, well, it’s because it’s butter whipped with pure cane sugar syrup. I’d do a lot of things just to have that butter in stock on our Piggly Wiggly’s shelves, but I guess we have Alaga, which is better than nothing.
Aside from that, these biscuits are unlike any I’ve ever had: a sweet crust, pillowy soft, like a toned-down dessert.
Nonetheless, with the arrival of the autumnal equinox, what better time than the present to share with y’all my undying love for the South’s favorite root vegetable: the sweet potato.
Sweet Potato Biscuits
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 cup freshly-milled flour, preferably Ruby Lee
- 2 Tablespoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- 6 Tablespoons leaf lard, cut into small pieces
- 1/2 cup mashed, cooked sweet potatoes, chilled
- 2 1/2 cups buttermilk
Heavy cream and raw unrefined sugar, for topping
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees, or 375 to 400 degrees if your oven runs hot. Put a pizza stone or a couple of cast iron skillets in the oven and let it preheat for about an hour or so. These need to be hot, hot, hot.
In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder and soda, and salt. Add the butter and leaf lard, cutting in with your fingers until the mixture is crumbly and resembles coarse sand. Some big chunks of butter are fine.
Put the bowl in the freezer for 10 minutes.
Remove the bowl from the freezer and cut in the mashed sweet potatoes with a fork until just incorporated. The mixture will be lumpy.
Make a well in the center of the mixture and add the buttermilk. Mix together with your fingers just until the dough comes together. Do not overmix; you are looking for a cohesive, smooth dough.
Transfer dough to a floured surface and use your hands to shape it roughly into an 8×8-inch square about 2 inches thick (do not knead or fold the dough).
Using a 2 1/2 inch biscuit cutter, cut out rounds of dough. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and freeze for 5 minutes.
Remove the baking sheet from the freezer. Transfer biscuits to preheated pizza stone or cast iron skillets. Brush the tops with heavy cream and raw sugar.
Bake for about 1 hour or until the tops are browned. Remove from the oven and let the biscuits rest, covered, for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 12 to 15 large biscuits.
One thing about this recipe I can appreciate is the pizza stone hack. Now, I don’t own a pizza stone, and I still find it quite fancy to own one.
It’s intriguing to see it pop up in a biscuit recipe, where I normally would gravitate towards the alternative, a cast iron skillet.
Every time we go over to John’s parents’, there’s a Brenda Gantt cookbook on display that shows her holding up a pan of perfect biscuits in a rather shallow cast iron pan.
Some may call it a griddle pan, others a fajita skillet. Either way, it doesn’t have high sides and if you’ve got one you don’t care about anymore, well, I’ve got a home for it.
Now, I can already hear some of you fussing at me about this one being, well, a fussy recipe. At least, that’s what I’m starting to call them.
I tell you, though, toss these out at Thanksgiving, and you’ll have folks beating down your oven door for more.
Now, I’ve made sweet potato cornbread, which really is just like a sweet potato poundcake.
Don’t even get me started on the debate over a pumpkin pie versus a sweet potato pie. If you’re a true Southerner, none of that pumpkin spice mess should even be on your radar as far as I’m concerned.
In all my years of tilling up dirt, watching gardens go from bountiful to fallow, I have never seen a pumpkin patch outside those little family fun farms full of corn mazes and factory-made apple butter.
There was a point last year where it seemed all I could stomach was candied sweet potatoes and mustard greens with pepper sauce.
Speaking of, while we were in Detroit, accepting our National Newspaper Award for Freedom of Information, I noticed they had (of all things) collard greens.
These were next to “Faygo-Brined Chicken”. Though exactly which strain of Faygo remains a mystery to me, my guess is either cola or root beer.
Anyway, these folks didn’t have any hot sauce to go on those greens. Even more disturbing, no one asked for any.
It was one of those moments where I wished I had one of those miniature bottles of Tabasco in my pocket to spice it up, even marginally.
Still, though, there wasn’t anything but prepackaged ciabatta to soak up the pot likker, which is just gauche to me.
Sure, I could tell y’all about trying a Hot Brown at The Brown Hotel in Louisville, but you can go read more in-depth accounts of that experience from more renowned sources.
I’m just a little bumpkin who keeps falling off the turnip truck in these high-steppin’ places.
Honestly, it makes me wonder when my youthful squeakiness will wear off and I just become a gaunt, middle-aged spectator…a face in the crowd.
So far, though, I get random folks stopping me to tell me I look like one half of Hall & Oates or Freddie Mercury, which is always an ego boost.
Nothing compares, though, to ducking into the Piggly Wiggly (which, yes, I’m still calling ‘Food-Valoo’) and seeing the same faces I see all the time in Perry County.
Nothing compares to a buttermilk biscuit in one of our well-worn cast iron skillets while my cat, Cheeto, tries to trip me up to get himself one.
However, I do throw a couple peanuts his way for being such a good boy: my little circus elephant.
In so many ways, I’m just like Cheeto, just with biscuits and cornbread.
Once a pan is in our kitchen, you can’t keep me from going back for seconds, thirds, fourths…you get the idea.
