french fridays with dorie: saint-germain-de-prés onion biscuits
Here’s a quick post on a quick bread for French Fridays with Dorie. I’ve been running at a million miles an hour for the past two weeks, including a short vacation, and even though this week’s recipe was as easy as pie (easier actually), I’m breathing a deep sigh of relief that it got made. And, I am so glad that it did.
I haven’t made many biscuits in my life, but each time I do, I think, “Why don’t I make biscuits more often?” I must have first made them when I was a young teenager, as this is definitely something I learned to make in home ec class, not from my mother. Home ec is where I learned everything I know about sewing too. Though I learned plenty from my mother, why don’t they offer home ec in school anymore? Every week, I still use life skills I learned in that class back in the 7th and 8th grade. But, I digress.
One thing I love about biscuits is that they are fast enough and easy enough to whip up to accompany dinner, fresh from the oven. Knowing I had time constraints, I mixed the dry ingredients together ahead of time so they were ready when I was. I also chopped the onion ahead of time and stashed it in the fridge.
While dinner cooked (a clean-out-the-fridge frittata, more on that this weekend), I sautéed the onions and rubbed the butter into the dry ingredients. Then, I stirred the onion and milk into the mixture, gave it a quick knead, and patted it out on the counter. Then, I cut out biscuits. My cutter was a little less than 2 inches, so I got 22, not the 32 that Dorie did. At this point, I’d only spent 10 minutes pulling these together. After a short bake in the oven, hot fluffy biscuits for dinner! Voilà!
As usual with Dorie’s recipes, I can imagine this as a jumping off point. I’m wondering what these savory treats will be like with roasted red peppers or olives mixed in. Or what about a touch of grated cheese? I see these as a frequent guest at my dinner table in the future.
Next week’s FFwD recipe will be a new challenge for me: Cheese Soufflé. Eggs and cheese are two of my favorite food groups, so I can’t wait to try it.
If you want to see how the other bloggers from French Fridays with Dorie made out with their biscuits, check out their posts here. If you’d like to make these yourself (why wouldn’t you?), the recipe can be found here or in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table.
french fridays with dorie: roasted salmon & lentils
This week’s recipe for French Fridays with Dorie seemed old hat to me: Roasted Salmon and Lentils. Salmon is one of my favorite kinds of fish, and lentils is my #1 favorite bean or legume. I make both frequently, so I knew I would enjoy the menu.
My in-laws were in town, and I thought that my mother-in-law, a loyal follower of my blog, would enjoy sharing a Dorie meal.
The primary surprise for me was that even though this recipe seems like a old friend on paper, I learned something new about cooking both the salmon and the lentils.
When we prepare salmon, we typically grill it in summer, or broil it in winter. For Dorie’s version, a large salmon fillet (wild coho salmon, for me) was roasted in a very hot oven. I was a little skeptical because, I find that a large fillet is seldom done in the recommended 12 minutes when cooking under the broiler. What a revelation that roasting the salmon worked out to perfection. While we’ll still be grilling in the summer, roasting will be the new off-season cooking method chez moi.
As for the lentils, I have been in on the secret of the tiny green Le Puy lentils for years. I think I first discovered them in the bulk section at Whole Foods, but they hae been my lentil of choice for salads and sides for many years. Dorie’s method for cooking the lentils again seemed similar to mine on paper, but the actual execution taught me a few new tricks.
I normally just cut the aromatic vegetables into bite-sized pieces and cook them with the lentils, but by the time the lentils are tender, the vegetables dissolve into oblivion. Cooking large pieces of the vegetables with the lentils and then chopping them up afterwards worked out really well. Also, pureeing some of the lentils to thicken the lentil mixture added a nice creamy texture to the final dish.
I served the salmon over a bed of lentils with roasted broccoli alongside. My in-laws enjoyed the meal as much as we did. Chalk this one up in the “Definitely Repeat” column of the Dorie scoreboard.
If you’d like to see how other bloggers’ roasted salmon and lentils came out, check out their links at French Fridays with Dorie.
A Plateful of Happiness 