Author: arielleclementine

Sausage, Biscuits and Green Chile Country Gravy

arielleclementine2 Comments

Hey friends! Did you think I was gone forever? There was a lot of big talk in my last blog post (in, ahem, October) about how I had regained my appetite and was cooking all the time, and would blog about it every day! Well, the appetite and cooking all the time bits were totally true.  I guess I just didn’t feel like blogging about it! I’ve never been good at sharing food. Ask anybody.

Things are really swell over here though! I’ll be 32 weeks pregnant on Wednesday, and our little baby (a boy, by the way!) should be around 3.5 lbs by now.  We’ve been eating really well, too.  We hit up the farmers’ market every Saturday, and buy meat (usually a whole chicken, and some sausage), vegetables (my fave), eggs (Flintrock Hill Farm), whole wheat bread (Sweetish Hill makes the best, imho), and fresh pasta (Pasta & Co). Then we come home and I’ll plan a menu for the week, and buy the filler ingredients from Central Market.  It’s worked out really nicely!

Our lavish breakfast of biscuits, sausage, and green chile country gravy was the result of just such a trip to the farmers’ market.  We bought a couple big green chiles and half a pound of breakfast sausage made from local (and delicious) pigs, and had ourselves a party!

Sausage, Biscuits and Green Chile Country Gravy  


For the Sausage and Gravy

  • 2 large fresh green chiles (hatch, anaheim, new mexico or poblano)

  • 2 tablespoons fat (sausage or bacon drippings) or butter

  • 1/2 small yellow onion, diced (about 1/2 cup)

  • 2 tablespoons flour

  • 2 cups whole milk

  • kosher salt

  1. Position your oven rack so that it is 4-6 inches below your broiler. Line a baking sheet with foil and put the whole peppers on the sheet. Broil, turning the peppers occasionally, until the skin is charred and peeling on all sides. Remove the peppers to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to steam for 10 minutes. Remove the stems, seeds, and skin from the peppers and dice the flesh. Set aside.

  2. If you’re making this for breakfast, to accompany biscuits and your very favorite breakfast meat, fry up the bacon or sausage in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Remove all but two tablespoons of fat from the skillet. (Or, if you’re making this with butter, skip the meat frying, and just melt two tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat.)

  3. Add the onions to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes, until they’re soft and sweetly caramelized around the edges. Sprinkle two tablespoons of flour into the pan and stir for about a minute, so that the raw flour cooks off and the roux takes on a golden brown color.

  4. Add the milk to the pan and stir to combine. Add the diced chiles. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then simmer for 3-5 minutes, stirring constantly, until the gravy is thick and creamy. Season to taste with plenty of kosher salt (I used a little more than a teaspoon) and enjoy with your favorite starchy treat!

For the Biscuits (from the Barefoot Contessa, natch)

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/4 pound (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced
  • 3/4 cup half-and-half
  • 1 egg mixed with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl.  Add the butter and cut in with a pastry knife until the butter is the size of peas.  Add the half-and-half and combine with a fork. 
  3. Dump the dough out on a well-floured board and knead once or twice to bring it together. Use your fingers to pat the dough into a rectangle that’s about 1/2 an inch thick.  Cut out 8 biscuits with a glass or 2 1/2 inch round biscuit cutter. 
  4. Place the biscuits on a parchment-lined baking sheet and brush with the egg wash.  Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until the biscuits are golden brown on top.

    Bun in the Oven

    arielleclementine7 Comments

    Hello readers! Andy and I are going to have a baby! I even redecorated my blog for the occasion!  I would have taken a picture of buns in the oven, but I don’t make buns, I make biscuits, so I thought that would suffice.

    This photo was taken in early October at our first doctor’s appointment.  At that time the baby was 3.76 centimeters long, but he/she will have doubled in size since then and should now be about the size of a lemon! And look decidedly less like a gummy bear!

    I’m not gonna lie to you, reader- the first few months of my pregnancy weren’t the most fun I’ve ever had.  I felt sick a lot, and really sleepy.  I ate a whole lot of Pirate’s Booty (aged white cheddar, of course). And for a long time, it made me feel queasy to read my beloved food blogs and cookbooks.  But I feel a lot better now! And I’ve been cooking a lot too, which makes me feel more like myself again, so hooray!

    I’m really really excited 🙂 Imma keep you posted on all the developments too.  Next up: we’ll find out the sex of the baby December 20- huzzah!

    The Arnold Palmer Quiche

    arielleclementine5 Comments

    Hey reader! Guess what? Tomorrow afternoon ole Andy and I are going to hop a plane to Paris!  We’re going to be gone for two weeks, in which time we’ll visit Paris, Lyon, Florence, Rome, and anywhere that strikes our fancy in between.  I am beyond excited. And when I come back, I’ll show you all of the food I ate! Also, if Molly and Helen have their way, I’ll also come back with some sort of skeleton and a small taxiderm-ied animal.  I have weird friends.  Before I go, I wanted to leave you with something delicious and vaguely Parisian, so here we go!

    First off, no.  This quiche is not half lemonade and half iced tea.  But it is half for me (roasted broccoli and cheddar) and half for Andy (crispy bacon and cheddar).  So I gave it a funny name!  Make no mistake about it- this quiche is off-the-charts amazing.  If you, like me, thought quiche was just a bunch of eggs beaten with a little cream, mixed with cheese and fillings and poured into a pie shell, you’re in for a treat! This quiche, really a riff on Quiche Lorraine, is nothing less than custard, and it is so much better than the standard beaten-egg quiche.  In fact, there are only 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks in it- mixed with one cup whole milk and one cup heavy cream.  (Fun fact! This recipe comes from The New Best Recipe, the folks who are fanatical about making a recipe work perfectly every time.  They caution you to not replace 2 cups of half-and-half for the cream+milk, because half-and-half doesn’t have the same butterfat as the milk+cream mixture (11.7% compared to 20%). Science!)  Anyway, on to the recipe!

    This is one of my very favorite tools- a pastry knife.  I used it to cut butter and shortening into the flour mixture.  I used 1/4 stone-ground wheat flour in addition to a cup of white because I ran out of white flour, and, er, because I’m healthy :/

    Then you mix that flour/fat mixture with a little ice water, wrap it in plastic wrap, and shove it in the fridge for an hour.  Can you see the tiny hunks of butter in the dough?  That’s where the magic happens.

    Then you roll the dough out and put it in your prettiest pie plate! And crimp the edges! And then it has to refrigerate for another hour 😦 Boo. But you really have to do it, or else the shell will crumple during its pre-baking.  Use this time to roast some broccoli!

    After your dough has chilled, you bake the crust for 25 minutes or so, until it looks dry and starts to turn light brown.  Then you take it out of the oven and scatter shredded cheddar cheese on the crust and then put your fillings on top of that!

    Action shot! You put the pie on the oven rack and pour the custard mixture on top.  And then you play… the waiting game.  When it’s all brown and set up, and only jiggles a little in the middle, you can take it out! And then wait a little longer for it to cool off. And then eat it! Oh, and if you made a bacon-half for your significant other, force them to eat some of your leftover roasted broccoli on the side.  It’s only fair.

    I hope you enjoy! When I come back, I’ll regale you with tales of bread and macaroons and pasta and pecorino! It’s gonna be awesome 🙂

    The Arnold Palmer Quiche
    (Really: Quiche Lorraine from The New Best Recipe)

    • 1 (9-inch) pie unbaked crust (recipe follows)
    • 4 ounces (about 4 slices) bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
    • 1 cup roasted broccoli
    • 2 large eggs + 2 large egg yolks
    • 1 cup whole milk
    • 1 cup heavy cream
    • 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
    • 1 pinch freshly grated nutmeg
    • 4 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated (about 1 cup) 

    1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place a sheet of aluminum foil over the unbaked crust; add a layer of pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the aluminum foil and the weights. Bake crust for 5 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven, but do not turn the oven off.

    2. Meanwhile, fry bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crisp and browned, 5 to 10 minutes. Transfer bacon with a slotted spoon to a paper towel-lined plate.

    3. Whisk eggs, yolks, milk, cream, white pepper, and nutmeg in a medium bowl or a measuring cup with a pouring spout.

    4. Spread cheese evenly over the bottom of the warm pie shell, and then top with half bacon, half broccoli, or any other toppings you wish. Set the shell on the oven rack. Pour the custard mixture into the pie shell until it’s about 1/4 inch below the rim of the crust.

    5. Bake for 32 to 35 minutes (mine always takes closer to 45 minutes!) or until the top is a light golden brown and a knife blade inserted about 1 inch from the edge comes out clean. The center should feel set but soft, like gelatin. Transfer to a rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

    My Favorite Pie Crust
    (from The New Best Recipe)

    • 1 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour, plus more for dusting the work surface
    • 1/2 teaspoon table salt
    • 1 tablespoon sugar
    • 3 tablespoons cold vegetable shortening
    • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
    • 4-5 tablespoons ice water

    1. Mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl.  Add the shortening and cut in with a pastry knife until the mixture has the texture of coarse sand. Scatter the butter pieces over the flour mixture and cut in with a pastry knife until the mixture is pale yellow and resembles coarse crumbs, with butter bits no larger than small peas.

    2. Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of ice water over the mixture.  With a rubber spatula, use a folding motion to mix.  Press down on the dough with the broad side of the spatula until the dough sticks together, adding up to 1 tablespoon more ice water if the dough will not come together. Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 2 days before rolling.

    3. Remove the dough from the refrigerator (if refrigerated more than 1 hour, let stand at room temperature until malleable).  Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch circle.  Transfer the dough to a nine-inch pie plate and crimp the edges.   Refrigerate for another hour.