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The Food Maven Diary
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09/13/2001 Archived Entry: "Bon Appetit Awards & Southern Biscuits"
I know you will pardon me for not putting this diary entry up earlier, and for describing at such a sad, frightening time the splendid Bon Appétit dinner and awards ceremony at Le Cirque on Monday night. I have received some emails and phone calls urging me “to carry on as usual” because people want some reassurance that life can and will continue as usual. (Naturally, it never will be the same; civilization will never be the same.) So here’s what would have been posted Tuesday if not for the horrific happenings of the day.
Monday night was the Bon Appétit Magazine American Food & Entertaining Awards and you can read about the honorees and why Bon Appétit chose them in the October issue of the magazine, which has already been sent to subscribers and should be on the newsstands.
I was the master of ceremonies for this evening, and I have attended many evenings like it, but this one had a quality of warmth, humor, and camaraderie that I have never experienced. It was a gathering of only about 100 people, which certainly contributed to the cozy feeling, but it was more than that. I truly think that a good part was due to the nature of the magazine and the people who run it. Bon Appétit is the most approachable of all the food magazines – the most haimish, if you will -- which is why it is by far the most popular of them all. Editor-in-chief Barbara Fairchild, as did her predecessors, makes sure that the magazine helps people live more fulfilling lives. It is not as interested in food and drink for status as it is in food and drink for pleasure and life enhancement. The recipes, the entertaining ideas, the columns, even the restaurant features, are conceived and written for the readers, not to impress or service the industry of food, wine, entertaining, and restaurant-going. There is a personal detail about Barbara Fairchild that I think is very telling about her and her attitudes: She still lives in her old neighborhood in Los Angeles, in “the Valley,” enjoying being close to her parents.
That said, the dinner prepared by chef Pierre Schaendlin of Le Cirque was fabulously delicious and very high styled. Here’s the menu (the wines are in parenthesis).
HORS D’OEUVRES:
Peking Duck in Pancakes with Cucumber, Spring Onions and Plum Sauce
Tarte Alsacienne
Pig’s Feet with Summer Truffles
Poached Quail Eggs with Caviar
Lardo di Colonate on Crispy Country Bread
Roulade of Smoked Salmon with Dill
Tortelli of Wild Mushrooms
Crepe Farcie with Maine Lobster
(Perier-Jouët “Fleur de Champagne” 1995)
FISH COURSE
Roasted Halibut and Langoustines with a Ragoût of Supion, Cranberry Bean and Little Neck Clam Jus
(Château Dulca Entre-Deux-Mers 2000; Calvet Réserve Blanc 1999)
SOUP
Beef Consommé with Fois Gras Ravioli
(Château Meyney, St. Estephe 1997)
MAIN COURSE
Roasted Niman Ranch Lamb Saddle Rolled with Tomato Confit and Thyme, Artichokes, Lettuce, Fondant Potatoes and Garlic Lamb Jus
(Le Bahans Du Château Haut-Brion, Pessac-Leognan 1997)
DESSERT
Millefeuille of Hazelnuts and Milk Chocolate and a Poached Pear in Vanilla
with Chocolate Ice Cream
(Château Lafaurie Peyraguey, Sauternes 1997)
Mignardise Le Cirque
Cookies, Truffles, and Petit Fours
The hors d’oeuvres were both carried around and served at a station. The canapés of quail egg and sevruga caviar and those of smoked salmon rosettes, designed to get the most salmon as possible on a tiny round of bread, were passed by waiters, as were butter-pat-sized plates with the boneless piece of pig’s foot with truffles, the two-bite, half-rolls of lobster crepe, and the tortelli filled with minced porcini and in a porcini essence of a sauce. Peking ducks hung from a rack at an hors d’oeuvres station, where a chef carved and wrapped them in thin Chinese pancakes. The lardo di colonate for which Le Cirque is famous and which is truly streaky lard cured in the Carrara marble caves of Italy, was sliced tissue-paper thin on a red-enameled, electric meat slicer that stood handsomely on its own next to the hors d’oeuvres station. “How would you like one of those in your living room?” was a too-often made crack.
The champagne reception was held in the library room upstairs from the restaurant. The dinner was in the banquet room next door. The Villard House, as you may know, have one of very few landmarked interiors in New York, which means that nothing at all can be permanently changed about it. It could be a dreary place, but designer Adam Tihany, who was coincidentally honored at the dinner, has dressed the rooms with colorful drapery that makes them happier places.
THE HONOREES
Food Writer – Anthony Bourdain
Pastry Chef – Gale Gand
Wine & Spirits Professional – Stephen McCarthy
Humanitarian – Bob Weir
Chef of Merit: Setting the Standard – Lidia Matticchio Bastianich
Tastemaker – Georg Riedel
Food Artisan – Bill Niman
Cooking Teacher – Shirley Corriher
Designer – Adam Tihany
Restaurateur – Todd English
Chef of the Year – Alain Ducasse
Lifetime Achievement - Joel Dean and Giorgio DeLuca
My job was to introduce the presenters of the awards, as opposed to introducing the recipients. I couldn’t resist making some ad lib comments about some of the honorees, however. After Shirley Corriher accepted her honor as Cooking Teacher, I mentioned how Shirley, a large woman, had cut such a striking figure at the IACP conference in Minneapolis this year when she made her famous biscuits for all to taste. Covered, and I mean covered, with flour, she sat at a table and all afternoon hand-shaped biscuits that were the lightest and most delectable I had ever eaten. “I want a private biscuit lesson,” I told Shirley as she walked away from the podium. “I have the recipe right here in my handbag,” she yelled back excitedly.
I was thrilled to get the recipe direct from the source, but Shirley’s biscuit recipe has, in fact, become famous and it has been published numerous times, of course including in Shirley’s own best-selling book, Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking.
I’ve never seen the following story in print, however, a story that was on the recipe sheet she handed me Monday:
“As a little girl, I followed my grandmother around the kitchen. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner she made the lightest most wonderful biscuits in the world. I used her bread bowl, her flour, her buttermilk – I did everything the same, and I shaped the biscuits just like she did. But mine always turned out a dry, mealy mess. I would cry and say, “Nannie, what did I do wrong?” She was a very busy woman with all my uncles and grandfather to feed three meals a day, but she would lean down and give me a big hug and say, “Honey, I guess you forgot to add a touch of grace.”
It took me twenty years to figure out what my grandmother was doing that I was missing. I thought that the dough had to be enough to shape by hand. She actually had a very wet dough. She sprinkled flour from the front of the bowl on it, pinched off a biscuit-sized piece of wet dough, and dip it in the flour. She floured the outside of this wet dough so that she could handle it. This wet dough in a hot oven creates steam to puff and make feather light biscuits. A wet dough was the big secret. Now, I make biscuits almost as good as my grandmother’s, and so can you, with a good wet dough and a touch of grace.”
Here’s more you can read on Southern biscuits, a little history and discourse provided by Shirley and Oregon State University’s Food Resource web-site.
Shirley Corriher’s Southern Biscuits
(Touch-of-Grace Biscuits)
Serves 4 to 6
Nonstick cooking spray
1 1/2 cups Southern self-rising flour – like White Lily (see note)
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons shortening
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup bleached all-purpose flour for shaping (see note)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Preheat oven to 475 degrees and spray an 8-inch round cake pan with nonstick cooking spray.
Combine the self-rising flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a medium mixing bowl. With your fingers or a pastry cutter, work the shortening into the flour mixture until there are no shortening lumps or larger than a big pea.
Stir in the buttermilk and let stand for 2 or 3 minutes. This dough is so wet that you cannot shape it in the usual manner.
Pour the cup of all-purpose flour onto a plate or pie tin. Flour your hands well. Spoon a biscuit-size lump of wet dough into the flour and sprinkle some flour over the wet dough to coat the outside. Pick up the biscuit and shape it roughly into a soft round. At the same time, shake off the excess flour. The dough is so soft that it will not hold its shape.
As you shape each biscuit, place it in the pan. Push the biscuits tightly against each other so they will rise up and not spread out. Continue shaping biscuits in this manner until al of the dough is used.
To make a large batch of biscuits in a hurry. Spray a medium-small (about 2-inch) ice cream scoop with non-stick cooking spray. Cover a jelly-roll pan with all purpose flour. Quickly scoop biscuits onto the flour, sprinkle with flour, shape, and place in small pans.
Brush the biscuits with melted butter and bake just above the center of the oven until lightly browned, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool for 1 to 2 minutes in the pan, then dump out and cut the biscuits apart.
“Butter ‘em while they’re hot!” Split the biscuits in half, butter, and eat immediately.
Note: If Southern (like White Lily) self-rising flour is not available, use 1 cup national-brand self-rising all-purpose and 1/2 cup instant flour (such as Shake & Bake or Wondra) or cake flour, plus 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. If self-rising flour is not available, use a total of 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder.
Note: Do not use self-rising flour for shaping since the leavener will give a bitter taste to the outside of the biscuits.
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