Leek Pepper Biscuits #recipe for Thanksgiving @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Happy run-up days to Thanksgiving, Mystery Lovers Kitchen friends! It's so interesting that my fellow bloggers are posting nontraditional Thanksgiving recipe suggestions, rather than old standbys. 

My recipe for leek and pepper biscuits falls somewhere in the middle. I know I have raved to you in the past about the fabulous bakery in Guilford, Connecticut called 4 and 20 Blackbirds. Among many other fabulous treats, they make special biscuits every Friday. You have to call in advance if you want any number of them, and I've done that many times. They are special enough for any holiday, including the baby shower I threw for our daughter last spring. (They made a smaller size for the tea sandwiches I had in mind.)

But what to do when I'm not in Connecticut? Mourn the absence of those biscuits at my table… But then, I heard that the lead two bakers had been interviewed by a local paper and that they'd been willing to provide the recipe for their leeks biscuits to the world. Hooray!

So that's what I'm sharing with you, tweaked of course for a lower sodium diet. And I should warn you, my oven is seriously malfunctioning. I mean seriously, as in turn the knob to warm and the temperature shoots up to 450 within minutes. I did manage to bake the biscuits by turning the oven on and off and watching carefully. They definitely would have been more beautiful without this oddball treatment! 

Ingredients:

2½ cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon plus 1½ teaspoons baking powder (I used no sodium)
10 tablespoons (5 ounces) chilled unsalted butter, cubed
1/3 cup finely chopped leeks (white and tender green parts only)
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (add more or less, depending on your taste—FOR ME IT WAS MORE)
¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon whole milk 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (HA!)

Add all the dry ingredients to the bowl of your food processor and pulse until combined. Then cut chilled butter into dry ingredients, until a coarse meal texture forms. (Pieces of butter should be no larger than a small pea.) Stir in milk. 

 

Dump the dough onto a piece of parchment paper or a floured surface and knead a few times. Pat the dough into ½-inch thick rectangle. Cut into biscuits of your preferred size. You should have about twelve.

Place on a greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, turning cookie sheet 180 degrees half through baking time. Tops and bottoms should be nicely browned. 

(Lucy's note--I never roll and cut biscuits the traditional way anymore, as the method above is so easy. But if you want round biscuits, use a cookie cutter.) HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We're grateful for you, my friends!


Lucy writes the Key West food critic mysteries.  Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram!