LUCY BURDETTE: We are coming up on St. Patrick's Day, time for corned beef, Irish soda bread, and various green foodstuffs. I found this recipe in the King Arthur baking newsletter, and it was instantly irresistible to me. I love biscuits of all shapes and sizes and we happened to have more basil than I could otherwise use. (For more biscuits, see my recipes for pimento cheese biscuits and Jane Brody's cottage oat biscuits). I did tweak a few things, but found the results to be delicious and very green, good for the body and good to serve at Saint Patrick’s day! I think they will become a favorite in our home.
Ingredients
10 tablespoons frozen butter, unsalted
One and three-quarter cup unbleached cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup +1 tablespoon buttermilk, or one cup milk with 1 tablespoon cider vinegar added
1/2 cup basil, packed
1/2 cup parsley, packed
1/2 cup spinach, packed
1/4 cup chives, chopped
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
Perhaps I shouldn’t be making tweaks before I’ve tried the original recipe, but I did leave out the garlic powder because I didn’t have it. And I did not use an egg for wash. (The price of eggs, ugh!) I think you could be very flexible with the herbs you choose as well (I'm picturing dill), just keep the proportions about the same.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl, including the cake, flour, the all purpose, flour, the baking powder, and the salt. (The garlic powder would go in here if you were using it. ) place a box grater in the bowl and grate the frozen butter into the flour mixture. (You might recognize this message from scones. It makes for a lighter batter.) store this mixture in the freezer while you do the next step so the butter stays close cold.
Wash the greens and dry them, then mix them together with the buttermilk and mayonnaise, blending well until it’s a bright green mixture with no big clumps. (I used my food processor, you could also use a blender.)
Add the herb and spinach mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well but gently until all the flour is incorporated.
Place a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet. Scoop the batter onto the baking sheet, about a quarter cup per biscuit. Grind black pepper over top of each.
Bake for 10 minutes at 400, then lower the temperature to 350 and bake for another 10 minutes. The biscuit should be browning on top and light brown on the bottom. Serve hot with butter! Maybe some honey too.
Aren't they cute??
Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries. A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS (#13 in the series) is now available for pre-order!
