Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Welcome to the CBC, This is Cooking With briYAN

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! While you and your loved ones were out dining by candle light, sipping wine as you gazed ever so lovingly into each other's eyes, the B.L.T. Project was too busy witnessing a threesome.

Yeah, you read that correctly.

Some hot love making was going down here and you missed it all. All I'll say is that my passion for food got a little tispy, drunk dialed my obligation as a student journalist who brought over his friend, my inner tech geek, and well... one thing lead to another and next thing you know, a dozen C.B.C. Biscuits were born.

Not the threesome you were hoping for? Well, you're on the internet my friend. There are THOUSANDS of sites that can cater to those kinds of threesomes. But if you're hungry and not horny, be sure to check out the recipe below.

I've always thought the union of cheese, bacon and chives (C.B.C.) would meld beautifully together but I couldn't think of anything other than an omelette that would prove that. So I turned to Google, who owns my life and powers my HTC Desire Z smartphone. I downloaded a few cooking apps and stumbled across this beautiful recipe.

Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on the C.B.C. Biscuit! If bringing a dozen of these to my internship interview doesn't net me a position, nothing will!



C.B.C Biscuits
Adapted from Epicurious Recipe App for Android

What's In It:
-10 slices of low-sodium bacon
-3 and 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
-1 and 1/2 Tbsp of baking powder
-1 and 1/2 tsp of baking soda
-1 and 1/4 tsp of salt
-1/2 a cup of chilled butter, diced into 1 cm thick cubes
-2 and 1/2 cups of coarsely grated old cheddar cheese
-1/2 a cup of freshly chopped chives
-2 cups of buttermilk

Makes a dozen biscuits



1. Let's begin with frying the bacon. You'll want to heat a large skillet on medium-high heat. Add two Tbsp of oil to coat the pan if you're not using non-stick. Add the bacon and fry until crispy and brown. Now, transfer the bacon to a paper-towel-covered plate to drain. Chop coarsely once the bacon is cool enough to handle.

Now would be a good time to center your oven rack and preheat to 425°F



2. In a food processor, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Now pulse for about 30 seconds. Add the cubes of butter and blend until you see clumps of batter sticking together. The app says this only takes 30 seconds but this took about 10 minutes for me since my butter chunks were about an inch thick each. The smaller you cube your butter, the better.



3.Transfer the flour mixture into a large bowl and add the chives, cheese and chopped bacon. With a spatula, toss the mixture to blend everything together.



4. When you're done mixing, create a small well in the middle of the mixture. When everything starts looking like this, you're ready to add the buttermilk.



5. Gradually add the buttermilk into the well and mix to ensure the ingredients at the bottom of the bowl are fully incorporated. Add the rest of the milk and mix thoroughly. The batter should be sticky once you're done pouring.



6. You'll need to scoop about a handful of the batter to form a biscuit but before you do, pour some flour onto a cutting board. Now, wet your hands with water and roll your them in the flour. This way your hands will stay relatively dry as you handle the batter. My hands were busy so I wasn't able to take any photos of this step :(

Note: Your hands WILL smell like ranch dressing .

Drop the batter onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, leaving about two inches of space between each mound of batter.



7. Bake for 16-18 minutes or until golden. To check if they're done on the inside, stick a toothpick into each biscuit and see if it comes clean when removed. If so, you're biscuits are done.



8. Let cool for 10 minutes and savour.