Homemade Biscuits with Sour Cream, Chives and Parmesan

Sunny and I woke up very early this morning to prepare a festive brunch for the whole family. We made some fresh juices, smoothies, crêpes, hashbrowns and sour cream biscuits. Making biscuits is a little messy but so worth it. Our family is very fond of buttermilk biscuits, but sour cream biscuits are even more decadent and delicious. The sour cream imparts a tangy flavor and richness that is hard to beat. We flavored the biscuits with parmesan cheese and garlic chives from the garden.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but my Aunt Elise is visiting us from Vietnam. She's never had biscuits before, and so she looked at the little rounds of bread with curiosity. After she took her first bite, she was absolutely hooked. Biscuits truly are universal in their appeal.

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Cranberry Apple Stuffing

I love Thanksgiving food. I have to thank my husband for introducing me to the tradition; he's been making his family's meal from scratch every year since he was a teenager. Most of the recipes I make now are adaptations of the ones he refined in the past.

I enjoy the turkey, the mashed potatoes, the yams, the gravy and the pies, but my favorite is the stuffing (or dressing, depending on how you use it).

Of all the Thanksgiving dishes, it's the most complex in flavor and texture. The other dishes are more singular in quality. Yams are sweet. Mashed potatoes are creamy. Sure, they can have some variation and subtlety, but most often, these dishes are really celebration of a single ingredient.

Stuffing is the harmony that contrasts the melody created by all the other Thanksgiving sides. It is also the most flexible of all the dishes, and is very forgiving of modification and experimentation. Not to mix metaphors, but croutons form a perfect canvas upon which many contrasting and complementary flavors can be layered.

For this particular stuffing recipe I used apples and cranberries, both fall flavors, for sweetness.  The apples also provide a crunch that's an excellent foil to the softness of the bread. To the usual suspects of celery, carrots and onions, I added shallots and king mushrooms. The mushrooms in particular add an earthy and meaty quality to the dish. All the ingredients were amply seasoned with Italian seasoning and a little lemon zest.

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Home-Made Corn and Whole Wheat Flour Tortilla

Tortillas are the foundation upon which many delicious Mexican dishes are made. They are readily available at any supermarket, and I bet many home cooks never consider making them from scratch when preparing burritos, enchiladas and the like. That's unfortunate, since the ingredients and process of making tortillas are both incredibly simple.

If you are fortunate enough to have a specialty Mexican market nearby as we do, you can purchase the masa dough freshly made and ready to press or roll out. But this time I wanted to make a healthier version using whole wheat flour. The texture of the tortilla looks very similar to paratha, or Indian flat bread, but the rolling part is much easier, especially if you have a tortilla dough press. The tortilla comes out perfectly each time in a nice round disk.

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Bread Contest Update: 3 more days of Voting left

With only 3 days left till the end of the contest, I wanted to give you a quick update. I don't want to influence the voting, so I won't disclose the vote tallies for each entry, but what I can say is that it is very, very close. The margin between the first and second place entries is just one vote, and there are 7 entries tied for third that are not too far behind. My advice to the entrants is to use whatever is at your disposal (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and tell everyone you know to vote.
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Vote for your favorite bread recipe and you could win a New West KnifeWorks Knife

The voting for our bread contest has officially started. Vote for your favorite bread recipe and you could win a New West KnifeWorks Knife (a $99 value).
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