Where are our Southern manners?

Howdy y'all!

We currently reside in Atlanta, which is located in the 'South'. The land of the ghee (or butter!) and the home of the craving...for fried food ;). Where the hospitality is unparalleled and resources are available in abundance. Where Paula Deen uses more butter than people drink water every day. No I am not being sarcastic here. She once fried a cheesecake. Anyway, there is a certain style of living that separates the Southern part of US than North.

Just like India! We're Southerners there too ;) However, we have realized that we have paid odes and odes of tribute to our rich south Indian heritage, but as far as U.S goes, we really didn't get the opportunity to do so. Why? Not because we didn't want to....but because the phrase Southern vegetarian seems such an oxymoron ;) But one fine morning, when we were reading a featured article on Edna Lewis, we craved for a rich, Southern style breakfast. And nothing says Southern like good ol' biscuits and gravy.

This is a MUST for every Southern breakfast. If you don't agree, then 'we don't take kindly to that'. Just kidding! OK enough of our miserable attempt at trying to appear Southern....here are the recipes.

Ingredients:

Biscuits (adapted from The Neelys)

1/2 cup wheat flour (Indian 'Atta')
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup low-fat yogurt
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp butter, cold and cut into small pieces.
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

Gravy

1 cup milk (2% reduced fat)
1 tsp half and half (we used a mini-moo)
1 tbsp butter
4 tsp soy sauce
8 oz button-mushrooms
2 tbsp cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper.

1. Preheat the oven to 450 F

2. In a bowl, sift the wheat flour, half the baking soda, baking powder and the salt.

3. Work half (~ 2 tbsp) of the cold, diced butter with your hands until you get a texture that resembles grated Parmesan cheese.

4. Add half the yogurt (~ 1/4 cup) until you barely start to form a dough. It'll be quite sticky but don't worry about it.

5. Knead it a little to form a coherent mass. Roll/shape it into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle and cut as many 2 inch squares as you can with a knife. Place these on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. We didn't find it necessary to grease the parchment paper (although we should have...how unsouthern of us to miss out on an opportunity to grease things up!)

6. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until the top is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean. Remove immediately and let it cool on a wire rack.

7. Repeat steps 1-5 for the all-purpose flour.

8. While the biscuits are in the oven, get started on the gravy. In a pan, bring the olive oil to high heat, throw in the mushrooms. sear them for a minute and then turn the heat down to medium.

9. Add half of the salt and cayenne pepper. Cook for 2-3 more minutes and set the mushrooms aside.

10. In the same pan, melt the butter on medium heat. When it has melted, add the flour. It'll form a thick mass which will be tough to stir, but its alright. Continue to work it with a wooden spatula till it turns slightly brown.

11. Add a couple of teaspoons of water and swirl the pan to coat it as much as you can. Then add the milk and the mini moo. This way, I avoid any potential 'curdling.'

12. Add the soy sauce and rest of the salt. You could change the amount of soy sauce to suit the color that you want. Add pepper. Cook until gravy has thickened a bit.

13. Add the cooked mushrooms and continue cooking till required consistency (thickness) has been achieved.

Traditionally, the gravy is cooked in animal fat. for example, on the same skillet where steaks are prepared. Ours is clearly a vegetarian version ;) And certainly way healthier than a regular biscuit. We used way less butter and absolutely no whole milk for the gravy. No lard either. But it tasted great! And the biscuits, what can I say...they were heavenly! Our recipe makes a total of 8 biscuits. We could have made ourselves a side of hash browned taters but we mustered great courage and abstinence and somehow managed not to do that!

To sum up our semi-Southern homemade breakfast in one word...YeeeeeeeeeeHaaawwwww :) ( Look for audio sound of Paula Deen laughing :P)

And since this is truly a 'quick' bread, this goes to Mansi of Fun N Fud for BBD#18-Quick Breads.

UPDATE: Sending this also to Roma of Roma's space for the JFI-Wheat event that she is hosting. This event was conceptualized by Indira of Mahanandi fame!