Okay, so I’m going to start this post with two statements.  The first is aimed both at my parents and my landlord- I promise that when we did this portion of the restoration we had a fire extinguisher on hand and that the pan was not close to anything that could catch on fire.  The second is aimed at my father and everyone who knows better than me- I know I used too much oil.  I mean, I didn’t know that at the time, but have since realized that I did not need to use that much oil.  Thankfully Dan is an Eagle Scout so all the necessary precautions were taken.

Now for the light-on-fire installment of our series. As you’ll recall from part 3, the next step was to coat it with oil and “burn the bejesus” out of the pan.  So on Saturday we hauled out our large burner, threw some oil in the pan, and sat around until it caught on fire (extinguisher in hand).  The Capt’n's advice was to only put the fire out “when it got a little crazy,” so I was expecting for this to get interesting.

We added a 1/4″ of oil to the pan, which I take it is too much.  The Lodge website suggested “a thin layer” and my dad (later) told me to put oil in the pan, spread it around, and then dump the excess oil out.  Somewhere in the middle is probably best.  From what I gather after reading about the process is that by bringing oil past its burning point in an iron pan you release free radicals that help to restore the iron.  Something about polymerization. Remind me to ask my chemist father-in-law about it the next time we see him.  I don’t totally know why it works, but I do know people have been doing it for centuries, and that’s good enough for me.  The internet is also full of arguments about what kind of oil to use, vegetable oil versus lard, etc.  I’m not going to get into that because I really can’t speak to what is best. I used canola oil and it worked just fine.

As the oil heated up Dan’s comfort level shifted from “this is really cool” to “this is making me nervous” quickly.  As soon as it started smoking a lot we cut the heat, and at that exact moment it burst into flames.  Following my dad’s advice I used baking soda to extinguish the flames, which worked like a charm.  The flames when out and then the oil-carbon-rust-baking soda combination formed these really gross/awesome bubbles.  Once it had cooled down I brought it inside and scooped out this gunk that was completely fascinating and disgusting.

After I got all the excess oil residue out I used a combination of steel wool and hot water to really scrub at the pan until it was rubbing clean and totally rinsed out.  This took approximately fifteen minutes.  After drying it off it looked like a brand new pan, it was amazing.

Even though it’s looking worlds better than it was a few weeks ago, I’m going to do one more round of sanding to really make sure I get the last of the carbon and rust out.  Then there will be two more steps- a gentle oven seasoning and its bacon christening.  I am so impressed by how (relatively) easy this whole process has been.  Time consuming, yes, but since I’ve been working slowly it’s been so much fun.  I can’t wait to pick up more cast iron to work on!

Part 1/ Part 2/ Part 3

It’s that time of year again folks, National Pie Month! You may recall that last year, in honor of this most glorious month, I made one sweet pie and one savory pie a week.  And I held parties every Saturday so that my friends could come and eat them. I was crazy.  I can’t compete with that schedule again, so this year I’ll be making one pie a week, and I’ll decide at random whether it will be sweet or savory.  I’m playing fast and loose over here.

This week I made a Chocolate, Peanut Butter, and Banana pie.  I had been thinking for a while about how I should start the pie holiday season and my mind kept wandering back to a chocolate cookie crust.  I love them.  Last year for pie month I made a lot of custards and creams and mousses, and while you might think that I would want to go the opposite direction I’ve actually been craving them.  Probably because I haven’t eaten a custard, cream, or mousse pie since last February.

This pie is a basic chocolate peanut butter pie with a cookie crust and a layer of sliced bananas.  It’s light and delicious, the perfect dessert for this dreary, cold, temperamental time of year. From what I could tell Saturday night, it was a big hit.  I’ve certainly been enjoying the leftovers.

In other news the ever-controversial Valentines Day is around the corner, which explains why my inbox is full of “the most romantic meal you’ll ever make” press releases.  I don’t claim to know anything about sexy food, but here’s my list of recipes I like to eat on date nights (read: not too heavy).  Enjoy or ignore.

Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana Pie

Crust:

12-15 chocolate sandwich cookies

1 stick of butter

Mousse:

2 8oz blocks of cream cheese, softened

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp sugar

Whipped Cream:

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp sugar

Peanuts for garnish

Two bananas

In a food processor, break down sandwich cookies.  Melt butter and combine.  Press the mixture into a pie dish.  Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.  Let cool completely.

In a stand mixer combine 1 cup cream, 1 tsp vanilla, and 1 tbsp sugar.  Whip until stiff.  Set aside.  Pour the remaining cream, sugar, and vanilla in the mixer and whip until soft peaks form.  Set aside and refrigerate.

Combine cream cheese and peanut butter in the mixer.  Beat until fluffy.  Beat in 1/3 of the stiffly whipped cream.  Fold in the remaining stiffly whipped cream.

Slice bananas and line the bottom and sides of the pie crust with the slices.  Spoon the peanut butter mixture on top, spreading evenly.  Next, spoon the gently whipped cream on top and in the center, leaving some of the peanut butter mousse exposed.  Sprinkle with peanuts.  Refrigerate at least 2 hours.

I have to say, I’ve been cracking away at this thing and I’m starting to see real results! Today’s installment shows an additional 3-4 hours of heavy sanding. Or if you measure time as I do, one disc of Criminal Minds from Netflix (including the episode where Morgan (played by eye candy Shemar Moore) drives an about-to-explode ambulance into a field in the middle of New York City, I die).  Things at work have been really stressful lately (it’s grants proposal season for us) so taking some of my angst out on this pan has been really therapeutic.  After my last installment I switched from steel wool to coarse sanding paper, which really got most of the rust out.  As you can see, it’s come a far way.

After I posted the first installment my dad (known around the internets as The Capt’n) emailed me a list of advice.  Since he’s salvaged and conditioned many a cast iron piece I was grateful for his suggestions.  He sad that once I’d gotten most of the rust off that I should “burn the bejesus out of it,” so that is my next installment.  In our urban backyard we combined little oil, our large burner, and some baking soda (for fire extinguishing) and smoked out the neighborhood.  This process draws out a lot of the remaining rust, etc, and (according to the internet) restores some of the free radicals that the iron needs.  If you understand why this works, I would love to know.  I trust that it’s an important step but the science is a mystery to me!  Anyway, those that are following along on twitter will know that yesterday we set the pan on fire and it. was. awesome.  I can’t wait to share part 4.  Thanks for following along, and we’ll be back with more cast iron love next week!

Part 1 / Part 2 

Two days after Christmas my baby sister, Genevieve, moved to Dublin.  She’ll be there for a year and even though I only see her a few times a year when she’s in North Carolina, I miss her.  So we decided that for each month that she’s in Dublin we’re going to share a camera using the hipstamatic disposable app.  Soon, our sister Lauren (who lives in New Orleans) will be joining us. Thank you for letting me share these photos each month!  Here is our January selection.

This weekend some friends and I took a “mid-winter” getaway to Morehead.  We planned it in November, as we were discussing how hard life and work can become once it’s cold and dark and dreary.  We were hoping that a getaway to look forward to would help us fight the cold-weather grumps.  And, before I knew it, the last weekend of January was here.  The thing is, the cold weather grumps had never really come.  We’ve had a few days of very cold, even a snow, but for the most part it’s been lovely (and a little terrifying coughglobalwarmingcough).  But wonderful weather certainly wasn’t going to stop us from taking a beach vacation, so on Thursday night we packed up and headed south.

We spent four days in Cateret County, visiting attractions like the aquarium and the Maritime Museum, drinking bloody marys on the beach, and reading on the pier of the Swamp House.  It was wonderful, relaxing, and the weather was amazing.

While we were down there I tried my hand at a recipe I’d been thinking of for a while.  You see, I love pimento cheese.  I love making it, eating it, and serving it to guests.  But I always make the same recipe (my grandfather’s), and I’ve been wanting to try something new.  So I thought about the flavors I wanted to highlight and put together a recipe that included sharp white cheddar, green olives, smoked gouda, pimentos, and of course mayo and spices.

The spread was, as I’d hoped, delicious. The smokey cheese played so nicely against the salty olives, a little bit of garlic and cayenne gave it a hint of a kick, and everything worked together to create a cohesive flavor.  It was perfect with the buttery snack crackers and exactly the sort of snack you want when you’re sitting on the pier all day, reading and watching the marsh life.

This is an owl named Alba that we met at the National Aquarium at Pine Knolls Shore.  She likes to watch the sharks.

Green Olive Pimento Cheese

1 medium size block of white sharp cheddar cheese

1 medium size wheel of smoked gouda

1 small jar of pimentos

1/2 cup green olives

1/4 cup mayonaisse

1 tsp garlic powder

Dash of salt, pepper, cayenne

Grate your cheese.  Dice your olives.  Drain pimentos.  Combine.  Stir in mayo and spices.  Stir until well incorporated, adding more mayo to get your preferred consistency.

Okay, we’re back with part two of The Cast Iron Chronicles!  This weekend I took a good long crack at the pan, in total spanning approximately 3 episodes of Criminal Minds. My first step was to knock the gunk and as much rust as possible off with steel wool.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  1) Why didn’t I just use an electric dohickey with a sanding attachment (I know for a fact that the Capt’n is thinking that as he send me an email suggesting that I attack it that way) or 2) Why don’t I just cover it in oven cleaner and let it soak overnight?

So for one- we don’t have any electric dohickeys, and I figured that’s why I have hands. And arms.  I know it would be faster to use power tools, but I’ve got plenty of Criminal Minds in my Netflix queue and all winter to work on this pan.  I’m in no rush.  As for the oven cleaner- because cast iron is such a porous  material I don’t want to use anything on this pan that I wouldn’t squirt on top of my eggs.  Cast iron has a tendency to retain the flavor of things and I don’t care to take the risk with oven cleaner, even if it would probably burn off later in the seasoning process.  I’m very careful with all my cast iron, I never use soap to clean them, only ever hot water. According to my Uncle Everett, Sybil only ever used salt to clean her cast iron, no water at all. So, no harsh chemicals during this process.  Just good old fashioned scrubbing.

I worked on the pan for about 2 1/2 hours. I removed all the pieces of debris and a large amount of the rust.  My plan is to continue with the steel wool and then transition to the coarse sand paper as needed.  I’m already beginning to see through the rust, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel!  I’m so glad to hear that y’all are interested in this process, I am personally loving it.  There’s nothing like sanding the hell out of a piece of metal to take your mind off of the stresses of daily life.

Part 1

My posting schedule for this series will be a little behind the actual work I’m doing, so if you’d like to stay up to date check twitter and instagram (user: biscuitsandsuch). Not an iPhone user? Webstagram or Flickr will have the photos!

I love eggs. And not to sound like a total hipster, but I loved eggs before they were cool.  Pie too. And toy camera photography.  Not leggings though, I’m totally jumping on the trend bandwagon there… But eggs, we’ve always been good friends, especially when a dippy yolk is involved.  Breakfast sandwiches, breakfast pizza, pasta carbonara, I love it.  So, it goes without saying that a cupful of breakfast goodness topped with a soft yolked egg is pretty close to heaven in my book.  Egg heaven.

This recipe was very much a Saturday morning refrigerator dump.  My favorite kind of weekend breakfast, where you sauté up all the leftover vegetable odds and ends from the week, add bacon and a fried egg and, voila, breakfast.  I started with a turkey bacon cup (it was what we had on hand, usually I’m a real-bacon-all-the-way kind of girl), filled it with chard and onions, garlic and potato.  Then we topped the whole mess with an egg and baked.

Dan and I have very different preferences when it comes to eggs- I like mine running all over the place and he likes his firm.  This difference of opinions doesn’t usually impact our relationship, (we’re pretty level headed people when it comes to our eggs) except for when I make a dish like this where the eggs are all cooked together.  If, like me, your family has varying levels of egg preference I have a suggestion- for those that like a drippy, yolky egg, follow the recipe.  For those that don’t, leave out the egg and then top the baked bacon/veggies with a fried egg.  Overcooking an egg in the oven leaves the yolk hard and weird, so I’ve found, after a lot of searching for the middle ground, it’s best just to fry a separate egg.

Breakfast Nests

(makes four)

8 pieces of bacon

4 eggs

2 cups chopped (uncooked) chard

1/2 red onion

1 red potato

2 cloves garlic

Salt, pepper, red pepper

1 pat butter

In your pan, cook the bacon until the fat has begun to come off and it starts to crisp.  Take the hot bacon and mold it into a cupcake pan.  Wrap one slice all the way around the inside of the cup, tear the other piece in half and line the bottom. Preheat your oven to 350

Chop onion, potato, and garlic and add it to the pan.  Saute for one minute.  Chop the chard.  Add it in, along with the butter and seasoning.  Toss and cook until chard has wilted.  Divide between the four cups, pushing it down so that there is at least 3/4 inch of room between the vegetables and the top of the bacon.

Crack an egg over the sink, tossing 1/3 of the whites.  Put the yolk and remaining whites into a cup.  Repeat with the remaining three cups.

Bake at 350 until whites have set.  Yolk should be soft, approximately 20 minutes.

As you can guess from pretty much every post on this blog, I am deeply devoted to cast iron.  In fact, in the hierarchy of food related things that I love I’m pretty sure it goes 1. Pie 2. Bagel Sandwiches 3. Cast Iron.  And often, #3 is an important factor in achieving #1 and #2.  There’s something magical about cast iron- it’s durable, non-stick, beautiful, reliable.  Consistent.  It’s everything that my very expensive stainless steel pans are not.  In fact, in the years that we’ve had both cast iron and stainless steel our cast iron has never left our stove top.  It moves seamlessly from fried pickles to caramel to sopapillas.  Can you tell I love it?

Today I’d like to introduce a new series on Biscuits and Such, The Cast Iron Chronicles.  Creating series, sharing behind-the-scenes peeks, tutorial posts, and overusing the ever controversial serial comma are all part of the big-picture goals for 2012.  As long as that sounds good to you, of course.

Anyway, back to The Cast Iron Chronicles.  My friends Brit & Aaron (coconspirators in the Dan-turns-27-party plan) recently moved from LA to Alexandria.  When they moved into their new house they found (among other things) this cast iron pan in their back yard.  As you can see, it’s in bad shape.  Covered in rust, battered and weather-worn.  I immediately claimed it.  They brought it up when they came for the party and today I finally took a crack at it.

This series, probably four or five installments, will follow the pan as I remove the rust, dirt, and grime and bring this beauty back to her former glory. My plan is to use a combination of steel wool, sand paper, and vegetable fats to remove the rust and season it again. The Capt’n gave me a few tips, as he has restored many a cast iron cookware item in his day, including Sybil’s cauldron. Even so, I’d love to hear any tips you have for conditioning cast iron, or anystories from your own projects. This should be a fun ride!

Tomorrow is the anniversary of our first kiss, many moons ago.  I know that once you get married other anniversaries are supposed to melt away, but I figure- why not just celebrate more?  We always celebrate the same way– by going to Dougherty’s, the pub where we decided on a whim to gamble our years-long friendship.  Thankfully it was a successful gamble.  At Dougherty’s we’ll get burgers and fries, people watch and maybe even try to figure out what made that night so unusual.  Who knows.  I just remember being surprised.

Afterwards we’ll come home and I’ll pop two of these in the oven– individual apple crisps.  They’re each a perfect one serving, one apple baked with cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter.  Sweet, but not too sweet.  Filling, but not too heavy.  A special dessert to celebrate a special day.

Baked Apple Crisps, For Two

2 medium size red apples

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup dry oats

3 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp flour

1 tsp cinnamon

Peel and slice apples.  Combine 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp sugar, and apples in a pan.  Cook over low heat until they soften slightly.  Divide into two small serving dishes and turn your oven to 350.  In your pan, melt the rest of your butter.  Pour over oats, remaining sugar, flour, and cinnamon.  Toss.  Divide the topping evenly over the two dishes.  Bake for 35 minutes.

Midway through the holiday madness I was contacted by a fellow North Carolinian who was wondering if I would be interested in reviewing some cheese straws.  Not just any cheese straws, but his family’s 100 year old recipe that his mother and uncle just started selling in small, artisan batches.  Now, I’m picky about product reviews because I hate the idea of disappointing someone or, worse, making you all feel disillusioned by what goes on here at B&S.  But cheese straws? From a sweet brother and sister combo in Concord, NC? How could I resist?!?

These bad boys arrived on our doorstep just before we headed on our whirlwind Christmas vacation.  I snagged a few for the road and then spent the next week thinking about them.  They are perfect, everything a cheese straw should be.  Spicy, soft but not too soft, cheesy, salty, amazing.  As we were setting up for Dan’s party last weekend Charlotte (a Tennessean and lover of all things cheese straw) and I spent a fair amount of time savoring these, trying to taste for different spices, carefully considering how we felt about them.  Our conclusion? Delicious.  Everything a cheese straw should be.  We strongly suggest that you visit Ritchie Hill’s site and see for yourself.

In other news, it’s a new year, which means it’s time for goals and planning and thinking into the future.  I know the past few weeks around here have been heavy on the reflections and musings side of things (and light on the recipes and eating side of things), but forgive me as I take one more stab at it (I’ll be back tomorrow with more of the edibles).  My B&S related goals for this year are as follows:

- Continue expanding our recipe collection

- To actually make some instructional movies like I keep promising

- To take more process shots now that I have a fancy new flash

- To add to our set and prop collection

- To create images that inspire and to push myself to stay creative

- To write a post dedicated solely to the photography on this site

- To eat more pie

That’s not such a huge list, and hopefully it’ll be something that is constantly morphing throughout the year.  I’m hoping that 2012 is a year of big growth for me, in the kitchen, in the garden, as a photographer… I have high hopes.  That being said, I’m interested in hearing the sorts of things you would like to see around here.  More pie? Less musing? All the cheese? Let me know.  Let’s make 2012  a great year, together.  Okay, that’s enough cheese.

*Ritchie Hill didn’t pay me to say nice things about them.  In fact, all they did was send me a box of cheese straws (complimentary).  And I ate them.  And they were delicious.