Whole Wheat Shrove Pancakes

I don't know about you, but for me, pancakes have always been a little problematic. I've made them too gummy, too dense, and too black. I can never seem to flip them correctly in a skillet. There is always that stubborn pancake or two that catches on the edge of the pan during flipping and leaves pancake batter sliding down the sides. My pancakes are unattractive and troubled.

The key to golden, evenly-cooked pancakes is a griddle. You need even heat distribution (forget the patchy electric heat on your stovetop) and a flat cooking surface so the pancakes flip with ease. For Shrove Tuesday, I did not have a griddle, but I had the next best thing: a gas stove top. Even though at least one of my pancakes got caught on the side of my frying pan, they still turned out pretty nicely, and more importantly, light and fluffy.

And I finally realized why "light and fluffy" is necessary for pancakes, especially those made from whole wheat, which threatens the very lightness of traditional pancakes: the more porous and light the pancake, the less syrup you need to make your pancakes really sing. So be careful with your cooking times, and be careful not to overmix your batter. Those little lumps and air bubbles are essential to a successful pancake.

Drop Biscuits with Fried Basil and Maple Bacon

Folks, biscuits of any type - provided they are correctly baked and not over-mixed - are superior to all other breakfasts. My grandmother makes raised yeasty biscuits and serves them with utterly delicious and savory sausage gravy. Buttermilk biscuits à la my chicken pot pie topping are excellent served plain and hot, with lots of apple butter and jam. Sweet or savory, for breakfast or for supper, really good buttermilk biscuits are an essential staple of every gourmand.

I feel very strongly about biscuits. The vast majority of restaurants gets biscuits plain wrong. And biscuits in "other" (non-Southern) cookbooks are too buttery, salty, greasy, or cakey. The best, absolute best breakfast biscuit I have ever had made outside of the kitchens of cooks I trust was at a sweet little brunch locale in Savannah, a place called B. Matthew's Eatery. (Get the Eggs Benedict or the B. Matthew's Basic Breakfast. Holy smokes.) This biscuit was everything that I love about biscuits: light, fluffy, hot, with a sprinkle of dusted flour leftover from homemade batter that didn't quite get baked through. No superfluous butter. No greasy layers. Grandmother's raised biscuits are like this, as are Bill Neal's buttermilk biscuits that I make with that chicken pot pie.

There is one biscuit in the world that breaks my biscuit rules. And it is from a non-Southern cookbook. I know it must be sacrilege, but if you treat these biscuits right, with good flour (I like King Arthur), good butter (no store brands, as they contain more water and ergo less good butter), and lean buttermilk (cream makes these into scones, not biscuits), then they are just as tasty as my Southern favorites. With that, I share with you the Cook's Illustrated drop biscuit.

Georgia Bourbon Pork Tenderloin

As if I could upstage last week's cheese grits. 

We were in Atlanta all weekend, meeting my precious two-month-old nieces, staying warm during an unexpected hard freeze, and cooking breakfasts of biscuits and waffles, whole wheat concoctions of oatmeal cookies and icing, and this amazingly tasty pork dish, which will from this day forward be known as Georgia Pork.

This succulent tenderloin, marinated with rich bourbon, dark coffee, and blackstrap molasses, also comes from the hallowed kitchen of Sara Foster. Rubbed with freshly-picked rosemary and accompanied by heaps of roasted kale and asparagus, this pork loin was the perfectly easy dinner to make on a sleepy Saturday of holding babies and ginger-colored dogs.