Biscuits & Gravy 

What can I really say about this dish that hasn't already been said? It's comfort food. It's classic. It sticks to your ribs. And the other night, it was dinner.

When it comes down to it, I'm a simple creature. It doesn't take a whole lot to please me. People think that because I'm a chef, I eat gourmet every night. Not the case! I'm a meat-and-potatoes kinda guy. Keep it simple, and it ain't getting much more simple than this.

If you've never made this before, no worries, I'll walk you through it. And if you don't trust me, you can turn on food network and probably see your favorite jack-ass doing his or her version of it. In fact, it might sound something like this: "Hi, I'm (Your name here), and today I'm gonna make biscuits and gravy. Using my pets for inspiration, I'm gonna add smoked kitty litter to the biscuits and sprinkle charred cat shit over the gravy."  I think I might have heard Paula Deen say that.

Anyway, no recipe needed for this one. Make gravy, make biscuits, done. I'll explain what I did to the best that I can remember. For the gravy, I started by making a bechamel sauce. Basically you start with a roux and add milk. What's a roux? Butter and flour, equal parts. I cooked the roux until it got just a little bit of color. Normally, you don't want any color in the roux for a bechamel. But I don't like rules. I'm gonna put my spin on this, without the cat droppings!

Once the roux looked good, I added some salt, pepper, and chopped garlic. Honestly, I didn't intend the roux to get that color, but I was also on the phone and not paying attention. It still came out good.

At this point, I cranked up the heat and started stirring the milk in. From there I added a pinch of nutmeg, sage, and thyme. I've been using a lot of thyme lately. I like the super savory flavor of it. I don't know about you, but I have a tendency to get stuck on flavors. For a short time, everything I made tasted like smoked paprika. Lately, thyme has been the star of the show.

I cooked and chopped up some bacon before hand and added that to the gravy. I let it simmer and got the biscuits ready. The recipe? Not this time! I used the stuff out of the can this time around. No shame here about that!

Nothing left to do but plate up and eat! I don't think you need me to tell you how to do that. I sprinkled a little parmesan on top of  mine. All in all, I liked how it came out. I had some hot links in the fridge I could have added to it. But the sauce was rich enough. Sometimes enough is enough.

That's all for this edition of the coolest blog in southern California. And how do I know it's the coolest blog? Because I'm the coolest negro in southern California!  HAHA!

Until next time,

J. Miller