28. Biscuits

Dear biscuits,

Turns out I've been wrong about your savory form for some time. Too much Bisquick and its ilk will do that to a person, I suppose, and you're the kind of starchy bland food I'm prone to being snobbish about anyway. But enough excuses: I don't mind being wrong when I'm disproved by tasty treats, oh no, and tonight my housemate made you according to the Flaky Biscuits recipe in the January/February issue of Cooks Illustrated, and well, wow. I guess if you're at all into self-knowledge you were already aware that you're completely wonderful in that form, with a bit (okay, a lot) of extra rolling to give you an almost croissant-like texture. We ate you for dinner smothered in the leftover mushroom-leek gravy from a meal I'd made earlier, and it was fantastic.

Given the less-than-kind things I've had to say about your mediocre savory forms, I feel I should make it clear that this incredibly flaky and delicious version of you was easily good enough to eat on its own instead of just as a vehicle for rich, creamy sauce, and this is high praise, because (if I do say so myself) that gravy is almost good enough to eat as a soup, except for how it's maybe just a bit too thick. All of which is to say I have once again seen the error of my overgeneralizing ways and sincerely apologize for all the times I talked trash about the savory sorts of you for so many years, biscuits. I know this kind of revelation shouldn't be news to me anymore, but like I said before, it's the kind of thing I don't mind being wrong about, even to the point of publically renouncing my past mistakes. Hence this letter, in which I'm happy to admit that as with just about every food I've ever claimed to dislike, you have ways of being awesome.

Now your sweet forms, to those I owe no apologies, except maybe for whatever part I've played in the dialect confusion between U.S. and British English as to whether or not those are cookies. Tea biscuits are a thing of beauty and a joy forever and I promise I'll continue to enjoy them with delicious tea wherever I live, regardless of whether it's a country that's biscuit-literate.

Finally, and along a similar line of thinking, biscuits, it occurs to me that the recipe my housemate followed tonight could be probably adapted to create sweet scones, the thought of which fills me with a joy so great it's a bit difficult to express. Suffice it to say such an invention could be the best of all possible worlds, biscuit-wise, and delicious with tea and clotted cream and jam on top of all that wonderfulness.

Here's to many happy future teatime experiments!

Love,
-Tracy

Title abridged 1 December 2011.