Purple Sweet Potato Buttermilk Biscuits

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Words and photos by Amber Breitenberg, special to EdibleDC

I'm from Norfolk, Virginia, where, though we sometimes forget it, our roots run deeply Southern. I grew up quite familiar with the sweet potato biscuit, a classic southern side that goes perfectly with a thick slab of Virginia ham. This time of year sweet potatoes are quite ubiquitous in my CSA share and I had been planning to make a batch to go with some maple rashers we were saving from The Rock Barn.

I happened to end up with a couple purple sweet potatoes and thought how cool it would be to make the classic sweet potato biscuit with a purple hue. I never would have guessed how vibrant and beautiful they would turn out, and obviously delicious. I love simple recipes that will make your guests say "that must have been so hard to make!" and then of course I get to explain that in fact it was quite easy--even bettter-- most of the ingredients came from our local farmers.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I use a Gluten Free substitute like Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour)
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 5 Tbs unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 cup baked sweet potato
• 3 Tbs honey

Instructions

Preheat over to 400°F. Poke holes into sweet potato using a fork. Place sweet potato on baking sheet covered in aluminum foil in center of oven. Bake for 1 hour or until a fork can be easily inserted into the center of the sweet potato. Once cooked, scoop out the insides of the sweet potato and discard the skin. Place in refrigerator to chill.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or a fork until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Place in refrigerator to chill.

In a small bowl, combine the buttermilk and honey, stirring with a whisk until well blended. Add the sweet potato and continue whisking (I prefer to use a hand mixer or you can throw everything into a food processor to make sure everything is well mixed)

Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and stir gently until moist (you may need to add one or two additional tsp of buttermilk if the dough seems too dry).

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Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to about 1/2 inch thickness. Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour.

Fold the dough in half twice and reroll to about 3/4 inch thickness. Cut dough into rounds with a biscuit cutter. Combine edges and reroll dough until all of the dough has been used.

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Place dough rounds on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper about 1 inch apart.

Bake for 12-14 minutes or until you can see the dough beginning to flake.

Remove biscuits and let cool for several minutes before eating.

*These are best served right out of the oven and in my opinion do not store very well. So when you make them plan to have friends over to enjoy them with you or be prepared to bring a few to your neighbors.

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Amber Breitenberg is a food and lifestyle photographer living in Washington, DC. Through her blog, A Little Terroir, she shares the stories of our local farmers and producers and offers some lessons she has learned along the way about living and eating with a sense of place. @alittleterroir

Soup for Syria

Syrian Child

By Susan Able with photographs by Barbara Adbeni Massaad, courtesy Interlink Publishing Group.

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It was the winter and Barbara Abdeni Massaad couldn’t stop thinking about the Syrian refugee families she had read about who were sleeping in tents.

The president of Slow Foods Beirut, who is also a well-know cookbook author, writer and photographer, visited a refugee camp in Zahle, Lebanon, and saw the struggles first hand. Massaad knew that good food could make an impact in the lives of the refugees. With a friend, she started making soup for the Hamra refugees. She took pictures and interviewed the refugees about their experience and the idea for a humanitarian cookbook was born. The Soup for Syria project began.

Just released in October, Soup for Syria is a gorgeously photographed book with 80 soup recipes contributed by famous writers and chefs such as Mark Bittman, Anthony Bourdain, Alice Waters and Paula Wolfert. Other recipes were contributed by Massaad’s friends and supporters of the project. In a contributor’s statement Bourdain said that “soup is elemental, and it always makes sense, even when the world around us fails to.”

100% of the U.S. sales of Soup for Syria will go to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide food relief.

In a CNN interview, Massaad said, “I would always tell the refugees, ‘Had I been a barber, I would have cut your hair for free. I am not a barber, but a photographer and food writer, so I will take photos and write about food to help your cause and send a message to the world.’”

She added, “Each kind gesture towards another in need is a step forward for humanity. Use what you know best to help others.”

Spicy Clam Soup with Basturma

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By Garrett Melkonian /Serves 4-6

3-4 tomatoes, peeled and diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

2-4 tablespoons red pepper paste

Cilantro, a small bunch finely chopped, plus additional for garnish

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons cumin

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 pounds manila clams, rinsed of sand and drained

3 cups chicken stock

3 1/2 ounces basturma (Turkish air-dried beef, or substitute pastrami), diced**

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

Grilled or toasted bread to serve with soup

In a large bowl combine the tomatoes, garlic, pepper paste, cilatnro, cayenne, cumin, lemon juice and olive oil. Mix thoroughly with a spoon or spatula, don't use a whisk.

Heat a large stockpot over medium-high heat, add the tomato mixture, and cook until the mixture becomes fragrant that tomatoes begin to break down about 1-2 minutes.

Add the clams, stock and bastruma and bring to boil oer high heat. Reduce the heat to simmer, cover and cook, shaking the pot occasionally  just until all of the clams have opened, Using a slotted spoon, transfer the clams to serve in bowls, leaving the broth in the pot. Add the butter to the broth and check for seasoning. The basturma and the calms carry a good deal of salinity, and the soup may not need salt. Ladle the broth over the clams, garnish each bowl with cilantro leaves and serve with thick slice of grilled bread.

**Many of our area markets with Middle Eastern products carry basturma including Mediterranean Gourmet Market in Alexandria, (703) 971-7799.

Soup for SyriaEdited and photographed by Barbara Abdeni Massaad. Interlink Books, 2015. 208 pages. 

Pumpkin Soup from Mi Comida Latina

Illustrator Marcella Kriebel Shares A World of Colors and Food

-From Edible DC's Fall Issue. Story by Marcella Kriebel, special to Edible DC.

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It is a great time of year for buying fresh local pumpkins. There are so many heirlooms varieties of squash and pumpkin that are great for cooking, that choosing one is half the fun. We're sharing "Locro de Zapallo" from illustrator and cook Marcella Kriebel as an inspiration for a fall soup. The other recipes she mentions can be found in our digital issue here at edibledc.com!

I’ve been blending the concepts of travel and art for most of my life. I remember making my first journal—actually, a sketchbook full of illustrations—documenting a family car trip to Yellowstone when I was 8 years old. It must have been fun, because I’ve been doing it ever since.

Fast-forward 10 years to college, where I majored in studio art and anthropology with a minor in Spanish. Since graduation, my interests and educational background have come together in a complementary way; I’m actually using my education and have been fortunate to earn a living from it.

My cookbook, Mi Comida Latina, is comprised of 100 hand-lettered, illustrated recipes inspired by my travels throughout Central and South America and documents the recipes I collected while cooking with Latin American home cooks and chefs. I found that cooking with the locals was the best way to understand their unique cultures and form friendships. The cookbook allowed me to share their recipes in an authentic way, beginning with family and friends and now to a wider audience.

I’ve always enjoyed exploring art in just about any medium, and especially drawing. I carry a sketchbook most everywhere and wouldn’t consider traveling without one. Whenever I learn a new recipe, I sketch little images in the margins to complement it. As I worked on the final cookbook illustrations, I used watercolor to illuminate the pages, as I do in my travel sketchbooks. I used one little two- by six-inch watercolor set for the majority of the cookbook, and discovered how versatile it truly could be. It was also fun to hand letter and vary the type of text for each recipe. I considered each page from a design standpoint; it’s always a challenge to have the recipe look colorful and visually appealing while including the technical information needed to make a truly tasty dish.

I didn’t necessarily set out to be a food illustrator, but I do enjoy drawing and painting food, whether it’s a beautiful Salade Niçoise or a portrait of the vegetables in the nightshade family. In 2014, I challenged myself to produce a daily illustration and called it Art Every Day, featuring all kinds of foods, from a single artichoke to a steaming bowl of udon noodles. These paintings form the basis of my current print collection of over 60 designs available in an open edition. So I’m still growing and learning both about food and cooking and illustration, and it is a process I love.

I chose the following recipes to share from Mi Comida Latina. The first is Causa, which is a variation on classic Peruvian dish. Salsa Roja is one of the many, many methods of making a classic Mexican tomato salsa, but the key is to blacken the tomatoes, which lends a tremendous flavor to the salsa.

Finally, Locro de Zapallo showcases pumpkin, but can be made of a variety of ingredients. “Locro” simply means stew; this was an Ecuadorian version but others can be found throughout South America—every home cook has his or her favorite recipe.

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