Art Smith’s Goat Cheese Drop Biscuits
21
I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with absolutely amazing cuisine. This presents (first world) problems, however. How do we choose which restaurant to go to for my birthday? How will we ever have time to even make it to half the restaurants on our to-try list (a constantly expanding list I keep in Evernote, by the way)? How can we go back to a restaurant that was awesome, when there are so many other ones we want to try, too? I hear a lot of bloggers and good cooks say they rarely dine out because they can make better meals at home. I consider myself a good cook, but I don’t have that problem in the slightest.
Tom and I visited Table Fifty-Two, Art Smith’s restaurant focusing on Southern cuisine, quite a while ago. It was actually while I was hugely pregnant, and I remember this distinctly because the cab driver we had on the way home was telling us how he’d gotten into an accident once while he was driving a woman in labor to the hospital (a really great story choice on his part).
Unfortunately we haven’t been back, and it’s definitely not because we didn’t like it. We loved it, in fact, and do need to go back. Truly everything we had, from the goat cheese drop biscuits that are offered in place of bread, to the fried green tomato (my first!) to our soups, entrees, and the hummingbird cake that Tom ate on his own, despite our waiter’s urging that it could feed like 12 people. From start to finish, we had a great meal.
But the goat cheese biscuits? Those were really good. You obviously know what a huge goat cheese fan I am, and you should probably know I’m a huge carb fan, too. I already eat way too much “regular” bread at the start of a restaurant meal, so I was obviously all over these biscuits. They come to the table warm in small cast iron skillets. They are light, a little tangy, buttery, and fabulous.
I’ve been wanting to make these at home forever, but the extra large log of goat cheese I bought gave me the push I needed (I think we had 4 meals with goat cheese that week…). And I’m so glad. They were incredibly easy to make and turned out perfectly. I ended up freezing most of them (almost immediately, so I wouldn’t eat 8 at once) and I can’t wait to warm them up in the near future.
Goat Cheese Drop Biscuits
Source: Art Smith, via Oprah.com
2 cups self-rising flour (or make your own)
1 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. cold butter
4 Tbsp. (2 oz.) goat cheese
1 cup buttermilk
extra butter for greasing the pan and topping the biscuits
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Place a 10-inch cast iron pan into the oven, and then heat the oven to 425°.
Place flour and salt into a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the butter and goat cheese with a pastry blender or two forks. Make a well in the middle of the ingredients and pour in the milk. Stir just until the mix is moistened, adding an extra tablespoon of milk if needed.
Remove the hot skillet from the oven and place a tablespoon of butter into it. When the butter has melted, drop 1/4 cupfuls of batter into the pan. Brush the tops of the biscuits with additional melted butter (I put 2 Tbsp. butter in the pan to melt, then poured off about half into a small bowl, using that portion to brush onto the biscuits).
Bake from 14–16 minutes until browned on the top and bottom. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese.
FOUR goat cheese meals in one week!! Sigh. lucky.
These biscuits sound amazing. i mean, anything with goat cheese IS, but these sound especially delicious.
Oh my! These sound wonderful!
These look awesome, I can’t wait to try them!
Wait–goat cheese AND biscuits all together? I think I’ve gone to heaven. I cannot WAIT to make these.
ELLY. This is just craziness. I want like 7 of these. I have a gigantic log of goat cheese in my fridge begging to be used for these!
Those are some tough decisions! Hehe. I love the biscuits, anything with goat cheese has to be good 🙂
see now i can eat goat cheese when it’s baked, cooked, fried, etc…just can’t eat it cold. aftertaste thingee
soooo these will be printed now.
Looks great!
Wow, Elly, these sound and look amazing! I hope to one day make it to Chicago and WELL. Cheese and carbs are totally my thing too. I must make before 50 days of fasting from it…
OMG, your birthday dinner sounds so fabulous! And I’m guessing these biscuits are amazing!
hi, nice recipe. Thanks a lot. PS: I inserted your RSS Feed to my site. Greetings from Greece.
I am going to have to try these biscuits my mouth is watering already. There is a restaurant in my town that makes fried goat cheese and it is devilish. I know it doesn’t sound healthy but in moderation cant be bad.
Yum! Goats Cheese and traditional Southern style biscuits? Yes please! (on another note I use Evernote too! for everything!)
We’re going to Table 52 for dinner tonight. I can’t wait. Thanks for whetting my appetite with these gorgeous biscuits.
Have a great meal, Christina!
Thanks, elly. We really enjoyed our dinner last night. These biscuits were AMAZING! Thank you for posting this recipe. I will have to make these in the near future!
I love goat cheese too. These biscuits sound delicious!
My local Farmer’s Market just sent an email saying my favorite vendor for goat cheese will be back next week- can’t wait to get some fresh goat cheese and try these!! Thanks for sharing!!
Thank you for posting this recipe, Elly — I made a batch of these last night, served them with a salad, and they were a huge hit! A perfect combo of light and filling; this is a tasty (and vegetarian) meal I’ll be making on a regular basis.
Also, I have you on my blogroll now, and I can’t wait to link these back to you!
Glad you liked them!
These are great! I just finished making them and had a bite right out of the oven…so good.
I did not have buttermilk, so I just used milk. Next time, I will get the buttermilk for a bit more tang, but they are delicious either way!