Did you just shudder? Wince? Don’t worry; you’ll get over it. Stick with me, kid.
If you’ve travelled in North America, you’ve already encountered some terrible shocks, especially first thing in the morning, and between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, when the blood sugar drops. And at 11am, and of course, at bedtime. And after a car trip. And if company drop in for a visit.
Across the pond—I know it’s wrong, possibly criminally so—you can’t have just tea at the drop of a hat.* Most of it’s been in Boston harbour since 1773. It’s bad of course, and one more thing to hate about ‘Merica. Adding insult to injury—in many places in the South, you will be offered iced tea. Usually, “sweet tea”, which is sugared as well as iced, thus offending on many levels. Usually made in-house—if someone offers you the bottled iced teas, (the only kind I’ve seen here, and they are nasty), do what you’d do at home if someone says something terrible to you: snort and walk away, or punch them in the nose, depending on how caffeine-deprived you are by then. Personally, I adore sweet tea; but I’m eccentric.
In the drawer to the left of the TV wall, you may locate one battered teabag, bereft of its clean little paper envelope, left over from the last British tourist who found a packet of Lipton’s teabags at the local Piggly Wiggly. If you are desperate enough, you will place it in your cup and then look for the electric kettle. Sorry.
If you are very, very good, you may be offered coffee, and if you’re in a city or on the West Coast, it may even be good coffee. But there are no biscuits as you know them, no, no matter how you plead. (Or, in a British phrase that literally no one understands—I know ‘cause I’ve asked them—not if it is ever so.) If you encounter a well-travelled server, or a posh B&B owner, they might eventually grasp that what you’re asking for is a cookie. Yes, you may have a cookie.
It’s not that there are NO biscuits. At breakfast, you may be provided with a savoury, floury kind of scone, and in its way, it will probably be nice with butter and jam. That’s what they call a biscuit over there.
Unless it’s a Pillsbury biscuit, designed for non-bakers and prospective celiacs. Pillsbury biscuits come refrigerated, sodden with non-food preservatives, in a foil and cardboard tube; a masterpiece of engineering, which the cook bashes against the sharp edge of a counter. The tin (“can”) pops open and the first biscuits extrudes into the gap. Twisting the can liberates the other circular blobs, which are then dumped onto a pan and baked in the oven until tough. They are uniform in colour, hard on top and they smell like sour milk and cardboard. My mom used to buy them and we’d fight over who got to smash open the tube. They’re fun to make but terrible to eat, especially once they’ve gone cold and returned to their non-food components.
My theory is that Pillsbury biscuits are an unconscious re-rendering of the ubiquitous, iniquitous ship’s biscuit that sustained the British (and later, the US) Navy throughout the age of sailing ships. They were baked of flour, salt and water (and according to the Royal Museum at Greenwich, sometimes of powdered bone!) years in advance of the voyage, headed up in barrels and stored in what was hoped to be a dry bread room. Ships being damp, and barrels made of wood, mould was usual, as were weevils. You knocked the weevils out on the table before taking a bite. If you could take a bite, as they were rock hard and you probably wouldn’t have had many teeth after suffering scurvy from that last trip around the Horn.
Sailors pounded ship’s biscuit with a spike, (fascinating—“biscuit” is both singular and plural, like “moose”—there are never ships biscuits) mixed it with water, shreds of salt beef and onion and cooked the mass into something chewable, called lobscouse. Sailors got a pound of biscuit a day, in the Royal Navy in 1815, and a half-pint of rum. And meat and dried peas, of course. If you ran out of rations, there were nearly always rats (called “millers”) to eke out a naval diet. (My deep thanks to the brilliantly researched and even better-written sea stories of Patrick O’Brian.)
I reckon that, some 300 years after the Napoleonic Wars, Pillsbury tapped into our collective unconscious by engineering a semi-edible item that can travel great distances and must be bashed on the side of a table before being ingested (notice I don’t say “eaten”). And the water biscuits, here in the UK, bear a resemblance to ship’s biscuit having holes pricked into them and containing nothing tasty, but are thinner, weevil-free and some say, slightly edible. The age of sail lives on in our DNA, and shows up in our snacking. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies…
Nevertheless, a well-made American or Canadian biscuit is a fragrant fluffy, filling, delectable piece of bread. My dad like his with butter and molasses (treacle). But best, by far the best thing you can do to a biscuit (providing you can cook), is to serve it covered with gravy. (You knew I’d come to that eventually, right?)
If what you know of gravy is salty, brown granules dissolved in water and used to fill up a Yorkshire pudding, it is time to expand your horizons. Because, although like many people these days, I instinctively draw back from most things American (not Canadian), I feel that the USA still has a contribution to make to the world and that all is not totally lost. There is still the gravy.
My mother’s legacy to me was twofold: her love of writing, and her porkchop gravy. (Vegetarians, please cover your eyes). I’m going to share this in open source—it’s not trademarked and you may have it gratis. For millions, this is comfort food par excellence. Dear reader, I want you to have another source of comfort.
First, cook the porkchops in a large, flat pan—as many as you can get to fit. They must have fat on them (that’s where the gravy comes from). Brown them well, so that the fat is rendered out. If they stick a little, celebrate and leave as much as possible in the pan. And don’t wash the pan! Leave all the bits!
Eat the chops that night, and next day, depending on how much dripping (or “grease”) remains, either dissolve a tablespoon of white flour (not brown—the gluten is required) in the dripping, or add enough butter or oil that every grain of flour is enveloped in fat. This is very important, so don’t be stingy (or mingy, or mean) about the fat. Stir it until the flour gets brown; keep the heat medium, and don’t let the flour burn. This rustic roux-making is a most delicate stage: if the phone rings, let it go to voicemail.
Once the flour is toasty brown, slowly stir in the milk—full fat is best, but low fat is ok. Go slow, so the flour doesn’t lump. There should still be some lumps from where the chops left juice in the pan and it caramelised. These lumps are the most delicious umami-esque thing: the more the better. I’m guessing as to amounts, but two cups of milk will probably do it. Then, stir until the milk heats, thickens, starts to boil. Add salt to taste and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Don’t skip this step: the black pepper is crucial. Ladle it onto hot biscuits. It’s rich stuff: if your tummy is tender, only try a little at first. And if you have issues with gluten or lactose, forget the whole thing.
Now you know. Life will never be the same—but I hope, in a good way.
Now, I have questions about British biscuits. Why are biscuits named as they are? They are frankly misleading; a more litigious country wouldn’t stand for it. Try finding custard or cream in a custard cream. Or bourbon in a bourbon. Fig rolls at least have figs, but they’re little rectangles, not rolls. Jaffa cakes, the internet tells me, are one of the most popular biscuits—and in the same page is the fact that, because they’re actually cake—not biscuit—the company making them won a lawsuit that saved them paying VAT. So, they are duplicitous in their very being.
Ginger nuts contain no nuts, and I’m not eating anything called a “digestive”: in fact, I think the gustatory should remain divided from the alimentary whenever food is under discussion. Hobnobs make me think of hobnail boots, or the dials on my gas stovetop. Flapjacks, over the pond, were a name for what we would call pancakes, but which in Canada are called (Canadians being more truthful about these things) “oat cakes”.
What gives? Is it a quaint British custom, naming things what they aren’t—perhaps originating in efforts to keep the faeries away? Or is something more sinister going on?
My laptop tells me these meanderings are approaching 1,500 words, which is about 1,400 more words than most people are willing to read these days. Some would argue that a tolerance for fewer than 100 words doesn’t qualify as “reading”, and being a wordy creature, I take that line. It’s time to stop, anyway: I’m hungry. I’ve been playing around with intermittent fasting—and I started typing this before even putting the kettle on. And not a biscuit in the house.
*These statements do not encompass the West Coast, except the area between Arcata, California and Portland, Oregon. Likewise, New York City and selected parts of Chicago.
