FOOD & DRINK

Anything for Mother

Remembering one February morning with Mom and a batch of angel biscuits

By Kitty Crider
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FOOD EDITOR
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

STARKVILLE, Miss. — Mother is not eating. Her health is failing and food has lost its appeal.

What a change for a Southern cook who seldom finished one meal before planning the next, a woman known for filling her table with plates and platters of hospitality.

I have flown to see her for my monthly visit.

I am stunned anew when I walk into my childhood home. The windows are not steamed from something bubbling on the stove. The sink stands empty. And there are no aromas coming from the kitchen. Mother is sitting in her rocking chair in the large den.

I find it all disconcerting. I want to feed her.

"Mother, what would you like me to cook for you?" I ask.

After all, this is my MOTHER. This is the woman who kept her temper when, as a 5-year-old, I put my little black purse in her oven and she unknowingly preheated it to dripping stringiness. She could have squelched my curiosity with the stove at that moment. Instead, she got me a blue wooden box to stand on at the counter and began teaching me the joy of nurturing body and soul with home-cooked food.

So, of course, I will cook anything for her on this morning in early February.

Mother ponders my question a long time, as she rocks. I can see her inventorying her recipes in her mind: Will it be souffle au fromage from her autographed Julia Child cookbook, or saffron tomato soup from one of her university gourmet club luncheons, or a homemade pear mincemeat pie like she and her mother always made from the pear trees in their back yards?

She spends so long deciding, I up my offer. "Mother, it CAN be more than one thing. I'm here for a week."

She sips some tea — is it Lipton's or Harrods No. 42 Earl Grey today, I wonder — and announces with a definite nod of her head: "Angel biscuits."

A choice from the past, angel biscuits have been floating around the South for at least four decades. They are light and a little sweet, a cross between a roll and a biscuit. Because they contain yeast, as well as baking soda and baking powder, they can be kept in the refrigerator for a week and baked off as needed.

While Mother has made these primarily for large family gatherings — not daily — they are always a huge hit, frequently absconded by her husband, grandsons, sons-in-law, nephews, even daughters, directly from the baking sheet.

I dig around and find her splattered recipe in a bright red "Alabama First Lady's Cookbook," a volume I gave her when I was a food editor for another paper in another state. I go to the large U-shaped kitchen with its green laminate countertop. There in the mixing corner stand two large red-painted canisters, old potato chip cans that are big enough to hold 10-pound bags of flour and sugar. They keep company with a large Cuisinart food processor, a Kitchen-Aid mixer, a bread machine and an assortment of whisks, wooden spoons, rubber spatulas. Unlike a lot of 80-year-olds, she is not locked in a black-skillet generation. Yet, hers is a more functional than fancy kitchen, a post-World War II heart of a home, where she's cooked three hot meals a day for a family of five.

She's always cooked. Mother believes in good food and its ability to bring together people no matter how varied their interests, ages and backgrounds. Even when she owned a gift shop for 20 years, she cooked for her holiday open houses, printing copies of favorite recipes.

Her idle kitchen rips my heart.

I tug open one of the kitchen drawers, stiff with age, and get out her old red-handled pastry blender to cut the shortening into the flour, the first step of most biscuit recipes. But then I see by the note in the margin that over the years, Mother has adapted the recipe to her food processor. And now she even subs dry buttermilk for fresh, once a staple in many Southern homes.

I smile. This is so typical of her. She cherishes the old but embraces the new. I open her kitchen cabinet to get the Crisco. Pulling off the lid, I get a strong whiff of rancidity. The extra virgin olive oil and Pam on the shelf beside it are much fresher, proof of how she's changed her eating habits to healthier ingredients.

But I'm not going to sub olive oil for Crisco in these biscuits. Not today. Not for her. She is terminally ill and I'm trying to re-create a memory.

I grab the car keys and tell her I'm dashing out for fresh shortening. She nods approval. She's never tolerated rancidity in her kitchen. I call my husband from the car and shed a few tears. Mother's really sick and the shortening is bad.

I return and get to work, measuring and mixing, rolling and cutting. I glance into the den. In her rocking chair, Mother has dozed off to the familiar tune of kitchen tools clinking.

I reminisce while I work. As a preschooler, I recall her giving me handfuls of flour to sprinkle like powdered sugar on my elaborate sand-pile mud pies.

I remember how proud she was when, at 8, I got my first ribbon at the county fair for biscuits and later, as a teen, won a state cherry pie contest. It's the same pride I see in that box of my newspaper clippings she keeps in the study. I think about how far-sighted she was decades ago in suggesting that I combine two loves — food and journalism — in college, at a time when very few schools offered such joint fields of study.

I owe her so much. And all I'm doing today is making her biscuits.

Overcooked biscuits. The first dozen are too dark. Maybe I used the wrong baking sheet.

Mother has awakened. So I consult her, the pro. "Switch to the pizza pan (a favorite baking sheet) and roll out a second batch," she suggests.

I get plump, golden brown rounds of goodness this time around. Perfection. I have duplicated the biscuit she remembers.

Slicing one open for her, I add a little butter and some of the Sarabeth's apricot orange marmalade I had given her for Christmas. She is smiling now.

"Simply superb!" she pronounces, after a bite. "I had forgotten how good these are."

I smile. Mother is eating. Angel biscuits.

My mother's name was Rebekah O'Kelly Therrell. She died Feb. 8 of this year. She was 81 years old. Her death came just a couple of hours after I completed the first draft of this column.

Angel Biscuits
1 package dry yeast
4 Tbsp. water, warm
1/3 cup sugar, divided
5 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 1/2-1 3/4 cups buttermilk

Dissolve yeast in warm water with 2 Tbsp. of the sugar. Set aside while mixing remaining sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the large bowl of a food processor. Add shortening, cut into pieces, and pulse on and off, scraping as needed, to incorporate. (Without a food processor, cut shortening into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender, two knives or your fingers until mixture is in fine particles.)

Add buttermilk and yeast and mix until mixture resembles yeast dough. Make biscuits or place dough in a covered bowl in refrigerator and use as needed.

To make biscuits: Roll out portions of dough on lightly floured surface until 1/2-inch thick. Cut with 2-inch biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass. Place biscuits on a greased cookie sheet. Brush tops with melted butter. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise in a warm place for an hour. (Some cooks skip the rising step and bake the biscuits immediately.)

Bake at 425 degrees 10-15 minutes or until brown. Makes about 2 1/2-3 dozen biscuits.

Notes from Mother: Do not double recipe. Food processor works great. Dry buttermilk is fine.
— Adapted from the 'Alabama First Lady's Cookbook'

kcrider@statesman.com; 445-3656

Editor's note: This piece, a favorite of readers — and its writer — won the national James Beard Award.