After 30 years of keeping company with me, it’s still nice to know that Mrs. Mercotan can surprise me. However, the surprise tonight was one which left a bad taste in my mouth. Garlic biscuits.
Don’t get me wrong. I adore garlic in its myriad forms. I love garlicy breads served with spaghetti and sauce. But tonight with our traditional spaghetti dish, she served biscuits which had been sprinkled with garlic powder and baked.
Generally I adore these biscuits. They’re wonderful not only with honey or jam, but also with gravy, sausage, etc. Hot, flakey, moist, they’re all that good biscuits should be.
But to coat them with garlic and then dip them into a tomato sauce? It did not add up. I tried them, but it was jarring and unsettling. It destroyed peace.
Yet before I rant about it, I thought I should solicit other input. Do other dopers enjoy garlic biscuits? Is it an appropriate side-dish to be dipped into one’s favorite pasta sauce? Enjoyed on its own? Should I not wince when it is served again? Or should I declaim “none of that for me, dear! It is an abomination like unto serving ketchup on chocolate iced cream!”
What about garlic toast (bread soaked in garlic and olive oil, then toasted)? I’ve got a bag of that stuff (made in Spain) in my kitchen right now. Is that like ‘biscuit’?
I think they’d be nice if the garlic were fresh (the powdered and puréed stuff leaves a foul aftertaste) and were mixed into the biscuit dough before baking them. Then they’d be a delicious, down-home type of doughball.
My only objection would be to serrving them with pasta - as anyone who’s seen the wonderful restaurant movie Big Night knows, you should never serve “starch witha starch!!!”
I think Quadgop means American-style biscuits, which are basically bread rolls leavened with baking powder or soda instead of yeast. Yummy – a good biscuit is delicious.
As for garlic biscuits – I’ve never made then as you’ve described, with the garlic just sprinkled over the top. I have made biscuits with garlic (fresh garlic) mixed into the dough. Then I brush the hot tops of the biscuits with garlic butter just before serving. They are quite good. However, it should be said that I don’t dip my bread into my pasta sauce. I don’t think biscuits would be very successful ‘dippers’ as a good biscuit is very tender and would crumble under such rough treatment. Maybe that was your problem?
Biscuits with garlic on top are a glory unto their baker, and a gift unto their eater. But biscuits with garlic on top that are dipped into pasta sauce are anathema. Thou mayst enjoy thy garlic-topped biscuits, and thou mayst enjoy thy pasta sauce, but thou shalt not dip the first into the second, nor besmear the second upon the first, lest ye fall into iniquity. For is it not written, “Woe unto him who heeds not the righteous outcry against such barabarity, and sullies his biscuit with sauce, for he shall have no joy thereof, and he shall abhor the biscuit wrongfully.”?
I haven’t done that but I generally think that breads made with milk (such as biscuits typically are) don’t generally equate well to garlicy types of food and definately not in a red sauce. I don’t know why this is. However, I think a light coating of garlic butter on said biscuits would be ok rather than cloves of garlic (which is like ambrosia) or garlic sprinkled atop it. I am not sure where this dichotomy comes from though.
Thanks for the input, all. I do think that burned powdered garlic on top made the biscuits impossible to enjoy, even in the best of times. But I also agree that they did not lend themselves into dipping into tomato sauce in this, or possibly any form. Genuine garlic, with butter and/or olive oil would have been tempting.
Part of my conundrum is that upon first sighting them, I assumed we’d be breaking out the honey and butter. Once the mind is set for that, other alternatives are less palatable.
