facebook.com/dottiesbiscuitbarn
ANDY WALTER, OWNER
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a biscuit barn drive down the busy streets of Salt Lake City only to stop near you, open the barn doors, and benevolently pour gravy on perfect biscuits and place them in your hands. A fairer person you’ll never meet, Andy Walter slaves overnight to prepare the awe-inspiring fare of Dottie’s Biscuit Barn before every Downtown Farmers Market he graces. True to Utah’s generous style, other restaurant owners with commercial kitchens open their doors for Andy to come in during their restaurants’ dormant hours in the middle of the night to make biscuits, gravy, and pie.
If you see Andy at the Downtown Farmers Market, you’ll notice he looks pretty tired. He doesn’t look that way because he woke up early. The bags under his eyes prove that he actually hasn’t been to sleep yet. Locals know his smiling face from his time serving customers at the Copper Onion or managing the Shallow Shaft up near Alta. An average Friday evening finds Andy working his day job, clocking out, then heading to a kitchen to cook until the early risers of the farmers’ market heed the call of biscuits.
Perhaps a brick and mortar is in the future, but for now Andy can’t make enough biscuits for the markets he attends or the parties he caters. The barn is always the hype of the markets and the joy of the lucky ones who taste the wonders of Dottie’s biscuits.
If you ever see a barn driving down the street, follow it. For one, it’s probably not going far because gas prices are high. And two, biscuits, gravy, and Andy’s friendly face await.
(SERVES 4–6)
3–4 (about 2½ pounds) large, ripe heirloom tomatoes
½ large yellow onion
1 Anaheim or similarly mild to medium-heat pepper
1 sweet pepper (use yellow and green to add color, or whatever is coming in from the garden)
½ jalapeño or more intense pepper (serrano or cayenne could work too)
1 tablespoon butter
½ tablespoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cracked pepper
½ tablespoon smoked paprika
½ tablespoon fresh oregano
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (depending on what peppers you used in the sauté)
2 cups vegetable stock
For the roux:
4 tablespoons butter or lard
¼ cup flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Prepare a large saucepan with boiling water, then cut a small X in the bottom of each tomato and drop them in for a couple of minutes. Remove to an ice bath and peel the skins after a minute or two in the ice water. Once peeled, take the firmest tomatoes and dice them up. The softer ones (depends on varietal and ripeness), cut up as best as possible, or just crush by hand and save for adding to the sauté.
Medium dice the onion and peppers.
Put 1 tablespoon butter or other cooking fat (bacon lard would work great too!) into a large sauté pan and add onions and peppers. Sauté until onions are translucent and begin to caramelize . . . the more color the better!
Add the salt, pepper, smoked paprika, oregano, and red pepper flakes, give the mixture a quick stir, and then add half the tomatoes (using the crushed and/or roughly cut tomatoes first). Let the tomato juice deglaze the pan (you could use a touch of red wine at this point as well). Once the tomatoes are hot, add in the vegetable stock and allow the sauce to come up to a boil, then reduce heat slightly and allow the sauce to gently boil for half an hour. Give the sauce time to reduce down a touch and naturally thicken.
Adjust your spices as needed during this time. At the end of this reduction, add the other half of the diced tomatoes (not including their juices). This will preserve the “chunk” of the tomato gravy.
To prepare the roux: Melt the butter or lard and then stir in the flour in batches, using a whisk and stirring vigorously. The longer you “cook” the roux, the less thickening properties (starchiness) it will have in your sauce. The French have all sorts of classifications for these cook times; however, the longer you cook the roux, the more flavors will emerge. Once the flour is incorporated, I cook the roux for about 2–3 minutes on medium heat, constantly stirring. Save the roux; it keeps for a long time.
Note: This is a butter and flour roux, but if you want to make it gluten free you could use a cornstarch slurry, tapioca flour, etc.
Slowly add ½ cup roux to the tomato sauce and allow time for it to thicken. If you add too much, you can thin it with more vegetable stock.
(MAKES 12–16 BISCUITS)
4 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted, sweet cream butter
1½ cups buttermilk
Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Make sure butter and buttermilk are cold. Cut butter into ½ tablespoon–sized chunks and throw into flour mixture. Use a dough fork, butter cutter, two knives, etc. to cut the butter into the flour mixture. This can also be done with a food processor, by using the pulse mode, but don’t overprocess. You want ¼- to ½-inch balls of butter.
When finished, pour in buttermilk and use a hard spatula to incorporate the buttermilk into the butter-flour mixture. Don’t work the dough too hard, just enough to work in the buttermilk.
Lightly flour a clean, hard surface and pour out dough—it should want to fall apart. Using a dough cutter, begin collecting all the dough and shaping it into a rectangle. With a rolling pin, roll dough out to about ½ thick, trying to keep dough in a rectangle. Using a dough cutter, lift up one end of the dough and fold it back on itself. Roll dough out again to ¾ inch thick (a little thicker than before). Fold dough back on itself again and roll out to 1 inch thick, then cut biscuits. I use a pizza cutter to make square biscuits; you get less waste and avoid re-rolling the dough, which can make your biscuits tough.
Serve with tomato gravy, jam, or honey and butter.
