Cornmeal Drop Biscuits & Sausage Gravy

When I moved to Ithaca from California, everyone warned me that the winters would be hard. And yes, they were - I lacked energy, the desire to get out of bed, the ability to stay away from any and all bread products. Okay, that last one is true all the time, but winters were definitely a huge adjustment. The thing no one told me about, though, was the boundless energy I'd get come spring and summer, something that I've been taking full advantage of the last two months.

For example: this morning I got out of bed early, tried my best to not wake Justin, scooped some Gimme Coffee into the coffee maker, opened up the copy of Martha Stewart's Baking Book that J bought me for our anniversary, and picked out a breakfast recipe. It had to be something quick, something I had all of the ingredients for and something that I could pair with our one remaining link of hot Italian sausage from The Piggery. And so it was that my fortuitous gaze landed on a recipe for cornmeal biscuits, and lo! there was music from above, and all the children of the land rejoiced. The biscuits took about 25 minutes to make, from start to finish, and paired appallingly well with the sausage gravy I instructed Justin to make when he woke up. I felt a little bad handing him a wooden spoon and a frying pan while his eyes were still blurry, but it turned out, for Justin, this was an ideal way to start the day.

Cornmeal Drop Biscuits from Martha Stewart

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup fine yellow cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 stickunsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
• 1 cup nonfat milk

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl.
3. Cut butter into flour with pastry cutter until the mixture forms coarse crumbs. Drizzle milk over top of dough and fold in with a rubber spatula. Try to get all of the little cornmeal bits off the bottom of the bowl, and be careful not to overmix. The dough will be sticky, but they're drop biscuits, so you're cool. It's supposed to look like that.
4. Using two large spoons, leverage globs of cornmeal dough onto a baking sheet (I line mine with a Silpat) and bake until golden, approximately 15 minutes.

While the biscuits are in the oven, whip up a batch of sausage gravy, or force your poor, sleepy significant other to do it. Justin's recipe below:

Sausage Gravy

2 1/2 tbsp all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 link hot italian sausage
a pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Remove sausage from casing and crumble into saute pan. Cook until thoroughly done, approximately 3 minutes.
2. Add flour a little at a time and cook, stirring, until just starting to brown. Add milk all at once. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly.
3. Season with a dash of salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper - or more, if you like.
4. Spoon over warm biscuits and devour.