Hello hello!
I’ve missed this corner of the internet. Apologies for the absence last week, I came down with a bad and very annoying summer cold and found myself mostly horizontal with a box of tissues and a direct line of ginger tea last week. But we’re back, we’re baking, and I’m finding myself with more energy and inspiration than I’ve had in weeks so maybe the extended rest was needed.
As you may know, I love to both cook and bake. If it makes you happy to eat something I want to make it for you. I don’t really abide by the mentality that some people are cooks (free-styling) and some are bakers (meticulous and precise). I don’t think it’s so clearly black and white. You can freestyle your bakes to a certain extent and many moments of cooking require great precision. For me, it’s a spectrum and I like being able to do both to exercise either side of my brain. Lately, I’ve been very inspired to bake and have been having a lot of fun experimenting and baking on a whim without much game plan. The prompt I’ve been giving myself is “bake what you wish existed in the bakery case”. And if I stepped foot into my dream Asian inspired bakery and saw these tall shrimp and chive biscuits fresh from the oven displayed in front of me I would order them in a heartbeat.
Despite my love of baking sweet things, I’m personally scouring the bakery case for a savory baked good that gets me excited. I want more than a bacon, cheddar, scallion scone. Whenever I open my freezer, I’m faced with the giant bag of dried shrimp my dad brought back for me from Hong Kong. So with my prompt in mind, I got a glimmer of an idea for shrimp and chive biscuits and ran with it. They turned out better than I expected, incredible really, like extra flavorful, more mature Red Lobster biscuits! The dried shrimp wasn’t overly seafood-y but added such a nice saltiness and brininess to the biscuits.
I get that dried shrimp might not be for everybody, but as a girl who grew up in a Toisan family that cooked with dried shrimp often, this felt like a special revelation!
Dried Shrimp Should be a Kitchen Staple
Dried shrimp is a pantry staple if you cook a lot of Southern Chinese or Cantonese food. It is a dynamic flavor enhancer, very much in the same way anchovies, bacon, Chinese sausage, and other cured salty meats function in recipes. You don’t need a lot of it to make an impact but the process of salting and drying the shrimp concentrates their flavor.
For the best texture in this recipe, you have to soak the dried shrimp first and then crisp them up in a pan like little bacon bits. If you skip this step the dried shrimp is on the chewier side, which I found unappealing. You would still do this process if you were going to stir-fry the dried shrimp with vegetables or noodles. They just take a little but of effort to unlock their full flavor and texture!
The dried shrimp my dad brought me from Hong Kong are huge and bigger than the ones I normally find at Chinese grocery stores in the States. But the smaller ones are absolutely fine! You’ll find them normally in the refrigerated section of Chinese markets or if they are really fresh and it’s an old school market, then may be in open air bins. To keep them fresher longer, I prefer to store my dried shrimp in the freezer!
I have a few more of these biscuits in the freezer waiting for me and I think I might just pop one in the oven after I hit send on this newsletter! Hope you love these big, beautiful, buttery, buttermilk biscuits as much as I do!
Before the end of the week/month I’m putting the final touches on August’s bun of the month recipe. Think peaches and cream. It’s going to be a good one so make sure to keep your eyes on your inbox for that. Have a great week!
(Dried) Shrimp and Chive Buttermilk Biscuits
makes 6 big beautiful biscuits and 1 rustic biscuit
60g dried shrimp
2 tbsp avocado or neutral oil
400g (about 3 cups) all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp coarse salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp black pepper
170g (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, frozen for 1 hour
230g (1 cup) buttermilk, plus 2 tbsp for brushing
24g fresh chives, finely chopped
In a medium heat proof bowl, add the dried shrimp and cover with hot, just boiled water. Cover the bowl with a plate and let the shrimp soak for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove the shrimp from the water (which you can save for jook or a soup for extra flavor) and pat dry with a towel. Finely chop the shrimp into small bits. Heat up oil in a medium frying pan over medium low heat. Add the shrimp and toss to coat in oil. Continue to stir while frying until the shrimp is aromatic and crisp. Set a mesh strainer over a heat proof bowl and pour in the shrimp and oil. Shake off any excess oil off the shrimp and allow the shrimp to cool for 10 minutes. Save the shrimp oil for your next stir-fry.
In a large bowl, whisk to combine flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and pepper. Grate the frozen butter and then transfer to the flour mixture. With your finger tips, break up the butter and press it into the flour until the mixture resembles sand with some larger clumps of butter. Add the butter milk and mix with a flexible spatula until a clumpy mixture forms. Add the chives and dried shrimp and give it another mix to incorporate.
While the mixture is still mostly clumpy, transfer onto your counter and use the help of a bench scraper to bring the dough together by folding the dough onto itself, creating layers. After about 6 folds you should be able to pat the dough together into a 6x8-inch rectangle that's about 1 1/2-inch thick. Transfer the dough to a cutting board.
For extra clean slices and taller biscuits, you have the option to freeze the dough for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Loosely cover the dough with plastic wrap and make room for the dough in your freezer. If you don’t have room or time to freeze you can chill in the fridge or simply move forward to cutting and baking the biscuits.
Preheat the oven to 425-degrees F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Remove the biscuits from the freezer and trim off the very edges of the dough, save those to form your bonus rustic biscuit. Cut the dough into 6 square-ish biscuits. Arrange the biscuits on the baking sheet, spaced 2” apart. Press the biscuit scraps together to form a 7th biscuit and place on the sheet. Brush the tops of the biscuits with buttermilk. Bake until the biscuits are tall and deeply golden brown around the edges, 17 to 19 minutes. Allow the biscuits to cool on the sheet for about 10 minutes before serving.
Sounds delicious!! I will be trying this next!! ❤️
Lol, you funny