Food Revolution Day: A Beautiful Biscuit

A lifelong passion for a well-rounded biscuit

Think small.

Getting involved in Food Revolution Day is as easy as a biscuit and as significant as salt of the Earth. British chef and media personality Jamie Oliver started the food initiative in 2012 as a global day of action to help keep good cooking skills alive. This year's theme is to choose a food, cook it and share it. That can be as simple as handing a dish to a neighbor or teaching a class on how to make it.

Award-winning cookbook author and Beurre & Sel creator Dorie Greenspan tweeted Oliver's idea and encouraged her "French Fridays With Dorie" group to get involved. If they needed a starting point (and don't we all), they could choose a recipe from her cookbook "Around My French Table," and go from there. That's where I jumped in. It took some noodling and stirring about in my own head, but I managed to think small and remember her onion biscuits.

(When we think too big, we talk ourselves out of action, concocting a million excuses why we don't have the time, resources and French finishing salt to get the job done. Thinking small is the key to hopping forward, a way to participate that feels doable.)

Biscuits are a natural for me; I was raised on them. Once my mother found out we learned biscuits in home ec, I had to make them every Sunday. My first efforts were flat, lifeless disks and often shaped like the bell or star cookie cutters we had. She persisted, and I handled the dough enough times (and used a champagne glass to cut the shapes) so that we got to know each other better - the biscuits and me, that is.

Mom was adamant on sticking with it: If you could make a good biscuit, you could get a husband, she said. We'll discuss that later.

Roll forward to these days. Well, a year ago. While prowling the bookshelf of my friend Jeanne Ambrose (she is editor of Taste of Home magazine and the author of Heartbreak Recovery Kitchen), I found Greenspan's cookbook and her recipe for Saint-Germain-des-Pres Onion Biscuits. I scribbled the recipe on the back of a ukulele song sheet (the only paper at hand) and vowed to try the biscuits. Once I did, I forever turned my back on the old buttermilks. I've stirred many versions over the years - from angel biscuits leavened with yeast to Southern style rounds dipped in bacon fat - even topped biscuits with red beets for Better Homes and Gardens. There is something about Greenspan's onion version - sweet, salty, softly oniony, fluffy - that hits all the marks of a comforting experience. And then there is the ease of it.

Food Revolution Day gives me a great excuse to make biscuits, but whom to share the biscuit with?

The story continues today, the actual Food Revolution Day, but for now . . . go stir things up.

You have time.