Invitations to Notice
MY BLACK BELT BISCUIT EXPERIENCE YIELDS MORE THAN BISCUITS DURING SHELTERING-IN-PLACE
“BISCUITS ARE AN invitation to notice,” he said.
Not in any way ironic, and more than a hint of an admonishment to come into the full presence of the moment. This is what we had come for.
But not before a good long catch-up among old friends who hadn’t seen each other in over a decade and a half, savored over vintage demitasse cups of French-pressed tea, sweetened with local wildflower honey. That is also what we had come for. Maybe, in truth, even more so than the making of biscuits. Last February, right before the world as we knew it turned upside down, my aunt Ginger (we are both named for her mother, my paternal grandmother, Virginia, but my auburn hair comes from the other side of my family, so the “Ginger” nickname is a misnomer in her case) and I converged from different coasts in the small town of Marion, Alabama, to learn the secret to biscuit making from Chef Scott Peacock.
Marion sits in the heart of the “Black Belt” of Alabama, so named for its dark, rich soil. The fact that we were gathering in Alabama was itself not something any of us would have predicted the last time we had seen each other, in his bustling restaurant near Atlanta. Least of all Chef Peacock. The chef had left Alabama for college, vowing never, ever, to return. But return he had, drawn there to document the foodways of his (our) home state, to learn to grow indigo and heritage varietal wheat, and to offer guests that “invitation to notice,” cleverly disguised as a biscuit-making class.
I had first met Scott through Ginger, when I was serendipitously back in Atlanta for a visit from my newish adopted home in Northern California, on a night she had arranged to meet the then-most-talked-about chef in the region, to try to cajole him into catering her daughter’s wedding—another thing he had vowed never to do. But a mutual friend had introduced them after my cousin, the bride-to-be, read an article about the chef in the New York Times, and none other would do. My surprise appearance at the meeting was meant to be the clincher, because of my foodie cred as the then-leader of the Marin County convivium of Slow Food.
Notwithstanding Scott’s own impressive CV that includes a stint as executive chef at the Georgia governor’s mansion and running his own highly acclaimed restaurant, he had become, and remains, a revered practitioner and arbiter of authentic Southern cuisine, in no small part due to his professional, and deeply personal, association with the late, great Edna Lewis. “Miss Lewis,” an African American woman who grew up in the small farming settlement of Freetown, Orange County, Virginia, the granddaughter of an emancipated enslaved man who helped found the community. Miss Lewis is widely regarded as having introduced, and elevated, American country cooking to a wider audience through her four books, as well as her restaurant, Café Nicholson, which served as a gathering place for bohemians and artists in Manhattan during the 1950s. One of those books, The Gift of Southern Cooking, Recipes and Revelations from Two Great American Cooks (Knopf, 2003), co-authored with Scott, remains the “go to” for Southern cooking for many, including me.
It was through Miss Lewis that the young chef, a white gay man 50 years Miss Lewis’ junior, was invited into the hallowed world of the most highly acclaimed American, and international, chefs, including Alice Waters. At the time of that fateful first dinner in Atlanta, Waters was board chair of Slow Food USA. Hence my presumed “hook.” In truth, it was a shared reverence and enthusiasm for Southern cuisine, and Ginger’s willingness to build a “tent kitchen” in her backyard that would accommodate enough deep fryers to prepare Scott’s famous fried oysters and fried chicken for 250-plus guests, that sealed the deal. It was transcendent.
So it was with great excitement that Ginger and I read the news that Scott was offering a glimpse into his new life, back in Alabama, through The Black Belt Biscuit Experience. For the next year or so we kept saying to each other “we’ve got to go,” but hadn’t made it happen. Then Martha struck. Yes, that Martha… When Martha Stewart Living covered Scott in its Thanksgiving issue last year, we rushed to book our date, knowing his dance card would soon fill up. Little did we know our late February 2020 convergence would be one of the last Scott would be able to host before our entire nation was admonished to stay home due to COVID-19. I will be forever grateful.
Yes, we learned to make Scott’s rightfully world-famous, ethereal biscuits, but the memories and lessons gained that day resonate much more broadly, and deeply, than the alchemy of flour, buttermilk and lots of butter.
I often say I love to cook, but hate to bake. That’s because baking requires exact measurements and, notably, more focus.
The pandemic’s shutdown of our favorite local restaurants beckoned my family back into the kitchen together more often than we had been in years. Distance learning meant my then-junior in high school was not out of the house from early morning until dark, so we unexpectedly had the luxury of time to plan meals and cook side by side. We ordered buckwheat flour and learned to re-create for ourselves the crepes we were missing from the Sunday San Rafael Farmers’ Market; we hand-rolled pasta that we hung to dry on a broom handle balanced between chairs; the “over-21s” of us experimented with new cocktails (lots of them). And I baked biscuits.
In the midst of the maelstrom of bad news that seemed to compound upon itself every day, I accepted—again and again, and not just in the kitchen—Scott’s and his biscuits’ invitation to notice. To acknowledge the proverbial “silver linings” of this once-in-our-lifetime (I hope) period. They were not hard to see, and appreciate, once I paused to notice.
It’s a practice that I know will serve me to continue once we are able to freely move about again, harkening not from some ancient philosopher, or ascetic issuing words of wisdom from high atop a mountain, but from the magic that can result from the combination of a few simple ingredients and a focused intention: the biscuit.
