Notice I say nearly.

Because I have succeeded in baking. I have, at this moment, a mouth full of biscuit.

I’ve been looking for a simple biscuit recipe for a while now, because I don’t feel as though I have the counter space to make bread (nor much of the equipment), but I go through a lot of bread (sandwiches, mostly, and for breakfast before early-morning classes). I’m lucky in that the Fairway in Harlem is only a ten-minute walk from my dormitory, but still — there’s no reason to make unnecessary bread runs when I should be writing essays.

All the recipes in The Joy of Cooking, Beard on Bread (one of the most truly horrible titles in the history of the universe), and whatever else I flicked through over the last few weeks have kneading and resting and use biscuit cutters and warn darkly against making bscuits that aren’t all equal in size. But this recipe for cream drop biscuits over at Epicurious has none of that.

I didn’t stick exactly to the recipe there, mostly because I wanted a biscuit that was a little more flexible than one with cream, which wouldn’t, I think, have worked with, say, avocado. There are three avocados ripening on the shelf over my desk, and I’m not going to be distracted from them by a biscuit that’s too rich.

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups low-fat buttermilk

Oven: 400 F.

Directions
Stir together dry ingredients in a bowl. Add buttermilk slowly and mix just until a dough is formed. Drop heaping spoonfuls onto greased baking sheets, making about twelve biscuits. Bake 15-20 minutes, unntil golden brown.

They’re a little doughy, and there’s something off about the ratio of sugar to salt — next time I’ll try it without the sugar entirely — but they’re prefectly adequete for a snack and the hallway outside my room smells like baking. I’m calling this a win.

And my history-major (and literature-addict) self couldn’t resist the theme, either: Back to School.

The only dish I’ve ever had caraway in, to the best of my knowledge, is rye bread. Now, I admit, I’ve eaten a lot of rye bread, but it wasn’t until recently, when I was unfortunate enough to eat a slice of rye bread that did not include caraway seeds, that I ever noticed the flavor.

What are those little brown crunchy things? What do they actually taste like, when the tongue isn’t distracted by pastrami and roast beef and mustard? What would they taste like in something else?

The spice caraway, Latin name Carum carvi, has been used since the Stone Age. It comes either from northern Europe or western Asia; I’m a little inclined to the western Asia theory, mostly because its name is derived from Arabic: karawya — apparently the term is still used today. By now, though, it’s used all over Europe and North America, and is mostly popular in Austria, Hungary, and Germany.

Caraway was popular in the Middle Ages, a common item on the spice routes through Belgium and Poland, and is the major flavoring in the quintisenntially English treat seed-cake. Shakespeare refers to it (above), in Henry IV, Part II; a 1525 Herbal claims it beneficial for “flatulence, coughs, ‘the frenzy’, ‘the biting of venemous beasts’ [I really hope he means the bites from, not that it helps one to gnaw on such beasts], ’scabs and tetters’ and as a tonic for baldness”; and Nicholas Culpeper, in The English Physician (1652) cites caraway as “conducing to all the cold griefs of Head and Stomach, the Bowels or Mother, as also the wind in them, and helpeth to sharpen the Eye-sight. The Pouder of the Seed put into a Pultis, taketh away black and blue spots of Blows or Bruises. The Herb it self, or with some of the Seed bruised and fryed, laid hot in a bag or double cloth to the lower part of the Belly, easeth the pains of the wind Chollick. Caraway Comfects, once only dipped in Sugar, and half a spoonful of them eaten in the morning fasting, and as many after each meal is a most admirable Remedy for such as are troubled with Wind.”

I could find no recipe for “Caraway Comfects”, but Culpepper’s mention of sugar made me think of pfeffernusse, the black-pepper cookies of Scandinavia. I’d already promised Jenny cookies as an oblique thank-you for being awesome, and when I found a recipe for seed cake in Ortiz’s Encycopedia, I decided to combine the two.

Ingredients

1 egg

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 cup butter

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

3 cups cake flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Oven: 400 F/200 C

Directions
Sift together flour and baking soda.

Beat egg, add sugar, beat in.

Add lemon, butter, caraway, several grounds of fresh black pepper.

Mix wet and dry ingredients.

Roll small balls, drop onto greased cookie sheet, flatten slightly with the back of a wooden spoon.

Bake 10 minutes.

They came out brilliantly; straight out of the oven, they were soft and slightly chewy, and once they’d cooled, the crumb was tender, almost cakelike. One thing I hadn’t expected was how pale they were — these cookies don’t brown. At all. It’s impossible to tell that they’re done, visually, and I had to resort to the stab-with-a-toothpick mechanism. The black pepper didn’t come through at all (which I’m sorry about; the next time I make these, I’ll add more), and when you first bite into one, it seems like an ordinary sugar cookie for a split second. And then the taste and scent of caraway opens up, and dominates everything else.

It’s not quite like rye bread, not quite, but it’s not unlike, either. It’s more delicate than rye bread, likely because of the white flour instead of the rye flour. These are really good for dipping in tea, since they store well, and a strong black tea (Assam was one I liked) seems to work best. They might be good with wine, too; a sweet red, maybe, and that’s something I’ll have to try next time, too.

Of course there’s going to be a next time.

References:

Culpeper, Nicholas. The English physitian: or an astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation. London: Peter Cole, 1652. Electronic text: Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University (http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/culpeper/culpeper.htm).

Heise, Jennifer A. Savory Seeds in the Middle Ages. http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/seeds.html.
Ortiz, Elizabeth Lambert. Encyclopedia of Herbs, Spices & Flavorings. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1992.

The Residence Life website isn’t exactly helpful, either — all I know is that there is no “community refrigerator” in the suite (I assume to cut down on suitemates’s squabbling), only a “specially designed ‘fridge niche’ in each room.” This makes me very nervous. If they’re talking about the same kind of fridge I had last year, when I was not in a suite, the classic knee-high mini-fridge, I’m going to starve by mid-September.

My thought, since I decided not to have a meal plan, had been to cook dishes that keep — beef stew, in the winter, for example; tomato sauce for pasta while I can still get better-than-decent tomatoes at Fairway; and to always have on hand some stock. But if I don’t have a fridge/freezer to store such delectables in…you see the difficulty.

When I put my uni cookware in storage at the beginning of the summer, I recall that all I had was a slightly dented saute pan, a ridiculous tiny (and dented) pot, some wooden spoons, a spatula, and assorted cutlery and dishes. Last year I had a meal plan. Clearly this equipment will not suffice; therefore, I’ve spent, um, some time going through the Williams-Sonoma and Sur la Table websites.

What? It’s totally an efficient use of my time!

Unfortunately, the only conclusion I can come to is that I need to rob a bank.

There’s a lot that I want (oh, man, do I want a wok), but I’ve managed to narrow it down. I need knives; I can’t function without knives. I need a cutting board. I need storage containers (I think. I’m going to have to figure out some way to cook ahead, in some way.). A colander would be really nice, because I eat a lot of pasta (not essential, I managed to eat pasta last year without a colander, but it would make my life easier). I need a bigger pot, because the one I have makes two, maybe three, servings.

And there goes my first month of work-study salary, if not more; and I don’t even have a work-study job lined up yet.

I know, I know, Williams-Sonoma and Sur la Table and A Cook’s Companion and all those other fantastic kitchenware stores in Manhattan are overpriced; they sell you things you don’t really need; and I know I can get all of that fairly cheaply (except possibly the knives; knives, in my experience, do tend to reflect their workmanship in the price, and I’m enough of a wimp to be utterly convinced that an unbalanced knife is a threat to my survival), but still. I don’t want to have to buy new cookware every year.

Besides, there’s a M.F.K. Fisher quote I used to have scrawled in a notebook that’s always resonated with me:

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love?

(The Gastronomical Me. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc., 1943.)

I don’t want to spend my cooking time wishing I had other things, better things. I want to like what I have and want to use it. I want cooking to be my safe place in the madness and stress that is university, I want to find pleasure in that more-than-bodily communion.

I’m still not sure what it is I’m going to buy first; probably the pot and the cutting board, the knives will come when I start getting paychecks again, and I think I’ll also ask around in my family — my grandmother and mother are packrats — to see if anyone has things in the back of a closet that they’re willing to give me. I’m still afraid that I’m going to end up needing some piece of equipment that I don’t have and can’t fake (I don’t play tennis, so the way Jack Lemmon’s character in The Apartment drains spaghetti– yes, a tennis racket — isn’t even an option), but I keep telling myself that the greatest achievement of the species Homo sapiens is language; the second greatest, adaptability.

Besides, it’ll make a fantastic story. Eventually.