No Fancy Kitchen Tools Required: Easy Cookie and Bacon Biscuit Recipes

Have you ever found a recipe you were dying to try—but didn’t have the right tools and kitchen supplies? Sometime around midweek last week, I impulsively decided I wanted to make a Calabrian lasagna for dinner—but (and I can’t explain this) I didn’t have a lasagna pan. So I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond after work to buy one—thinking it would be easy. Turns out, the store only had cake pans, they were too shallow, I wound up making a lasagna in a 2-inch-deep pan, it was fine, not perfect, but the whole experience was very fraught and I wouldn’t recommend last-minute lasagna-pan buying to anyone.

Anyhoo.

In his gorgeous new cookbook, Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home, chef Marcus Samuelsson gives us a peek behind the scenes at his family kitchen. And one of the most genius things I found in the book is a whole bunch of super-easy dinner-party-ready recipes that

don’t

require anything remotely out of the ordinary—which means that even if you have a minimally stocked kitchen cabinet, you’ll still be able to make huge batches of delicious foods for a horde of hungry guests.

I especially loved Samuelsson’s mini-manifesto on cooking with your hands—so much so that I asked the publisher specially to excerpt it here for you guys:

In Marcus Samuelsson’s *Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home*, he writes:

I’m constantly asked, “What’s the most important tool in the kitchen?” For me, it’s hands. They give us the authority to call any dish ours. Think of strudel dough stretched with the back of your hands, couscous rolled between your palms, Chinese noodles pulled to imperfect perfection. We use our hands to mix meatballs, to knead dough, to prod fish or meat, or tap a cake to determine doneness. Cooks on television always taste with a spoon, but at home we know our hands are clean and we taste with our fingers. My grandmother would always ladle her gravy into her palm and slurp it up. “You have to taste a lot of gravy to get it,” she’d say.

There’s a Korean saying: > sson maat. It translates as “hand taste,” but the meaning is that the food tastes so good because the cook has the taste in her fingertips.

Our hands are an elemental way of putting food into our mouths too. You’re never closer to your food than when you lick the dripping juices from a burger off the side of your hand. Eating with your hands is also an indication of the greatest trust and sharing. In Ethiopia, eating with your hands is > gursha, a sign of the utmost trust and sharing.

I love that.

Here are two of chef Marcus Samuelsson’s amazing handmade recipes from his new cookbook. I hope you love them as much as I do!

Bacon Biscuits With Jalapeno Scrambled Eggs and Grilled Corn

Serves 8, with leftover biscuits

I made this for myself for breakfast once and realized it was too good not to serve to friends. Bacony biscuits, loaded with cheese and chives and brushed with maple syrup, next to a bowl of spicy scrambled eggs and grilled corn. Could there be a better brunch? Now I whip up a batch of these whenever we have houseguests and leave the extra biscuits on the counter so my guests can nibble on them whenever they are feeling hungry. I promise you there are never any left at the end of the day.

For the biscuits:

6 thick-cut slices bacon

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, plus 1 tablespoon, melted

1 1/2 cups grated Cheddar (6 ounces)

1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese

1/4 cup chopped fresh chives

3/4 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons maple syrup

For the corn:

4 medium ears corn, cut in half

2 tablespoons olive oil

For the eggs:

4 slices bacon, chopped

3 jalapenos, chopped

12 large eggs

1 cup half-and-half

Pinch of cayenne

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Make the biscuits:

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

2. Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until it’s crisp and brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to absorb the excess fat, then crumble.

3. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a food processor and process for 5 seconds. Add the cold butter. Process until the mixture begins to resemble coarse meal, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a large bowl. Add the bacon, Cheddar, blue cheese, and chives. Toss to blend. Gradually add the buttermilk, mixing with your hand until the liquid is fully incorporated into the dough.

4. Lightly flour your hands, grab about 1/2 cup of dough, and pat it into a rough round. Put the biscuit on the baking sheet. Continue with the remaining dough, placing the biscuits 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.

5. Bake the biscuits until they are golden and a knife inserted into center comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes. Combine the melted butter and maple syrup and lightly brush on the biscuits.

Grill the corn:

6. Preheat a gas grill to high.

7. Brush the corn with the olive oil, put it on the grill, and cook until the corn is caramelized and some of the kernels have popped, 10 to 15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes.

Make the eggs:

8. Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Add one of the chopped jalapenos and saute until the jalapeno is tender and the edges are brown, about 4 minutes.

9. Beat together the eggs, half-and-half, and the remaining jalapenos. Season with cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour into the skillet with the bacon and turn the heat to low. Cook, scraping the eggs across the bottom of the skillet to make large curds, until the eggs are cooked but still moist, about 5 minutes.

Spiced Chocolate-Chip Cookies (pictured, top)

Makes 5 dozen cookies

I spice my chocolate-chip cookies with cinnamon, cardamom, and Aleppo pepper.

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper or cayenne

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 large eggs

2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (60% cacao)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, with racks in the middle and upper third. Line two baking sheets with parchment.

2. Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, Aleppo pepper, cardamom, and cinnamon in a bowl.

3. Beat the butter, both sugars, and vanilla extract with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl. Stir in the dry ingredients, then the chocolate chips.

4. Drop rounded tablespoons of the dough onto the baking sheets, spacing the cookies 2 inches apart.

5. Bake the cookies until they’re golden brown, 9 to 11 minutes, switching the pans from top to bottom and front to back halfway through. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely. Let the baking sheets cool, line with fresh parchment, and bake the rest of the cookies. Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook At Home (c) 2014 by Marcus Samuelsson. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.