Farmer's market breakfast ✌️ ways

Chive Biscuits with Mushroom & Sausage Gravy + Cheddar Chive Crusted Quiche

I mean I guess if its going to keep pretending to be winter, we better eat that way, shouldn’t we?

No, really, what the heck is up with this dang weather? Gray and wind and rain and snow and cold and blustery every gosh darn day. We get two days in the 60s (maybe it was just one day? I can’t even remember anymore!) and then nine consecutive days of garbage. Yuck! And that’s coming from a pretty optimistic, glass half full, get-out-in-all-kinds-of-weather type person.

I guess its time we all just accepted this April for what it is. A great time to eat more butter.

Enter: biscuits & gravy.

Today’s recipe(s) is a riff on one we make often. Actually, it’s a riff on a whole bunch of things we make often.

1. Biscuits— If you’re new to following me, you might not know that making biscuits is one of my favorite things to do on weekends (and apparently also weekdays this week). I have several great biscuits recipes on my blog (see here, here, and here) and encourage you to try them from scratch. You’ll want to follow the instructions below carefully (especially the part about working it quickly), but I promise they really are not a difficult thing to make.

2. Gravy- We love to make traditional biscuit gravy with pork sausage from our friends at SchumAcres (their last name is Schumacher, isn’t that precious!?). And we also love to make a mushroom gravy for biscuits when we’re feeling the need to keep things a little “lighter”. This week, I did a little merge of those two favorites, wanting to use both the sausage and mushrooms I got from the Dane County farmers’ market on Saturday! I also added spinach to the gravy because green things are good and I think its called balanced to put green things in dishes filled with butter and cream?

3. Quiche— Because we have 4+ dozen eggs at our house right now (we had a rather fortunate double 2-dozen delivery from two of our favorite farmers last weekend), biscuits & gravy didn’t feel like enough breakfast food. I wanted to keep things simple so I played with the same flavor profile as above using breakfast sausage, mushrooms, the chives growing outside my back stoop, and this time also a little cheddar from the market. I didn’t have enough spinach for both meals so this quiche has some beautiful rainbow chard from my friend Beth’s greenhouse thrown in for a real taste-of-April-bounty kind of flair (even though rainbow chard in April is ridiculous, especially this frigid April, and only possible because my friend Beth is a farming goddess and installed an incredible geothermal greenhouse on her property this last year. More on that later).

I think all of the recipes turned out exceptionally well and will provide some great hearty nourishment to get us a little closer to May when DEAR GOD LET IT PLEASE BE WARMER.

That’s all for now folks. I hope you enjoy these recipes tremendously and they warm you well.

-Lauren

P.S. I still have more work to do on that bee pollen. Someone asked me on Monday what my verdict was on my new farmers’ market treat, and I can honestly say, that salad was amazing, but my opinion on bee pollen is still out. It wasn’t a large enough part of that dish to have a strong stance just yet. I’ll keep playing. Don’t worry.

P.P.S. In case you were wondering, this snowy, windy, cold ass spring has both Kyle and I feeling a lot of (very great) feelings about our decision to not farm this year. We are both pretty much giddy that we don’t have to schedule around the constant rain, lay landscape fabric in these wind super storms, or concern ourselves with any amount of “are we behind already” kinds of stress. And the giddiness also makes us feel guilty because we are from the Midwest and making a positive change for ourselves in spite of expectations gives us all kinds of weird feelings. And yet, we’re so freaking happy not to be wrangling row cover in wind storms. So there’s the mid-April year off of farming feelings dump for you. Many more of these to come I’m SURE. And now, let’s eat.

CHIVE BISCUITS WITH MUSHROOM & SAUSAGE GRAVY

Serves 6-8
Takes 30 minutes

For the biscuits:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
9 tablespoons butter, cubed and well-chilled
1/4 cup minced chives
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon heavy cream (or milk), as needed

For the gravy:
1 pound pork sausage
10 ounces shittake (or other favorite) mushrooms, torn or sliced
2 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5 cups whole milk
4 cups spinach, cut into bite-size pieces
1-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
14 twists freshly ground black pepper

Fresh eggs, cooked to your taste, optional
Microgreens, optional
Minced chives, optional

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, combine the biscuit flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the cubed, chilled butter and blend it in with a pastry blender, two forks, and/or your hands (pinching quickly to keep the butter cold- keeping it as cold as possible yields more flaky goodness) until pieces of butter are pea-sized and well incorporated into the flour. Add chives and stir to combine. Add buttermilk, and stir until dough begins to come together. If it is still quite dry, add additional cream or milk.

3. Turn out biscuit dough onto a dry, unfloured counter. It may not be fully together in one solid mass at this point. Use your hands to quickly work the dryer pieces into the dough. Press into an inch-tall circle and cut out biscuits using a biscuit cutter, round cookie cutter, or large glass (I like a 2 - 2-1/2 inch sizing here for nice, large biscuits).

4. Place on a baking sheet and cook until puffed, golden brown and cooked through, about 13-15 minutes.

5. While the biscuits bake, prepare your gravy.

6. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Brown sausage well, letting it cook a few minutes before stirring so that there are some crispy bits throughout. This should take about 10 minutes. Remove sausage to a bowl and add mushrooms to the pan with butter. Cook mushrooms over medium heat while the butter melts until tender, about 5 minutes.

7. Add sausage back to skillet along with flour. Reduce heat to medium low and cook mixture, while stirring, until flour coats sausage and mushrooms. Add in half of the milk and stir well. Continue stirring until the mixture begins to thicken. It should happen quickly, in 1-2 minutes. If it doesn’t, increase the heat slightly. Once thickened, add in the remaining milk along with the spinach, salt, and pepper. Continue cooking until spinach is well-wilted and sauce reaches your desired consistency. This should take about 5 minutes.

8. By now, the biscuits should be finished. Break them in half, place them in bowls, and cover with sausage gravy. Add cooked eggs, if desired, as well as any microgreens and chives you are using. Enjoy!!

Prep ahead: If making biscuits ahead of time, prep the dough, cut them out, and freeze the raw biscuit-shaped circles of dough. Bake them straight from the freezer when you’re ready to eat them. It will take 18-20 minutes instead of 13-15. Sausage gravy can also be made in advance. Store it in the fridge (for up to 5 days) until ready to use. Heat whatever portion you plan to eat, and if its too thick (it might be), add milk until it reaches the desired consistency you want.

Okay, ready for more??

As I said earlier, the other recipe I developed with my farmers’ market bounty builds on the same flavors, ingredients, and preparations included above.

To access the recipe for my quiche (with pork sausage, mushrooms, rainbow chard, and a cheddar chive crust), you can upgrade to one of my paid subscription options and the post will automatically appear for you. This platform is cool huh?

Thanks everyone for your support!

Getting this project started has been a dream come true for me, and I feel so lucky to be pulling in a small income from my writing and recipes already.