Buttermilk Biscuits and Brent's Biscuit Fish

Mom's basic biscuit recipe:

2 cups sifted flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup milk

Sift together dry indgredients. Cut in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Add milk all at once, stir only till dough follows fork around bowl.
Turn out on lightly floured surface, knead gently 30 seconds.

Brent's Note: I dunno about gently. Mom says work the dough as little as possible, but I find folding it on itself and kneading it at least some yields flakier biscuits.
Roll out about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Cut with biscuit cutter, bake on ungreased baking sheet at 450 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

Brent's Biscuit Fish
Actually, this is a modification of a recipe from Jacques Pepin.

Sized for one person:
1 cucumber
1 vine-ripened tomato
2 garlic cloves
1 leftover biscuit
1 cod fish fillet 1 onion
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
GOOD White wine

Slice the ends off the cucumber, then peel it with a vegetable peeler. Then slice lengthwise in half, then slice again into quarters. Remove seeds.

Chop up cucumber into (roughly) 1/4 or 1/8 inch pieces.
Dice a tomato.
Mince the garlic.
Dice the onion.

In the picture above you can see I already had some leftover diced onion. Something I learned from Pepin is that if you dice up some onion for a recipe that doesn't use the whole thing, put it in a colander and rinse the diced onion with water, then drain and use as normal. The remainder can now be put in a zip-lock baggie and kept for quite a while without it getting that nasty sulfur smell/taste. As a result, I almost always have some diced/minced onion in the fridge now since I use it in so many other dishes - it's handy to have.

Heat some olive oil (a small puddle - a few tablespoons?) in a pan, then add rougly equal parts onion and cucumber and sautee until the onion is clear or just starting to brown. Add the garlic, give one quick stir, then immediately add the tomato (don't want to scorch the garlic but do want to sautee it briefly). Then add the white wine. I don't measure any of this, I just do it by proportions seen in the previous pictures. Be sure to use a good white wine, not the denture-cleaner labeled "cooking wine" at the grocery store. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it. (grin). The amount of wine to add is, just enough that it starts to look a bit soupy. I usally add some freshly ground pepper just before the wine has reduced and I plate it up (to taste).

While the veggies are first started cooking, take a biscuit and crumble it into a blender. Add a dash of salt and pepper, and turn it into crumbs. They should be just a bit salty. Pour onto a small plate and dredge the fish fillet in the crumbs so it's well coated and sautee in butter or olive oil. I do both the fish and the veggies at the same time (in separate pans of course). By the time the wine has reduced so the veggies/wine aren't soupy anymore, the fish fillet is usually about done.

Pour the sticky veggie mixture onto a plate and place the fish fillet on top.