Biegnets!

My niece's current favorite movie is Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." The music is great, and message of the movie is a good one for young women. Rather than resign herself and her fate in waiting for some Prince to come and make everything better, Tiana is a worker bee. She has dreams, but they are dreams she is willing to work to achieve.  That's good enough for me.  Tiana's biggest dream is to open her own restaurant, one of her signature dishes is the classic New Orleans Biegnet.  The first time I saw them I said "Oh Goody!  Fry Bread!"  The Spanish call them "Sopapillos."  It's all good.

I will be off the grid for the next few days.  I have some serious gigging to do over the weekend, I'm going to try and sneak in a tuna fishing trip too.  Busy hands are happy hands.

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INGREDIENTS

1 cup lukewarm water

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg, room temperature, well beaten

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup heavy cream

3 teaspoons yeast

1 teaspoon kosher salt 

Mix the yeast and sugar in the lukewarm water and let stand for five minutes until the top is foamy.
Add in the egg, butter and cream and beat with the dough hook attachment until reasonably smooth.
Add the flour and the salt, and knead at a medium speed for ten minutes.  The resulting dough should be soft, smooth, and very elastic.  Form that into an oval wrap well with plastic and refrigerate overnight.  This is critical to the biegnet.  The mixing and kneading process has released a lot of the glutens in the flour.  We need them to relax now in order to have a puffy, tender biegnet.  Chewey biegnets suck out loud.

In the morning take out the chilled dough, and working as quickly as you can, roll it out to a uniform 1/4 inch thickness.  Cut into 2 or 3 inch squares.  Fry in three inches of a light oil, peanut is best, canola will do at 380°, turning when a deep golden brown.
Cool on a rack, over paper towel, dust with confectioner's sugar.

Et voila!  C'est magnifique!  Laissez les bontemps roullez!

Party on.

Comments

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

How you don't weigh 300 pounds is a wonder.

Having biegnets and chicory coffee in New Orleans for the first time was a revelation.

By the way, you seem like an excellent uncle.

[low-tech cyclist]

There's no way I'm making beignets at home, because then I would weigh 300 lbs.

I'd just like to know of someplace in the DC area that bakes reasonably authentic beignets, so my wife and I can split a plateful of them some weekend morning. It's a long way to Cafe du Monde.

[kathy a.]

mhb must have about 30 people at his house. or several teenagers. every single food post makes me want to run out and grab the ingredients, STAT, and start cooking.

and now he says he's going to abandon us entirely, stop posting even the delicious photos, because some "gig" is more important than us. hmph.

[Sir Charles]

Probably hand feeding biegnets to Van Morrison -- as if he needs them.

[minstrel hussain boy]

it's at croce's in san diego, then the old time cafe in leucadia. harmonica and acoustic guitar. old blues, stomp jazz, gay 90's singalongs.

the leucadia gig is expecting a, for contractural reasons, absolutely unbilled guest performer.

(think deep voice, growling blues...we gotta get outta dis plaze)

i intend to play some absolutely snotty slide licks.

[Sir Charles]

How cool.