Charleston’s own biscuit maven releases a new cookbook focused on family dinners
Keep on Rolling: Carrie Morey launched Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit in 2005 based on her mom’s recipe. Since then, Morey’s empire has expanded to include a variety of products, four eateries, a food truck, a TV show, and a second cookbook (Harper Horizon) released in November.
Even with an ever-expanding handmade biscuit business, four Hot Little Biscuit café locations across three states, the PBS series How She Rolls, and a second cookbook hot off the press, Carrie Morey still manages to cook supper for her family. “For me,” she writes, “the heart of our family is sitting down to eat together at the dinner table.… No matter what has happened during the day, supper time is sacred—it heals us all.” And her Hot Little Suppers: Simple Recipes to Feed Family and Friends (Harper Horizon, November 2, 2021) answers the perennial question, “What’s for dinner?”
Delightful family pictures of Carrie cooking with her husband, John, and daughters, Caroline, Cate, and Sarah, pull the reader in, and mouthwatering photographs of the dishes inspire a delicious outcome. The collection begins, not surprisingly, with a chapter on biscuits. “Think of the biscuit as a blank canvas,” advises Morey. “Stuff it, frost it, slather it, sprinkle it.” She also shares her inventive iterations including biscuit bowls, casseroles, crackers, and eggs in a hole.
Beyond Biscuits: Eldest daughter, Caroline, and her friends turn out Carrie’s recipe for cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper) with bucatini pasta in the family’s Mount Pleasant home. (Left) Pork ragu with pappardelle.
The other chapters, arranged by season, include relatively simple but definitely creative weeknight dinners and weekend suppers for inviting company or having the family cook together, plus cocktails, desserts, and Morey’s “Hot Little Extras” and “Hot Little Tips,” which translate to additional side dishes and how-to advice.
In her recipe note for the hearty pork ragu with pappardelle, Morey writes: “When you serve this pasta to guests, they’ll think you’ve been toiling at it all day long! They don’t need to know how easy it really is.” And that, dear readers, is the answer to what to cook for supper.
