Want To Roll In Style? Make These.
In Tuesday's "" email I made the sorta obvious point that just because our cooking brains are mostly consumed these days with impressive recipes that we can make over the holidays, it doesn't mean that we can neglect our ho-hum weeknight cooking duties. Well, that was Tuesday. This is Friday.
So, here's another impressive recipe that we can make over the holidays. (Sorry if you're already up to your eyeballs in them; I can't help it.) The thing about this recipe is that it's not "impressive" in the sense of being extravagant or difficult; it's just the best possible version of the most ordinary possible food: the dinner roll.
More specifically, these are Parker House Rolls, which are the quintessential dinner rolls as far as I'm concerned. They're loaded with butter (in the dough and brushed on top before and after baking), which may explain why they're so good. Since we've already established that these aren't what most people would call "healthy," don't miss the opportunity to sprinkle them with some coarse salt after the second butter rinse. The variation using garlic-parsley butter is equally impossible to resist.
I'm not sure that dinner rolls would make many people's list of top ten iconic foods to eat around the holidays and New Years, but why not? They're an appropriate start to all sorts of festive meals, are perfect for swiping up all of the wonderful sauces and roasting juices that tend to be on our tables this time of year, and, while they're not hard to make, they do take some effort, which will show the people you're cooking for that you actually like them.
And if you don't actually like them, this is a good way to fake it. Enjoy the weekend.
—Mark
The quintessential dinner roll (not surprisingly, given all the butter, both in the dough and brushed on top). Use coarse salt for sprinkling at the end; the extra crunch is fantastic.
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