So the last couple of weeks in Chicago have been cold (which we know makes me very sad). And I had a cold. So the last thing I wanted to do was cook or think about cooking, but I also wanted some comfort food, because I felt incredibly sorry for myself. I’d bought crimini mushrooms before I got sick, but mushrooms and cream and, frankly, the million and seven steps in Julia Child’s version of cream of mushroom soup did not fill me with any type of excitement or joy. Like the previous challenge, I’ve never actually eaten cream of mushroom soup, aside from a little experiment that I did with chicken pot pie years ago. The only canned soup we had when I was growing up was chicken noodle, and I’ve never had any desire to order cream of mushroom soup in a restaurant (and now that I think about it, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it listed… Is it not a favorite?).
Given how I felt, plus the fact that I am not a fan of cream based soups, I decided that I was going to make a creamless version of a soup I’ve never actually had a good version of. Why do I do these kinds of things to myself? Why do I feel as though I actually know what I’m doing in a kitchen?? What is wrong with me???
The idea for the creamless soup actually came from a roommate I had senior year of college. There were four of us living in a townhouse and we would take turns cooking, which really meant we would take turns warming up meals one woman’s mom would freeze for us or making ridiculously large bowls of spaghetti with gobs of butter and salt. My three roommates were vegetarians, which was fine, but really limited what we could eat since none of us had the time or ability to cook anything tasty (let me be honest: they truly drove me insane, because they would say things like “I’m a vegetarian, is there meat in that?” as you handed them a glass of water. I knew that it was a passing fancy (especially since somehow going to McDonald’s for happy meals did not register on the vegetarian radar), which made it 20 times more annoying when I had to use separate pans to make chicken. I know for a fact that two of them now eat meat happily).
I digress… We ate a lot of beans and pasta and rice and one roommate taught us to make creamless cream of broccoli soup. We would boil frozen broccoli in some water until it was cooked through and then strain the liquid and add the broccoli to a blender with salt, pepper, nutmeg and a little of the liquid. Instant creamy soup (with a touch of milk if we were feeling extravagant) and incredibly healthy and easy. The same thing can be done with pumpkin or butternut squash soup, so I figured why not mushroom? So I chopped up my mushrooms and sautéed them in some butter with shallots and thyme, added them to some chicken broth and eventually decided to thicken it a bit with a super easy version of béchamel sauce (a white sauce which is the base for a lot of other sauces).
And kids, it was fabulous! No seriously, I don’t think I’ve been this happy about an experiment in a really long time (if ever). It was smooth and creamy with nice bits of mushrooms for texture. The flavor tasted like fall to me, maybe because of the thyme and shallots. The white wine I used to deglaze the pan with the mushrooms and shallots added a bit of richness to it and brought it all together.
The recipe is a bit of Joy of Cooking with a bit of what-do-I-feel-like-doing, so once you get the base, I’m sure it would be easy to change it up with different mushrooms (I’d actually bought shitake mushrooms to sauté and put on top, but I let them sit a bit too long before cooking them and they seemed a bit rubbery. I’m not a fan of the earthy taste of porcini mushrooms, but I bet they’d work well, too).
The soup was the perfect comfort food on a cold day when all I wanted was a good book and something warm to make me feel better. Of course, I hope that when you make it you are healthy and happy, but keep a bit in the freezer just in case…
Creamless Cream of Mushroom Soup
Needless to say, I didn’t have a recipe for this. I thought I’d come upon one in Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World. The recipe for fufu from Ghana sounded similar, but some searching on the interwebs led me to believe that these are two completely different foods with different textures and eaten in totally different ways. My main problem was that I had no idea what the consistency of mofongo was supposed to be. I could guess what plantain, garlic and pork would taste like together, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to have something creamy or crispy, dense or light at the end. I thought all of the frying would leave me with crispy and dense, but then I discovered that the end result needed to be rolled into a ball that could be added to soup or eaten with a sauce, so how was crispy going to work? Finally, one recipe said it should have the consistency of mashed (not whipped) potatoes. I decided to go with that and hope for the best.
I made the decision that recipe integrity be damned, I was not going to schlep home a pestle and mortar and deep fryer for this one dish. So I decided to use my blender set to chop and a deep bottomed skillet for frying. Luckily I have a candy/deep fryer thermometer, so I could test the temperature of the oil. I also decided to go with the bacon rather than trying to figure out the pork crackling sitch, because it was Sunday and I wanted bacon for breakfast anyway…
Green Plantain
All of the recipes called for green plantain, which was readily available at the local grocery store, so yeah! for one easy part of the recipe (an aside here: plantain is not pronounced plan-tane, but plan-tin. Trust me on this [but if you don’t believe me or my Caribbean family, dictionary.com will say it for you]. If I can stop one person from mispronouncing this word again I will feel my work in the food blog world is done).
So the recipe. Most of the ones I found online were the same except for one thing, which I learned late Sunday afternoon is kind of a crucial difference between the recipe working and failing miserably. The recipe I went with the first time around—from El Boricua, a Puerto Rican newsletter (http://www.elboricua.com/mofongo.html) –said that I needed to make tostones first and then use them in my mofongo. Tostones are basically twice-fried plantains (you fry the plantain, then press them down so they spread a bit and then fry them again).
Tostones
While really tasty and happy, I couldn’t get this version to stay in a ball if my culinary life depended on it.
Extra Crispy Mofongo Before It Fell Apart...
It was too crispy and there wasn’t nearly enough moisture to hold it together. I thought about adding some chicken broth, but that would have involved actually having chicken broth, so, um, yeah…. I also thought that adding broth would make it soggy rather than making it moist. There’s no way that this version would hold up in a soup or sauce without falling apart, but I could see substituting it for breadcrumbs on chicken or fish or a roast.
I decided to do the recipe again, but skipped the second frying of the plantains and that led me to as close to a mofongo as I think I’ll get until I taste a professional version and try it again. It was much easier the second time around, and the flavors and texture seemed right.
Is this the real deal?
I got the mashed potato consistency after about 10 seconds in the blender and was able to roll it into balls with no problem. I didn’t try dropping them into soup to see how they’d hold up, but I think it’d work. I leave it up to Moe to test and let me know if I’m even close…
Mofongo (compilation of recipes)
We’ve discussed the fact that Heather doesn’t really know what to cook or bake on any given day. And Michelle is super busy getting a PhD ([from Heather]: because she’s a rockstar like that!), so cooking has kind of taken a backseat to statistics. Add to that the fact that buying the ingredients, actually making the dish, taking a gazillion photos of it and then writing about it takes time, and you can see why days, weeks, months pass before anything new and tasty is posted here.
So! We’re asking for your help (and knowing what nice and lovely people you are out there in food blog land, we know you won’t let us down [hint hint]). Is there a recipe out there that you’ve been wanting to try, but don’t have the time to test? Or one that you’ve tried that didn’t quite work and you want to know if it’s you or the recipe (trust us, it’s the recipe–you’re a fabulous cook!). Or! Is there something you’ve tasted and really really want to duplicate, but can’t find a recipe for? Send them to us and we’ll work on it and post our thoughts, tweaks and pictures (and totally give you the credit for how well it turned out). You can leave it in the comments or email us at pestlemortar@sbcglobal.net.
Of course, keep in mind that neither of us are independently wealthy, so let’s keep the recipes involving shaved truffles and foie gras to minimum. And if there’s some exotic ingredient not readily available at our local grocery store, give us a hint as to where to get it. Finally, it should come as no shock that neither of us are professional cooks or bakers, so if it involves plucking our own chickens or making mayonnaise from scratch, pretty much go ahead and figure we aren’t going to do it. Otherwise, we are totally up for some challenges!
Think of us as your personal chefs and taste testers. What can we make for you?
Even though summer never really started, fall totally snuck up and scared me half to death. And I didn’t really expect it to pull up a chair and get comfy so quickly, you know? One day I’m in a cute sundress and flippies, the next I’m seeing 48 degrees on the weather channel. Give a girl a minute to transition the wardrobe and shoes, ok?
At any rate, this is my favorite season and not just for the boots and sweaters and Halloween candy. I love that after months of eating salads and fruit and everything else that screams summer (ok, ice cream and hotdogs, too), I can switch out the teeny outfits for comfy clothes and make soups and stews and breads and pies to keep me warm from the inside out. I don’t have a fireplace, but if I did it would be blazing at all times so that I could burn leaves (is that legal?) and curl up with a glass of wine and a book. Fall definitely speaks to my Cancer-esque homebody tendencies.
Last year, a good friend gave me a crock pot for my birthday (she was a good friend before, but that really upped things!) and although I was a little wary of leaving it on all day, when I learned about all of the happiness that slowed cooked meat can bring to my life, I was a quick convert. 
Just as belted cardigans are the “it” fashion item for the season (really?), a crock pot is a definite accessory (really!). I do lamb and chicken and beef stew and soups in it and most recently, pulled pork.
I’m a little sad about the pulled pork discovery, because (1) I missed out on a whole year of it and (2) I doubt it’s something I could eat every day—regardless of it being the other white meat—even though I really, really, really want to.
I also made s’mores in my oven.
And while there is nothing quite like sitting around a campfire singing songs or telling scary stories while you roast marshmallows on a stick, making s’mores in your oven avoids that whole sitting-outside-in-the-cold-and-getting-splinters-in-your-unmentionables-and-then-having-to-sleep-in-a-tent-with-people-you-don’t-really-like thing (not that that’s a true story from Girl Scout camp or anything). 
So, while I would have liked a bit more summer sun and warm breezes, I am happy that fall is here, with all of the goodness it brings. Now if we can just get winter to maybe take a little sabbatical…
Pulled Pork Sandwiches (adapted from Good Housekeeping) and S’mores
Even though I haven’t been in school for many many [many] years, September always feels like the start of the new year for me. I used to love getting all of my school supplies organized and ready, pack and repack my backpack and lay out my first day of school clothes (any wonder that I wasn’t invited to one party all of high school?). I have been trying to remember my last first day of school, which would have been my third year of law school, and I don’t remember anything at all except that I really probably didn’t want to go. I was over the whole law school thing before it even started, it seemed, which is not the best way to go into a situation that will leave you in debt well into your grandchildren’s adulthood. When I graduated from college—aimless, jobless and with a degree in International Studies and French—my family gave me a year to find gainful employment or go back to school. Easy choice at the time. I spent the summer after college in a tug of war between “oh my god, how embarrassed would I be if I don’t get in anywhere” and “oh crap, if I actually get in, I’ll have to go.”
My reward for my months of studying and writing essays and typing my name and social security number over and over was to spend four months in Paris. I saved all of my money from the job I had for six months so that I didn’t have to think about lying to French employers about having a work visa. I packed two huge suitcases and tried to forget that I would need to make a decision about the rest of my life by May 1. I had no idea what I would do in Paris for four months by myself, which is exactly what I wanted.
My days quickly took on the pattern of being completely random; my path decided based on how I felt or who could come with me or whether I’d stayed out too late the night before. The only thing I did almost every day was go to a café a few blocks from my apartment called Les Recettes de Charlotte. 
It was this beautiful tea shop done up in lavender and yellow and run by a striking older woman (I never got up the courage to ask if she was Charlotte), with shocking silver hair and a waist-line that made me think she’d never tasted any of the pastries in the store. She had the usual croissants and pain au chocolat, but then there was a separate part of the display case with mille-feuille (talk to me about why they are called Napoleon’s in English…), and pot de crème and delicate petits fours. I sampled everything at least once, I think, but for some reason I always returned to the tarte aux pruneaux, the plum tart. It was kind of like a turn-over (which is such a sad way to describe something that good), with a flaky crust and a warm sweet filling. I would order my tart and a cup of one of her specialty teas and she’d serve it to me on beautiful china. I’d sit there for hours reading or writing in my journal and she’d walk around the store and we never spoke once, even though the place was usually empty. I’m sure that I was on my way there when I dropped my deposit for the law school I finally chose in the mailbox. I probably ordered two tarts that day.
I discovered that Charlotte and her tarts have moved on to places unknown [to me]. I can’t find a recipe that even comes close to what she made, but this one I made up will do in a pinch, especially since I cheated and used pre-made pie dough. Italian prune plums are in season right now, and they are a perfect balance between sweet and tart. 
Any pre-made dough will work, and I did mini-double crust pies, but you could fold them over to make turnovers or make one big tart, if you want. 
Now if only someone would serve one to me on fine china with a cup of tea….
Not Quite Charlotte’s Plum Tart
- 1 pre-made pie crust (thawed)
- 1/2 pound Italian prune plums
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
- egg wash (1 egg yolk and 2 tablespoons water , lightly beaten)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line baking sheet with parchment paper.
Cut plums in half, using line down center as a guide; remove pit and cut plum into quarters. Put plums, sugar and water into saucepan over medium and cook until plums have softened a bit but still have some firmness. Pour a bit of the liquid in to a cup and stir in the cornstarch. Add this mixture back to the saucepan with the plums and stir until liquid thickens. Let cool.
Roll out pie dough and using a small saucer as a guide, cut out four equal circles. Place on parchment paper and add filling to middle of two of the circles. Cover with rest of dough, crimping edges all the way around. Brush with egg wash. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Part of the reason—besides my procrastination—that I update so infrequently is that I really don’t know how to cook that many things. Honestly, I have about six desserts that I make really well and about three dinner dishes that I feel confident about. Nine specialties does not a blog make. I have about 15 cookbooks, 100 back issues of Bon Appétit with all of my “must try one day” recipes tagged and six months worth of Food & Wine that started to magically appear in my mailbox and just as magically disappeared one day. All of this to say that when I need to, I can follow a recipe pretty well, but god forbid I should be forced to cook a month’s worth of original meals on my own. I am completely jealous of people who can look at a raw chicken and come up with seven different ways to prepare it without breaking out into a sweat.
In an effort to get more comfortable in the kitchen, I try to take classes whenever I can. I don’t know that I’ve ever made one thing from any of the classes (aside from the couscous recipe below) ever again (sensing a pattern here?). My cabinets are filled with all of the utensils I’ve sworn I’d use after the class—the mats and chopsticks from my sushi making class are still in the bag mocking me each time I open the drawer—and, like the road to hell, my kitchen is paved with the best of intentions.
Last winter I took a Moroccan cooking class at The Chopping Block with the hope that I could at least learn to prepare one entire meal that I could serve to people one day. I don’t know who those people are or why they wouldn’t want to just eat out, but that was my plan. On the menu that day was fennel spiced chickpea flatbread, Moroccan braised chicken with spices and apricots, a date, saffron and mint couscous salad and an orange and saffron crème brulée. I was paired with a mother and daughter who had some obvious tension between them. The mother felt she knew everything there was to know about cooking and the daughter couldn’t have cared less about the class or learning how to dice an onion. I tend to side with mothers in these little tiffs, mainly because I can only imagine what my own mother has had to put up with over the years, but after the mom tried to school me on pouring cream into a mixer and then tried to grab a knife out of my hand while I was “incorrectly” chopping dates (is there such a thing?) I understood why the daughter rolled her eyes every 25 seconds. She and I shared a brief moment of schadenfreude when the mom poured an entire ramekin of saffron into our chicken (when we were supposed to use four strands). The nice instructor’s head almost popped off, considering saffron can run about $10 a gram and Mommy Dearest had just poured about $100 into our pan of chicken breasts.
At any rate, the meal was actually pretty simple, and looks impressive enough to serve when those mystery people come over. It’s a little much for a random Tuesday, though, which is why I’ve never tried it at home. The only part of the meal I’ve duplicated is the couscous, which is the perfect thing to take to a picnic or make a batch of and have for lunch during the week. What I like most about it is that once you get the basics in, anything you like can be added like tomatoes, tuna, or olives. I’ve also done it with orzo instead of couscous, which turned out just as well (add a little olive oil while it’s cooling).
So if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere warm enough for a picnic this Labor Day, here’s your side dish. Invite me over when you decide to make the chicken…
pink lentils (on the orange side of pink)
I started cooking Middle Eastern food about eight or nine years ago, around the same time I realized that I would be spending the rest of my life with an Israeli guy. Along with the Israeli husband, came a hard-to-please Israeli father-in-law with a voracious appetite for the Sephardic food he grew up eating. Nothing, it seemed, had enough spice for him. At restaurants, he was constantly requesting hot sauce, and when that failed, hotter sauce. When he visited us, he would bring hot peppers from his garden and spices from the Middle Eastern stores in New York—not-so-subtle hints that my cooking wasn’t quite up to Sephardic standards.
Almost a decade later, with the help of Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food, I’ve become such a Middle Eastern food snob that I, too, have a hard time eating it at restaurants. Roden is a brilliant cook and an amazing teacher. Her cookbooks read like anthropologies and histories. She gives variations on each recipe, explaining how in Egypt they might add sumac instead of lemon or in Turkey they use cinnamon instead of cumin, empowering her devotees with enough confidence to experiment in the kitchen.
Her recipe for spiced creamy lentil soup (shorbet adds in Arabic) has become a standby in my house. It’s simple, spicy (but not hot!), and soothing. And, since it uses ingredients I almost always have on hand, I can whip up a batch when I have an empty fridge and don’t feel like going to the store.
Such was the case last week, when I served a hot bowl of this soup to my father-in-law, who arrived exhausted and hungry from a delayed New York flight. His eyes lit up with the first bite. “You know, you’re really starting to learn how to cook,” he said, which is as much a compliment anyone has ever gotten from him. Three days later, when we dropped him back off at the airport for his flight home, he gave me a hug and we said our goodbyes. The soup, he said, was the highlight of his trip.
Recipe (from Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food, with slight variations)
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 3 TB olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1½ teaspoon ground cumin
- 1½ teaspoon ground coriander
- pinch of ground chili pepper
- 1¾ cups pink lentils (rinsed until the water runs clear)
- Bunch of celery leaves or parsley leaves, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 or 3 bullion cubes, crushed (I prefer Telma brand, but any will do)
- salt and pepper
- juice of 1 lemon
To garnish:
- 1 onion, sliced and cooked in olive oil until caramelized
- Toasted wedges of pita bread
- Lemon wedges
Heat up the olive oil in a pot. Add the onion, soften, then add garlic, cumin, coriander, and chili pepper, and stir. As the aroma arises, add the carrots and celery or parsley leaves. Let those soften. (As tempting as it is, do not add salt at this point, as salt will prevent the lentils from softening.) Add the lentils and 2 quarts water and simmer for at least 45 minutes, until the lentils have disintegrated and the soup is creamy in texture. Crumble the chicken bullion in, add salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with caramelized onions, toasted pita bread, and lemon juice.
Enjoy!
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- pink lentils (on the orange side of pink)
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- soup’s on!
A few weeks ago my kitchen turned into fruit tart central. One friend was having a summer party and the next day I was going to a picnic and I’d promised to bring something sweet to both. I usually love being responsible for dessert but for some reason (perhaps the 100 degree heat and 95% humidity?) I was totally not in the mood to weigh flour and measure sugar. I thought of phoning it all in—using a mix or buying some ice cream—but my little baker’s pride (plus this little blog) wouldn’t let me.
I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t do anything that you don’t want to do when it comes to things like this, because you’ll only end up making mistakes and making the whole situation worse than if you had just made some excuse about why you put an Entenmann’s cake on a pretty plate and called it a day. As I stood stirring pasty cream until I thought my arm would fall off and patching holes in my dough minutes before I needed to leave my house for the party (which was better than what happened to me before the picnic: I was trying to slide the finished tart onto a plate, only to have it crack in half before I could get the whole thing on. I just added more cream and fruit and hoped for the best.), I couldn’t help thinking about that movie Like Water for Chocolate where the woman is so miserable while cooking that she ends up poisoning her sister (not on purpose, but her misery flowed into her food and ruined it). While I don’t think my baking has any magical powers, I feared my lack of enthusiasm would somehow be evident in every bite.
I was so distracted by just trying to get the tarts done that I was half way through the recipe for the pastry cream before I realized I didn’t have enough eggs. The recipe stressed that you shouldn’t let the egg/sugar mixture stand too long or it would curdle (and I’d already mixed in 2 eggs and the sugar). I was an egg short and had to run down to 7-11 and spend $20 for six eggs (only a slight exaggeration). I also had neglected to read how much dough the recipe actually made and realized my tart pan was too big for the amount of dough I had, so I had to make a second batch with not enough time left to let it chill properly. And then I put the dough in the oven, covered in foil as recommended in the recipe and when I went to pull the foil off, also pulled off half of the bottom of the tart shell, hence the having to patch it up with left over dough. All the time that I’m doing this, I’m trying to figure out a way to weave yellow daisies into my hair for the party (don’t ask) and suddenly realize that I may actually be allergic to the flowers that are now pinned to my head (I wasn’t, luckily). Normally these things would be merely annoying, but when you are really not feeling the whole baking adventure—and when you have a box of Betty Crocker brownie mix in your pantry—it kind of makes you want to lay down on the floor and forget the whole thing.
To spare you my agony, but give you all the benefits of the beautiful tarts that I eventually created, I will let you learn from my mistakes.
The tart is actually fool-proof (the layer of pastry cream will hide any flaws in the shell) and can be filled with anything you want. I chose strawberries and blueberries, but I’m guessing any summer fruit would work.
And I did have a lovely time at both the party and picnic, especially since no one was poisoned…
Blueberry and Strawberry Tart (my notes in red)
This wouldn’t be much of a food blog if there weren’t a post about Julia Child and that little movie about her falling in love with cooking and eventually herself and her life. I will leave you to experience the movie for yourself—something you should do posthaste. Be sure to take some Kleenex with you.
It probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but I am not a risk taker. I sometimes say that I take calculated risks, but this is just something I say to make me feel better about the fact that I am about the least spontaneous person you’ll ever meet (except for possibly my best friend from college. We actually organized a spontaneous cut day sophomore year so as not to miss anything important in class. It took weeks to plan).
My path to Le Cordon Bleu is similar to Julia’s, except I’m not a former spy, I don’t have unlimited resources and I only had a short amount of time to hope that this whole cooking school thing would work for me. Those minor details aside, when I decided to sign up for an intensive bread/pastry making class a couple of summers ago, I was completely lost. Like Julia, I didn’t know what to do with myself and nothing I tried was really working. My life was fine, but I constantly felt as though something was missing, that there was more out there if I could only figure out what it was. I had spent most of my life carefully planning my next steps and here I was, exactly where I planned to be (for the most part) and it—I—was not enough. I had done everything I was “supposed” to or thought I should do, but I was left feeling as though I’d be happier doing something or being someone else.
Taking a class at LCB was something that I’d wanted to do for years, but had never worked up the courage to commit to. Being in a kitchen, surrounded by rising breads and warm ovens was my idea of bliss, but it took me a long time to decide to try the class. I was terrified that I would hate it, hate being in the kitchen on my feet all day mass producing croissants. I worried that I would lose the dream I’d always fallen back on. But more than that, I was terrified that I would love it, that it would be everything I’d always imagined and I’d have to give it up after only a week. Living the dream and then having to come back to the reality I’d boxed myself into was almost worse than never having tried it. But by the time I signed up for the class, I had reached the point where if I didn’t do something then, I worried I would never do anything at all.
I promise to write about the breads and croissants and pastry dough soon (I even have the tart recipe in draft form!), but what ended up being more important than learning to make a dozen different breads that I have yet been able to recreate was learning exactly what Julia did during her time at LCB and in Paris: that taking a risk feels good; that it takes a long time to figure out your place in the world; that you may break a bit, but if you keep trying you will be able to put yourself back together; that we all have our tales of wanting something—anything—more, and if we are very very lucky, we will one day come upon whatever that thing is that’s going to feed our souls…
I have a favor to ask: let’s forget that it’s been almost 3 months since this little food blog was updated. Let’s start clean and fresh and full of hope and promise, ok?
So, several months ago, I met a charming man we’ll call X. Our first conversation, over dinner with a group of people, centered around food and the things I like to make, wish I could make and know that I’m good at making. Bread, cakes, pies and cookies fall into all of those categories. X promptly invited himself to my house to sample my bread, but I was raised to be a lady and taught never to bake for just anyone. Now, I’m going to pause here to say that I have a hard time not cooking or baking for people I like. Once I like you, as a friend or otherwise, I want to feed you. But, I’ve learned to be a little discriminating. I try not to give up the goodies too soon, just to make sure you actually like me and not my ability to follow a recipe.
X became fixated on me making him chocolate chip cookies. Many a late night texting session was spent discussing my reasons why I wasn’t going to bake for him immediately, but how it would be worth the wait. One Saturday evening with nothing to do, I decided I was ready to invite him over to watch me bake and eat cookies straight from the oven. I texted my invitation. The response? “Sorry, hanging out with the guys tonight.” This was likely sign #17 that things weren’t working, but I am not easily discouraged.
Weeks later, after much back and forth between us for myriad reasons, I decided that either I was going to bake for this man now or I never would. I mean, at some point you have to take the leap of faith and say that while the situation is not perfect, you’ve invested enough time and energy that you need to push the envelope a bit to see if things can go to the next level. So on the first 85 degree day of the summer, I went to 5 different stores to find brown sugar. I bought Ghirardelli chocolate chips and sifted flour. I cranked my oven up to 350 degrees. I baked 3 batches of cookies so I could pick a baker’s dozen of the most perfect ones. I put them in a container and carted them off to X, hiding them in the bottom of my bag so the burning sun wouldn’t melt them.
You know where this story is going, right?
Oh, don’t get me wrong, he said he loved them. Said they were amazing and awesome and I inferred from his words that my cookies may rate up there with some of the best he’s had. But not a week went by before he looked me dead in the eye and said, “I never promised you anything” and turned his attention to another girl in the bar (and to be completely fair to X, I am sure that he would tell you a different version of what transpired prior to him saying this, but this is (1/2) my blog, so whatever).
The recipe is easy and the cookies are impressive, no matter the outcome of your efforts. Just, you know, hold out for the right person like your mama taught you…
Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies (from Food & Wine, Feb. 2009)
