The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies I've Ever Made
Plus: Lentilpalooza with Mustard Brown Sugar Salmon, Lamb Shanks Rogan Josh, and Links.
Hey everyone,
It’s the first of the month, which means this newsletter is free for all subscribers! Now you non-paid people will get a taste of what you’re missing twice a week.
And this one’s special, because it involves a discovery that I made about chocolate chip cookies. The recipe didn’t change, I still use my favorite go-to cookie recipe from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook. (Recipe here.)
What’s different is I followed the famous NYT Jacques Torres / David Leite cookie technique in two ways (a) I used little chocolate discs or feves; and (b) I finally aged the dough.
This meant making the cookie batter a night ahead, pressing it with plastic wrap, and sticking it in the fridge. The only hard part was letting it soften enough, the next day, to become scoopable again. I recommend taking it out of the fridge an hour before you’re ready to scoop the dough.
Then, it’s business as usual: you use an ice cream scoop, flatten a little, sprinkle with Maldon sea salt, and bake until golden brown on the outside and just set in the middle (about 17 minutes).
Our dinner guests, Isaac Oliver and Jonathan Parks-Ramage (visiting from LA!), received my legendary cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes (only I used a different noodle, still twisty) and then the warm cookies for dessert.
The raves! The huzzahs! The happy tears! Let’s go to the cookie.
Do you see what I see? Impeccable structure. Caramelized exterior. A big, melty gob of chocolate in the middle.
These cookies were incredible. Aging the dough allows it to hydrate more, giving it a better structure, and therefore a better texture once baked. And the feves make the chocolate not just an occasional occurrence, but an event in and of itself. My cookie technique is forever changed.
You may have noticed I’ve been blogging a lot lately. What’s up with that?
Well, the truth is I felt incredibly flummoxed when my blog was on Wordpress. I’d encounter all kinds of issues — the blog would go down, the blog would go up, and I’d have no idea what was happening — and I’d always be at the mercy of web people who’d charge big $$$ to make things right.
Transferring it to Squarespace hasn’t been easy, but I love, love, love the results. I think the blog looks so fabulous, and the whole back-end is so stable, I’ve suddenly been revivified on Google. My site’s coming up again on searches. I’m currently tops when it comes to “best sticky buns” and “Claire Saffitz bundt cake.”
Also: it makes more sense to me to have the recipes on a searchable, indexable blog than in my newsletter. My newsletter is for keeping you updated on everything food-related that I’m doing, with lots of tips and discoveries like that chocolate chip cookie thing; the blog is where I want to file away specific recipes.
Such as: these Lentils with Pancetta, Anchovies, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Kale.
Don’t those look incredible?
I learned that recipe when I cooked with Chef Naomi Pomeroy for my cookbook and it’s been so long since I’ve made them and now that I’ve made them again, I can’t imagine making lentils any other way.
It’s such a rock star recipe. So many different flavoring agents infused into something usually seen as so bland and wholesome.
I served these lentils alongside Sam Sifton’s mustard brown sugar salmon and it was a perfect dinner party meal, if I do say so myself.
You can see all of this all play out on video too:
The other new recipe up on the blog is this one for Lamb Shanks Rogan Josh with Ajwain Pancakes that I scored from Daniel Boulud’s braising book that he co-wrote with Melissa Clark.
Not gonna lie: this is an involved recipe. Not only do you braise lamb shanks for three hours, you also make Ajwain pancakes — or flatbreads — to serve along with it.
All in all, it’s a terrific weekend cooking project and the results speak for themselves! Video here. Recipe here.
Now let’s look at some links:
Pete Wells isn’t thrilled with the subway station tasting menu (NYT);
The Best Places to Eat in Bed-Stuy Right Now (Eater NY).
Hey, remember my trip to Italy? There are still slots available! Here’s a TikTok I made telling you more about it:
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CLICK HERE and sign up before all the tickets are sold.
That’s all for this week, folks!
See you back here on Monday….
Your pal,
Adam
I age all my cookie dough. I think it makes a big difference in taste and texture. My other trick for chocolate chip cookies is to replace half the butter with Crisco (I know I know), but they turn out SO GOOD.
I've done the cookie dough aging thing as well and was pleased. I portioned them out prior to fridge time and cut out the next- day wait to scoop issue.