Yes, already

Well. The good news is that I’m making headway in my book proposal. I was working on it at a cafe on Saturday afternoon, and I could actually see it taking shape, right there in front of me. I love that feeling. I was absolutely elated. I lost all sense of time. I was in it up to my eyebrows. And I must have looked it, too, because as I was packing up to leave, the girl sitting next to me commented politely that I must have gotten some very good work done, because I was staring at my computer so intensely. And I decided that from now on, I should work only in the privacy of my home, so no one else has to witness that.

And that’s the good news. The bad news is, I’m tired. Did you know that I have a neighbor who, though at home all day, waits until night to do his gardening and outdoor home improvement projects? As I type this, my poor, stressed-out dog has his nose pressed to the window, watching our neighbor stroll the length of his yard, surveying the territory with a flashlight of such size and power that it could double as a fine searchlight. Living next to this is one of many things that can make a person tired.




I hope you people were serious when you said you were excited about the prospect of more breakfast recipes in 2011. Because I have another one for you. Yes, already. I’m going to try to limit it to one a month from now on, but what can you do? I woke up the other morning, realized I had the ingredients for a batch of oatmeal popovers, and the next thing I knew, they were made.



As with last week’s fresh ginger muffins, this recipe - or at least the ingredients part of it - comes to us from Ms. Marion Cunningham and The Breakfast Book. It’s a very subtle riff on a classic popover, one that includes a fistful of rolled oats that you’ve coarsely ground in the food processor. Her headnotes explain that she uses the oatmeal for additional texture, and I can attest that the result is really lovely: a little heartier, a scant degree more substantial, than an ordinary popover. But I would add that the oats bring some flavor too, which I like very much. It’s a quiet flavor, one you only notice if you look for it, but it’s there. Ordinary popovers can sometimes taste too eggy, but the oats counter that, giving the flavor some depth and grounding. It felt fiddly to haul out the food processor first thing in the morning, before I’d even put on real clothes, but I was glad I did. Actually, I might grind extra oats next time, so they’re ready whenever I want them.

I have to admit, though, that I did make some adjustments to the method. Ms. Cunningham starts her popovers in a cold oven, but that sort of terrifies me. I have an electric oven, and the only time that I tried the cold-oven popover method, the lower heating element scorched my popovers in the process of preheating. I am not a nice person when my breakfast gets ruined. Maybe it was a fluke, but I don’t use the cold-oven popover method anymore. I start my popovers in a hot oven, and I also preheat the pan before I pour in the batter, which gives them an extra boost. The method that I like best is detailed nicely in the book The New Best Recipe, and so that’s what I’ve written below. Basically, you get Marion Cunningham’s concept and ingredients, with The New Best Recipe’s method. I hope she’ll forgive me for taking such liberties.


Oatmeal Popovers
Adapted from The Breakfast Book and The New Best Recipe

I’ve made these popovers twice now, and I find that they don’t rise quite as exuberantly high as normal (oatmeal-less) popovers. But they’re still perfectly airy on the inside, and the oil in the cups of the pan make the outer edges nice and crisp.

Oh, and Marion Cunningham says that the combination of oatmeal and marmalade is very good. She’s right.

2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup rolled oats, coarsely ground in a food process or blender
½ tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil, for the pan
Orange marmalade, for serving (optional)

In a large bowl – ideally one with a pour spout, if you have it – whisk the eggs and milk until well combined, about 20 seconds. Whisk the flour, oats, and salt in a separate bowl, and add to the egg mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon or spatula just until the flour is incorporated. The mixture will still be lumpy. Add the melted butter, and whisk until the batter is smooth, about 30 seconds. Set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes. (This gives the gluten time to relax and brings the chilled ingredients closer to room temperature, so that the batter isn’t quite so cold when it goes into the oven.)

While the batter rests, put ½ teaspoon oil into each cup of a popover pan. Adjust the oven rack to the lowest position, place the popover pan in the oven, and preheat to 450° F. After the batter has rested, remove the hot pan from the oven and, working quickly, distribute the batter evenly among the 6 cups of the pan. (If your bowl doesn’t have a spout, you might want to transfer it to a vessel that does; it’ll allow you to work much more quickly.) Return the pan to the oven. Bake for 20 minutes - and DO NOT open the oven door. Lower the heat to 350° F, and bake until evenly golden brown, about 15 minutes more. Remove the popovers from the pan and cool for 2 to 3 minutes before eating.

Yield: 6 popovers

Note: If you don’t have a popover pan, you can use a regular muffin tin. Don’t use all 12 cups, though; use only the 10 outer cups. You’ll need extra oil to grease them.

And try to be cheerful

Okay. This year, I’ve decided, is going to be the year of The Breakfast Book. I’m allergic to resolutions, so let’s not use that word. Let’s just say that if I do nothing else in 2011, I would like to spend more time with one of the worthiest books on my shelf, one that has never done me wrong, one authored by she of the famous yeasted waffle, the esteemed Ms. Marion Cunningham. There is no one I trust more on the matter of breakfast. There is also no one else that I know of who has managed to wedge a treatise on manners into a chapter on quick breads. Witness a selection from “Breakfast Table Civility and Deportment” (page 53):

3. Clean fingernails, please.
5. Sit up straight and try to be cheerful.
7. Because everyone is defenseless at breakfast, there should be no contentiousness or crossness.
13. And don’t answer questions in a saucy manner.

I’m hoping to master #13 within the year.

This is Marion Cunningham’s fresh ginger muffin, the best muffin I have made in memory. Possibly ever. I like muffins, but often, I wind up leaving half of the batch on the counter, uneaten, until they’re stiff and dry and I throw them away. I’m more of a scone person than a muffin person. However. I will tell you that in the less than 48 hours since I made a batch of said ginger muffins, eight of them are gone, and of those, only one was not eaten by me. If you give me another hour, a ninth might disappear.

I’ve never seen another ginger muffin, cake, cookie, or other sweet that uses the method this one does. It starts with a knob of fresh ginger root with the skin on, a perplexing and maybe even off-putting detail that, it turns out, works very well.




You mince the ginger in a food processor, and I think this is why you want that skin: without it, the ginger would probably fall apart when confronted with a whirring steel blade. The skin helps the ginger to hold its integrity, so that it reduces to small, discrete bits, not something with the consistency of a smoothie. Then you take those bits and put them in a skillet with an equal measure of sugar. The sugar melts to syrup, and warmed in that syrup, the ginger cooks just enough to lose its sting. Then you take it off the heat, add lemon zest and a little more sugar, and there it is: a lot of flavor in a small, ugly, turmeric-colored heap, ready for mixing into a bowl of batter - which, in this case, is sagely moistened with buttermilk.

The resulting muffins are tender and pale yellow and look a little like cornbread. Mine wound up with humps like madeleines, which is weird, because I’ve never been able to consistently make madeleines with humps like that. Totally unfair. Anyway, the crumb is damp and sturdy but not heavy, and if you eat them while they’re warm, you’ll find that the top has a lacy edge that gives with a crackle. That’s nice.



And then the flavor comes: that quiet, breathy, slow-building heat of fresh ginger root - more a feeling than a flavor, almost. If you eat three muffins in an afternoon, as I did yesterday, you may actually experience a burning sensation at the back of your throat, which I tell you not as a warning, but because it’s awesome. Also: I didn’t notice any obvious ginger skin as I ate, in case you wondered. I imagine it’s good fiber for the digestive tract, if you don’t mind thinking of it that way.

Having now eaten these for breakfast and dessert, I’m thinking they might make a great cupcake - maybe with lemon cream cheese frosting? If you try it, please report.

Marion Cunningham’s Fresh Ginger Muffins
Adapted from The Breakfast Book

A word of warning: before beginning, take care to wash the ginger root well, checking its crevices and wrinkles for dirt.

One (~3-ounce) piece of unpeeled ginger root
¾ cup plus 3 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
¾ tsp. baking soda

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a muffin tin.

Cut the unpeeled ginger root into large chunks. If you have a food processor, process the ginger until it is in tiny pieces; alternatively, mince by hand. Measure out ¼ cup – or a little more, if you like. It’s better to have too much than too little. Put the ginger and ¼ cup sugar in a small skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar has melted and the mixture is hot. Don’t walk away from the pan: this takes only a couple of minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon zest and 3 tablespoons of sugar. Add to the ginger mixture.

Put the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer (or, a mixing bowl, if you plan to use handheld beaters or mix by hand). Beat the butter for a second or two, then add the remaining ½ cup sugar, and beat until smooth. Add the eggs, and beat well. Add the buttermilk, and beat until blended. Add the flour, salt, and baking soda, and beat just until smooth. Add the ginger-lemon mixture, and beat to mix well. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Serve warm.

Yield: 12 muffins

I am celebrating

2010 didn’t exit quietly, and the last month of it was a royal mess. But my aunt is okay now - even heading back to work! The rewards of health! - and for that, we’re relieved. I’m home again and excited for a new year, for the return of plain, normal, everyday life. I love plain, normal, everyday life. The laundry, the occasional clean sheets, the morning coffee that I never brew right, the dog asleep on the couch, the arrival of the mail, the mail carrier who hates the dog, the restaurant, the work, the split pea soup.

Few things are uglier than split pea soup, but that is alright with me. I’ve been on something of a split pea binge for the past month. (Am I the first person in the world to write the words split, pea, and binge in sequence? If so, I assume I will also be the last.) I’d made split pea soup a few times in years past, and once I even made an exotic version involving miso, but until this past fall, I hadn’t found one I felt loyal to. Now that I have, I am celebrating by eating a totally immoderate amount of it. By the way, if the idea of a split pea binge doesn’t ring your bell, I can also recommend a Reese’s Peanut Butter Trees binge. ‘Tis the season, -ish. Hard to go wrong, either way.

Split pea soup is a straightforward thing, and it hardly needs a recipe. Whether it includes ham or not, the process is mostly the same: get some aromatics going in a pot, add split peas and your liquid of choice, and cook until the peas soften, soften some more, and finally settle to a pleasing mush. But I learned my recipe, or the bones of it, from my friend Winnie, and though it looks plain on paper, it really does the job.




Behold the Winnie in her natural habitat. She’s one of the finest, most intuitive cooks I know: even when she’s cooking from a recipe, she hardly looks at it. She just knows what to do. Though she lives on the other side of the continent, I was lucky enough to get to cook with her several times in 2010, and to learn a few things in the process. For instance, I learned that one should never be without a stash of Allan Benton’s country ham, the backbone of this split pea soup and, now, the newest staple of my kitchen. I would have taken a picture of it for you, but I used my last package a week ago. 2011 is off to a rough start.

Until Winnie let me in on the not-so-secret secret, I used to be daunted by the idea of trying to get a hold of proper country ham: the southern kind, slow cured and naturally smoked, fragrant and salty and thoroughly hammy. I thought you had to buy a whole leg - and maybe from some producers, you do. But Allan Benton sells his in vacuum-packed slices that are perfect for chucking into a soup pot or frying in a skillet, saucing with apple cider, and then sandwiching in a biscuit. Whatever you like. Sometimes I open the fridge, pull out a package, and just sniff at it. It’s so smoky - in the true wood-smoke way, not that trumped-up liquid smoke way - that you can smell it even through the plastic. Now you know how I spend my free time.

Winnie’s split pea soup, as she taught it to me, begins with a slice of Benton’s ham, which you fry in a soup pot with a little olive oil. When it’s golden on both sides and the bottom of the pan has a few nice, browned bits stuck to it, you add some chopped carrot and onion and sweat them for ten minutes or so, and then you add split peas and water. There’s no need for stock here; the ham flavor is so generous that it fills the pot. Then you forget about it for at least an hour, and likely two. And then you set the table, and because it’s January and dark outside and you happen to have bought some candles at the store, you light one or two or three, and dinner is ready.


Split Pea Soup with Country Ham
Inspired by Winnie Yang

Until recently, I didn’t know that the age of dried legumes made a difference in their cooking time, but it does. If your dried split peas are fairly fresh, they will take less time to cook than those that have sat on the grocery store shelf for a while. In any case, cook them until they completely break down. If yours are on the older side, you may need to start with a little more water than I call for below, since the cooking time will be on the long side.

Olive oil
1 slice (~4 ounces) Benton’s hickory smoked country ham, or similar
1 large onion or leek, finely diced
2 medium carrots, finely diced
2 cups dried split peas
8 cups water, plus more as needed
Salt, to taste
Apple cider vinegar, to taste

In a soup pot or Dutch oven, warm a little olive oil over medium high heat. Add the ham, and cook, turning once, until golden brown on both sides. Add the leek and carrot, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender but not browned, about 10 minutes. (If the pan seems dry when you add the vegetables, add oil as needed.) Add the split peas and 8 cups of water. Bring to a boil; then reduce the heat and simmer gently, stirring regularly to prevent scorching, for 90 minutes to 2 hours, or until the peas have completely broken down and the soup has a creamy texture. This amount of water makes for a fairly thick soup; if you like yours thinner, add more water until it reaches your desired texture. The slice of ham should break apart as it cooks, but if necessary, use a couple of forks to tear it into smaller pieces. Taste the soup, and salt as needed. If the flavor is a little dull, add a splash or two of apple cider vinegar; you shouldn’t taste the vinegar in the soup, but it should subtly wake up the flavor.

Serve hot.

Yield: about six servings

You might hear someone sing

My family is not having the Christmas that you hear about in carols and television specials. I am typing this from California, where we were supposed to arrive next Tuesday for the holiday festivities, but instead I flew down six days early to help take care of my aunt, who is in the hospital. My mother is here, too, and my aunt’s two daughters, my cousins. My aunt came down with an acute illness, very fast and sudden and serious, but after more than a week in the hospital, she’s going to be alright. Today she even cracked a joke. I was so elated that I tried out a couple of bad puns, and she actually laughed at them. It was a good day. I’m glad to be here.





My mother and I spent the late afternoon sitting in squeaky, vinyl-covered chairs next to my aunt’s hospital bed, reading books while she napped. At one point, through the wall, I could hear an old man in the next room start to sing. The sound was muffled, and I couldn’t make out the words, and he was not what is commonly called a good singer. But he sang easily, cheerfully, the kind of slow, ambling song you might hear someone sing beside a campfire in an old western. He went on like that for maybe ten minutes. I hoped he would go on forever. For the past few days, I’d been wanting to write here, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Then I heard that man singing, and I thought, Well, there you go. This is what you write about. Exactly what’s happening.

Wade way in

November was nice, but what happened to it? Hi.

Our visit to the East Coast was good and long and involved a lot of sleeping and pizza research, the common themes of our days off since Delancey came along. I wrote a story about stuffing for this fine newspaper - you know that it’s not just for Thanksgiving, right? You can eat stuffing whenever you want - and now I’m working on a story for this fine magazine. But lately, my head is very full of Possible Future Book. I want you to know that I thought long and hard before I typed that last sentence. Because now it means that I can’t chicken out.

The idea of writing another book has been percolating for a while, but to be honest, I wasn’t ready. And to be even more honest, though I know approximately what the story is, I still don’t know what precise path that story will take. I’m the kind of person who has to write for a while, wade way in and splash around, before I can see where I’m going. (I write everything that way, including this blog post.) But I’m ready for that slog. I’m excited for it. Winter was made for projects, I think. So I’m going to write a book proposal and see what I’ve got. Who knows. But I wanted you to know what I’ve been up to, and what I’ll be up to for some time to come. Knowing you’re here makes me feel braver.




Knowing there’s a tin of butter cookies with cacao nibs on the kitchen counter makes me feel braver, too. You should try it.

I’ve been a little wary of posting this recipe, because it’s a close cousin of this one, and because it uses whole wheat, which we’ve been talking about a lot here recently, and I don’t want to beat you over the head with it. But the truth is, if you made those whole wheat chocolate chip cookies - and I know a lot of you did, you excellent people - you’ve probably got some whole wheat flour around, and maybe you might like another place to use it? Like the chocolate chip cookies before them, these butter cookies combine the flavor of whole wheat and chocolate, but in a more subtle, delicate, refined way. If the natural habitat of a chocolate chip cookie is a lunchbox, say, the natural habitat of these cookies is the saucer of a teacup. And they’re even quicker to make, which is noteworthy, because chocolate chip cookies aren’t exactly slow and laborious. They also make a handsome gift, if you can stay out of them.




This recipe comes from the brand-new book by Alice Medrich, she of so many great sweets, and I’ve already baked four batches of them. (Admittedly, two and a half of those were for an event to celebrate her book. Another half batch went into my mouth. And the last batch is for gifting, if they survive the weekend.) There’s a lot of talk these days about using whole grain flours for flavor as opposed to using them for reasons of health, and while the latter is certainly admirable, I’m on board for flavor. Let’s be clear about that. These cookies would probably be very nice with white flour, but what makes them work, really work, is the whole wheat flour. I fed them to my friend Olaiya, and she told me she would have never known that the flavor she was tasting was wheat. She thought it was some sort of warm, nutty mystery spice. Whole wheat flour is also a smart tweak, texture-wise: a sablé cookie should have a crumbly, pleasantly sandy feel - sable is French for “sand” - and the natural coarseness of whole wheat accentuates that. They crumble almost instantly, and then they start to melt, and the cacao nibs kick in with exactly the right amount of crunch. Would it be weird to say that these cookies feel nice between my teeth? I’m all for weird. They feel nice between my teeth.


Whole Wheat Sablés with Cacao Nibs
From Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies

This recipe is particularly quick to assemble if you get out a scale and use weight measurements. So quick! I used whole wheat pastry flour because I keep it around (for scones, mostly), but you can also use a mixture of regular whole wheat flour and white flour. And I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t substitute white whole wheat flour for the regular whole wheat, if you have it. Oh, and if you live in Seattle or nearby, try the cacao nibs from Theo. They’re the best I’ve had.

2 cups (9 oz.) whole wheat pastry flour, OR 1 cup (4.5 oz.) all-purpose flour plus 1 scant cup (4 oz.) whole wheat flour
14 Tbsp. (1 ¾ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup (3 ½ oz.) sugar
¼ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup (about 1 ¼ oz.) roasted cacao nibs

If using the two flours, combine them in a bowl, and mix with a whisk or fork.

In a medium bowl, with a large spoon or an electric mixer, beat the butter with the sugar, salt, and vanilla until smooth and creamy but not fluffy, about 1 minute (with the mixer). Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, and add the nibs. Beat briefly to incorporate. Add the flour, and mix until just incorporated. Scrap the dough into a mass and, if necessary, knead it a little with your hands to make sure that the flour is completely incorporated. Form the dough into a 12-by-2-inch log. Wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

Set racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Use a sharp knife to cut the cold dough log into ¼-inch-thick slices. Place the cookies at least 1 ½ inches apart on the prepared sheet pans.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the cookies are light golden brown at the edges, rotating the pans from top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking time. Cool the cookies for a minute on the pans, then transfer them (with or without their parchment) to a rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.

These cookies are good on the first day, but they’re best with a little age, after at least a day or two. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a month.

Yield: about 48 cookies

She got out a skillet

I should begin with a confession: I’m not in Thanksgiving mode yet. Who knows. It’s weird. This holiday sort of sneaks up, I’ve noticed, and then it’s quickly eclipsed by Christmas, which is sad, since Thanksgiving is our only national holiday devoted wholly to eating. This year, we’re heading to New Jersey to visit family, and I will almost certainly make cranberry chutney and probably a chocolate pecan pie, but it’s been hard to plan from a distance. Thanksgiving of 2010, I apologize. I’ll do better next year.

On the upside, I ate almost two pounds of carrots today.

I’m not sure why, but I keep thinking about my host mother. I haven’t seen her for ten years, but still, I think of her often, and when I’m not thinking of her leeks vinaigrette, I’m thinking of her carrots cooked in a skillet with onion and thyme. Corentine always cooked vegetables on the stovetop. It hadn’t occurred to me how accustomed I was to oven-roasting everything - broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, rutabagas, carrots, everything - until I noticed that she only used the oven for cakes and tarts and the occasional quiche. When she wanted to cook a vegetable, she got out a skillet and warmed some oil in it, or she got out a saucepan and the steamer basket. I didn’t think much about it at the time, and when I cooked for myself in her kitchen, I continued to roast as usual - using the drip pan of her broiler pan, since she didn’t seem to have a baking sheet. But when I came home, when I no longer had the luxury of sitting at her table each night, I missed her vegetables, and in particular, those carrots.

I don’t think of this as a holiday dish, so it feels a little misleading to write about it only a few days before Thanksgiving. It’s not that it isn’t worthy of a holiday table; it’s just that, for Corentine, this was bare-bones, stupid-easy, everyday eating. She would serve these carrots next to a piece of fish, with a slice of quiche, or a roasted chicken that she picked up at the market. It’s what you make when you’ve got too many carrots in the crisper drawer and you need something for dinner. But it’s also the kind of food that, to me, is synonymous with French home cooking: simple and inexpensive, but also nuanced, a little elegant.

I don’t want to call these sauteed carrots, because those two words usually point toward a cloying end, likely tossed with salted butter and honey, so mushy that no actual chewing is required. When I talk about Corentine’s carrots, I call them skillet carrots, because it sounds nicer, and also because the skillet and its lid are the key elements here. These are not sauteed carrots: they’re sort of sauteed, sort of steamed, and sort of stewed. I watched Corentine cook carrots this way a number of times, and though I now can’t remember whether she used olive oil or safflower oil (her usual go-to), the basic gist is this. You warm a nice amount of oil in a large skillet, and then you soften sliced onions in it. Then you add sliced garlic, and a few minutes later, you add a lot of sliced carrots and some sprigs of fresh thyme and maybe a little more oil, and then you cover the pan with a lid and let things roll along until the carrots are tender. But that doesn’t quite capture it: what’s really happening under the lid, where you can’t see, is that the carrots and onions are mingling, stewing together, spending quality time, so that in the end, the onions are nearly caramelized and the carrots are almost rich, sticky with the onions’ natural sugars.

Corentine served the dish just like that, and you can, too, but I like to add a small amount of red wine vinegar at the very end, a subtle dose of acidity, enough to gently perk up the earthbound flavor of the carrots without adding any flavor of its own. Last night I ate these carrots with a couple of fried eggs and let the yolks scurry around and sauce them, which I highly recommend. Today I’m a little under the weather, so I ate them on their own tonight, two heaping plates’ worth, and I highly recommend that, too.

Happy Thanksgiving.


Skillet Carrots with Onions and Thyme

My host mother used regular orange carrots, but I like to use purple and yellow ones, too, when I can find them. They keep their color when cooked, so they make the dish especially handsome. Whatever carrots you use, make sure that they taste sweet in their raw state: a dull, bitter carrot cannot be fixed. I don’t bother to peel my carrots, but I do wash them well.

Also, for this recipe, I like to slice my onions from stem end to root end, like this, so that they keep their shape and integrity as they cook. When you slice onions the other way – across their equators, you could say – they tend to fall apart during cooking.

Olive oil
1 yellow onion, halved and sliced from root to stem, like this
Salt
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 lb. carrots, sliced into ¼-inch-thick rounds
4 to 5 fresh thyme sprigs
½ tsp. red wine vinegar, or to taste

Warm a large skillet over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add a good amount of olive oil, enough to film the bottom of the pan. Add the onions – they should sizzle – stir to coat with oil. Salt lightly. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are softened but not browned. Add the garlic, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for a few more minutes, until the garlic is fragrant. Add the carrots, thyme, and a couple of generous pinches of salt, and stir to mix. If the carrots look dry, add a little more oil to lightly coat them; this dish needs more oil than you might think. Cover the pan and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are tender and the onions are very soft. (I never seem to pay attention to how long this takes, but I would guess that it takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes.) Remove the pan from the heat, and discard the thyme sprigs. Sprinkle the vinegar over the carrots. Stir gently to incorporate: the vinegar should subtly brighten the flavor of the carrots without being discernable itself. Add more vinegar, if needed, and salt to taste.

Serve hot.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

I am sold

I know this cookie looks wholesome. Actually, I’ll raise you one and say that it verges on homely. But this cookie speaks to me, and what it says is, Hey, baaaabe-eh. In this voice.

Meet Kim Boyce’s whole wheat chocolate chip cookie. This might be my favorite chocolate chip cookie, which is an absolutely insane thing to say, because until about a week ago, I thought that title belonged, forever and ever, to the New York Times chocolate chip cookie. I don’t know what I think anymore. Let’s just call this my new favorite chocolate chip cookie and leave it at that.

I first heard about this recipe from Luisa, and then Lecia mentioned it to me, too, and maybe Brian, and maybe you? However it got there, it’s been on my to-do list for a while, and last Friday, I decided that it was finally time to make a batch. So I did, and by Tuesday, I had decided that it was time for a second batch. That was barely 72 hours ago, but the last cookie disappeared shortly after lunch today. I did give about a third of the batch away, but still, I would like to state for the record that our household, which consists of two (2) people, put away roughly a dozen (12) cookies. I don’t know exactly what I expected from a whole wheat chocolate chip cookie, but I didn’t expect to want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On Wednesday, before they were all eaten, we had unseasonably good weather, and the whole house was washed in that crazy gold light that comes only in the fall, and even then only on exceptional days, and it gave me the opportunity to photograph these cookies for you in their natural state, which is to say, with halos on.

Take my word for it. You need to try a batch. They may be built on a foundation of whole wheat flour, but they’re not health food, so don’t get hung up on that. They’re everything that a proper chocolate chip cookie should be: tender and chewy in the middle, crisp at the edges, and very forthcoming with the chocolate. But what I like most is that, on top of all that, you also get the subtly nutty, naturally sweet-and-savory flavor of wheat. You know digestive biscuits? Imagine a cross between a chocolate chip cookie and a digestive biscuit. Do you read me? Am I the only American who hears the words digestive and biscuit and instantly needs a snack? I hope not. Because that’s the kind of flavor we’re talking about here. And that flavor, that benevolent wheaty flavor, not only tastes good, but it also performs a valuable service: it tames the sweetness and richness - that occasionally sweat-inducing intensity, if you will - that is the seldom spoken-about dark side of any chocolate chip cookie. Thank you, whole wheat. Thank you, Kim Boyce. In other words, I am sold.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce

Without really planning to, I’ve played around quite a lot with this recipe. I’ve only made it twice, but each time was in a different kitchen, with different ingredients and tools. Both times, the cookies came out beautifully. Here are some thoughts:

- A friend who had made this recipe suggested that I try making it with white whole wheat flour, so I bought a fresh bag and used it in my first batch. I loved the resulting flavor – lightly wheaty, almost bran-like – and I highly recommend it. For my second batch, I used a local brand of whole wheat flour, and it was plenty nice, but the wheat flavor was darker and heartier. If you’re after that digestive biscuit flavor, I would use white whole wheat flour.

- Because I am apparently getting ornery with age, I ignored Boyce’s advice to use cold butter. I honestly thought it was a typo, because I’ve always had a hard time creaming butter that’s even a little bit too cold. Instead, I used softened butter. (I left it at room temperature until it was still cool to the touch but took the imprint of a finger when I pressed it. Perfect for creaming.) It worked just fine, as you can see. But I’ve now done some poking around online and see that the recipe is indeed supposed to use cold butter, cubed for easier creaming. Oops! So, uh, never mind me. Do whatever you want.

- The original recipe calls for chopped bittersweet chocolate, and I tried it once that way and once with bittersweet chips. (I used Ghirardelli 60% chocolate in both cases.) I preferred the chopped chocolate because the pieces were smaller, so it gave the sense that there was more chocolate. But if you want to keep it quick and simple, chips will do the job.

- I made this dough once in a stand mixer and once with handheld electric beaters. The poor beaters had to labor a lot, and I wound up recruiting a sturdy spatula to help out, but it’s good to know that you can make do with whatever tools you have on hand.

- Boyce says that this dough is designed to be baked without chilling first. (This, I think, is linked to her use of cold butter. The cold butter likely keeps the dough cool and helps it spread less in the oven.) But I apparently am not only ornery; I also can’t follow directions. I scooped my dough, put it on a sheet pan, covered it with plastic wrap, and chilled it before baking. Some of the dough was chilled for about 1 hour, and some stayed in the fridge for two days. Chilling dough generally results in a thicker cookie, and mine were certainly nice and plump, which I like. So I recommend chilling the dough. And hey, I also noticed that the cookies that stayed in the fridge for two days were particularly flavorful. So “aging” the dough a bit isn’t a bad idea, either.

3 cups whole wheat flour (see note above)
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes (see note above)
1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into ¼- and ½-inch pieces, or bittersweet chips

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. (If you have no parchment, you can butter the sheets.)

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, and whisk to blend.

Put the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low speed, mix just until the butter and sugars are blended, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the bowl, and blend on low speed until the flour is just incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the chocolate, and mix on low speed until evenly combined. (If you have no stand mixer, you can do all of this with handheld electric beaters and/or a large, sturdy spoon.) Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and then use your hands to turn and gently massage the dough, making sure all the flour is absorbed.

Scoop mounds of dough about 3 tablespoons in size onto the baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. (I was able to fit about 8 cookies on each sheet, staggering them in three rows.)

Bake the cookies for 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the cookies are evenly browned. Transfer the cookies, still on parchment, to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough.

These cookies are very good while still warm from the oven, but I find that you can taste the wheat more – in a good way – once they’ve cooled.

Yield: about 20 cookies