Posts tagged Every Day is Saturday Cookbook
CRINKLY GINGER MOLASSES COOKIES

If you had to choose only one cookie for the rest of your life and only that cookie, forever, which would it be?

I know, that’s just plain mean. But if I absolutely had to choose, my desert island cookie would be ginger molasses. Even over my favorite chocolate chip. (Yes, shocking). I admit that our proximity to Christmas might make me slightly biased in this choice, but truly—-a chewy, slightly tangy ginger-forward cookie doesn’t get old for me. It very rarely risks being too sweet, or too dry or too meh—which frankly a lot of cookies of the world can be.

A good molasses cookie is a memory. It’s a feeling—a whole mood.

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TRIPLE GINGER-CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES

Do you ever have a cookie that you just can’t get out of your mind? Maybe it’s the first taste of a Levain bakery cookie on a visit to NYC. Maybe it’s your grandmother’s ginger-molasses…or the very first bit of the simple Tollhouse cookie of your youth, fresh from your mother’s oven.

For me, there are a few ultimate cookies. Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies (any version—her latest 2.0 appears in her latest book, Baking with Dorie) is one of them. This cookie—-A Triple-Ginger Chocolate Chunk Cookie, in Susan Spungen’s excellent book Open Table that came out right as the pandemic hit, is another. Just looking at these photos can warm me head to toe. I can feel the melt of that chocolate, the crisp edge the dusting of sugar gives the edges. And that’s just the photo. Wait until you make them.

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HONEY GRAHAM CRACKER SQUARES

Let’s get this right out in the open: Some people’s aggressive (public) holidaying has had me in hiding the last few weeks. Well, not hiding exactly, but hunkering inside, holidaying with my own people—privately (ie. off the ‘gram and other social). It’s not that I’m a scrooge or Bah! Humbug! Far from it. I live for Christmas. We got our tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving (a real beaut), it’s officially trimmed (this year, I hunted down charming old vintage ornaments that make me happy every time at look at them) and All I Want for Christmas radio on Pandora (yes, still Pandora!) is playing around the clock.

Also, there have been cookies: lots of cookies, and it’s only just beginning.

But, when other people’s tinsel-dripping twelve-foot trees and perfectly gilded mantles have you feeling envy, instead of inspiration, it’s time to tun out. Is the point of holiday-ing to spread joy, or to show off how much you have it together in life?

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DOUBLE CHOCOLATE BUCKWHEAT-FENNEL CRINKLE COOKIES

One of the first truly remarkable cookies I learned to bake when I became a professional cook was a chocolate crinkle cookie, which we made in the tiny pastry kitchen at Savoy restaurant, a then New York Times three-star restaurant where I cooked and baked under Peter Hoffman. We made 2 perfect cookies which appeared on the pastry menu night after night, along with a seasonal pastry and three delicate sorbets. Later, at Cafe Boulud, where I worked the pastry line, I learned the recipe for two more perfect cookies—the recipes for which I jotted down in a tiny notebook that I now keep in a safe, like a brick of gold.

Bad cookies are a dime a dozen, but truly great ones come from truly great, thoughtful bakers. Bakers who don’t want to eat sugar just because. Bakers who want you to feel treated without tipping the scales. Bakers who know your time and ingredients are precious and when they give you a cookie recipe, it’s going to be truly worth it.

My friend Aran Goyoaga is such a baker.

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MISO DARK CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

In the previous several years of having school-aged kids, my kiddos have had babysitters, after-school clubs or play groups to entertain them after hours many days of the week, while I worked. Now that they’re bigger, it’s strangely possible to pick them up from school, buzz them home for a snack and set them loose to run in the yard, while I aim (key word: aim) to get a few more things done at my desk, in earshot of where they play. It’s a system I’m slowly adjusting to: our new After School. Mostly, I like it.

Some days, After School comes hard and fast. On those days, cookies help, especially a week out from halloween, when we’ve got chocolate on the brain. This mama especially likes it if the cookies have an element of intrigue, like MISO.

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CREAMY ROOT VEGETABLE MASH (FAST!)

One of my Dad’s favorite food stories to tell is about the time he took the whole young family (me, my three-siblings and my mom) to a phenomenal four-star French restaurant 40 stories up in one of Chicago’s iconic skyscrapers. During the meal, the waiter served my dad an expertly executed rack of lamb, then made the rounds doing table side service of the chef’s flawless potato puree (or, mashed potatoes). The waiter dolloped a delicate swoop of puree on my dad’s plate, with flair, and this warning: “And don’t you dare ask for more.”

If you have my first book, you’ve already heard this story, but it perfectly exemplifies how my family feels about a creamy mash, completely lump-less, and luxuriating in butter and cream. But, a flawless mash doesn’t always need to error on total decadence to taste divine.

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BIG-FLAVOR (INSTANT POT) BOLOGNESE

As satisfying as a spaghetti-and-meatball dinner is a quicker way to get there is a big, bold Bolognese (or Ragu a la Bolognese, a ragu that hails from Bologna), which takes a quarter of the time to reach maximum flavor in a multicooker. I gave a LOT of thought to how much impact I could get from a quick-cook meaty sauce in a short amount of time, before including this recipe in INSTANT FAMILY MEALS. In short, I hesitated. But then, I dug in my heels and worked hard to solve some of the problems I worried about—and added ample amounts of harissa, good red wine and the best San Marzano tomatoes to make sure I could win the flavor equation on this one.

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INSTANT FAMILY MEALS || MY NEW COOKBOOK!!

I have so much to tell you, I really don’t know where to start—which is why, of course, this post is long overdue! I’m here to announce that my newest book, INSTANT FAMILY MEALS, arrived safely into the world just two weeks ago, and is already changing the way families do dinner.

I say that both sincerely, and modestly—It’s not me, it’s the pressure cooker. It’s a game changer for busy families, especially now. And this book—which is chock full of the favorites I’ve been leaning on in a tough year, coupled with the big flavors of food I miss most from restaurants and take out food—is right on time to help your family.

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CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES \\ HOLIDAY STYLE

How many of you cookie swap? Well, I’d be lying if I said I’d been to a cookie swap in the last five years, but it was one my favorite thing about holidays growing up. My mom was a cookie swap queen. And by that I mean, mostly, she baked her standard pale and crispy and perfectly uniform sugar cookies in the shape of bells and holly and trees and mittens, and let us sprinkle on the sugar, dutifully took them to the church cookie swap the first Sunday in December, and came home with a box overflowing with two dozen snowballs (Mexican Wedding Cookies), Peanut Butter Blossoms, homemade toffee, and in later years, those little round pretzels with melted chocolate and M and M’s meant to look like red-nosed reindeer. You can pop back several of those in just one bite.

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YES, BLONDIE

The other day, I fielded a VERY IMPORTANT question via Instagram about my Chocolate Chip Cookies for Modern Times: DO THEY BLONDIE?

Why, yes! I hadn’t thought of it because, frankly, blondies are often too dry or too sweet or just a bit too meh for my taste. But, the potential of blondies is obvious: uniformly moist, chewy cookies with relatively little crust (unless you choose an edge piece). And in the vein of easy and modern (as my cookies promise to be)—blondies are the even faster, even easier answer.

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CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES FOR MODERN TIMES

You’re going out on the limb when you set out to makeover the world’s most iconic cookie, especially one you’ve already somewhat famously madeover before. But, I’ve decided not to take cookie baking so seriously in my next decade of life, and that’s just how these Chocolate Chip Cookies for Modern Times came to be in my new book, Every Day is Saturday. I wanted o have a little fun and make something beautiful, super satisfying, overtly chocolatey while still a smidge toward healthyish on the cookie barometer…

READ ON FOR THE RECIPE.

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EVERY DAY IS SATURDAY || MY NEW COOKBOOk!

I was planning on continuing with GIFT GUIDE here (more coming) but I did an ask me anything on Instagram this week and several of you asked about my new book, which is all the nudge I needed to get this up here, today! This beautiful work, above, which has my heart and soul in it—this work that took 18 months of writing and developing, two months of shooting and way too many weeks of editing to count—has a name, and a face—or a cover to be exact. And I love it: EVERY DAY IS SATURDAY!

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