The Dinner Files

I have two secrets to my favorite chocolate chip cookies. One is an ingredient, the other is a method. I suppose I have guarded these secrets to some extent, but then no one had ever asked for them. People will compliment the cookies and I will say thanks and that tends to be the end of the conversation.

These may not be your favorite chocolate chip cookies at all. If you like crisp cookies, for example, move along, these cookies are not for you. These cookies are soft and a bit chewy and quite thin all at once, which is what I look for in a chocolate chip cookie. No cake-y nonsense here. They have oats in them because, again, that’s how I roll. They do not have nuts because I could take or leave nuts in my chocolate chip cookies but I live in a house simply filled with people who say “no” to such shenanigans.

(I just did a quick search on dictionary.com to make sure shenanigans isn’t one of those phrases with historically racist implications and found it is of “obscure origins.” The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of it in the April 25, 1855 edition of Town Talk in San Francisco. Let it be known that I am local even in my use of comically out-dated slang!)

They have a bit of nutmeg, which even if you don’t like thin-soft-chewy cookies I recommend you try adding to whatever ridiculous cake-like or crispy wafer-style chocolate chip cookie recipe you prefer. It adds a je ne sais quoi that people won’t detect other than that their hand is shoving yet another cookie into their mouth.

And the key to getting that texture I like so much? Melt the butter first. Simple as that.

Chocolate “chip” oatmeal cookies

I say “chip” because I have yet another secret: I don’t use chips. I chop the chocolate. Total pain in the ass? Yes. Completely worth the effort for the improved texture and teeny tiny shards of chocolate that work themselves throughout the dough? Absolutely. To me. You may, and likely will, decide otherwise.

3/4 cup butter

1/2 cup each granulate sugar and brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1 cup rolled oats (for the batch above I used up some quick-cooking oats we had in the cupboard because none of us like those for breakfast; they worked fine but I prefer the regular ones, even in my cookies)

1 – 1 1/2 cups chopped dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Melt the butter and stir in the two sugars so they dissolve. Let this sit until it’s warm or room temperature but definitely not hot. Since I don’t have a microwave I melt the butter on the stove, then transfer it to a large mixing bowl, which helps move the cooling down along.

Stir in the egg and the vanilla.

In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Then mix this flour mixture into the butter sugar mixture. This really is how you should do it. Seriously. The thing is, you may decide you don’t want to dirty and extra bowl. Full confession: I never mix my dry ingredients first for cookies. I add the small amount stuff (in this case the baking soda, salt, and nutmeg) to the wet ingredients and stir them in, then add the flour. No one has ever complained about the results. Ever.

Stir in the oats and the chocolate.

Scoop in 1-tablespoon balls onto a baking sheet about an inch or so apart and bake 10-12 minutes. Let sit a minute and then transfer to a cooling rack. You’ll get almost exactly 2 dozen cookies this way. Maybe a few extra.

My son helped me make these. They were, in fact, his idea. When asked if there was anything that sounded really good for dinner, he said “chicken enchiladas,” which was a new one because he usually wants, or rather begs for, chicken tacos. He also specified that he would like to help make the enchiladas, which was also odd because he usually asks, or rather insists, that those chicken tacos come from El Metate. It wasn’t completely out of character, though, because he’s been really into helping in the kitchen recently. He’s also been really into telling me that I am the best mom in the whole world. It is very sweet and charming, but it does loose some of its impact after the 20th iteration in a single morning. It becomes even less meaningful when I hear him repeating, chant-like, the phrase “Mama is the best mama in the whole world” to himself as he gets ready for school. It’s an odd mantra. It seems more like he is trying to make it so than proclaiming a deep truth.

It’s also a phrase that I have a bit of baggage around. You see when I was maybe 11 or almost 11 I saved up my allowance, walked up to the drugstore, and picked out a beautiful cut glass “crystal” votive with a blue candle in it for my mom for mothers day. I then wrapped it carefully, tied a ribbon around it, and made a card. My memory gets fuzzy here, but I’m pretty sure I drew a big rainbow on the card with out-sized bubble-like flowers growing on a green hill.

On that Sunday morning I asked my brother – two years younger – what he had gotten mom for mothers day. Nothing. He had forgotten. So he went downstairs, found a rough piece of scrap lumber, used enamel paint leftover from the model car my dad and I decorated for Indian Princesses, and painted “Your the best mommy” (sic) on the wood. This he presented, still wet, to my mom.

She fell for it. She also fell all over him thanking him for it. She then displayed that aesthetic monstrosity in their house for the next 20 years. A redwood and royal blue thorn in my side. The votive and candle which were so clearly the superior gift in every way to my 11-year-old eyes were ignored to my 11-year-old perceptions in favor of the crappy, stupid gift from her favorite child.

Of course, my 40-year-old self completely understands that perhaps the affectionate utterances and declarations of love for my mom were fewer and further between from her rambunctious, Star Wars-obsessed son than they were from her older daughter. I’m also pretty sure my memory of my gift being totally ignored isn’t accurate at all. Yet the very phrase “you’re the best mommy” rings, at a certain level, hollow to me. Perhaps it’s because as much as my son may think that – and that is great and fabulous in every way – I, the adult, know that it just really isn’t even remotely true. Don’t get me wrong, I have my parental strengths and high points. I bring a lot to this party. But I’m not the best. Not even close. The best is more patient and less distracted, at the very least. As a parent I know my own failings all too well. I need to believe that there are better – not just different but straight-up better – versions out there. Of course, I’m not telling him that. He’ll figure it out soon enough and in all likelihood spend the rest of my life reminding me of that very fact. For now I try to push that redwood slab out of my mind along with all my maternal weak spots, and feel the unconditional adoration that a 7 year-old can have for their mother. It is fleeting and I’m going to want to remember its sweetness.

So as he fawns all over me, we rolled up these enchiladas: The filling was plain cooked and shredded chicken meat. You could bake some breasts or pull meat off a rotisserie chicken from the store. I poached a whole chicken, pulled the meat off, and then used the carcass to make a pot of stock, but I’m funny like that. So fill some corn tortillas (we used these “Mi Abuelita” ones they sell around these parts that have some wheat gluten in them and thus are soft and don’t break when you roll them; pure corn tortillas need to be soften with a dip in sauce or hot oil before you fill and roll them) with chicken, roll them up and put them in a lightly oiled baking pan. Pour red enchilada sauce on them (many many jarred versions are delightful but you can make your own with this recipe if you were so inclined), cover the pan with foil and bake in a hot oven (somewhere in the 375°F range) until toasty hot all the way through. Serve with crumbled cotija cheese, sliced red onion or green onion, and chopped cilantro on top. You could go old-school and cover the sauced enchiladas with a freight load of Monterey jack cheese and bake them uncovered until the cheese melted and bubbled and those would also be very delicious. That version, however, isn’t so much in sync with my current interest in maintaining some semblance of what was once a girlish figure. And honestly, this less-cheesed version was, though I say it myself, delicious in a different and perhaps even better way. I’m not saying they’re the best enchiladas in the whole world, but I sure like them a lot.

Once upon a time, when he was a young boy, my dad did not want to eat his dinner. He didn’t like it. It was a casserole. His mother found this quite vexing, so the story goes, since, according to her estimation, he liked everything that was in the casserole. She went so far as to name everything – ingredient by ingredient – that had gone into the dish to prove to him that he did, in fact, like the casserole. He maintained that no, he did not. She asked him what he would prefer to eat. He said hot dogs. Legend has it that she then fed him hot dogs at every meal for a week.

We had a busy weekend around here. It started with Thursday and Friday off of school (Lunar New Year and a furlough day because the school district doesn’t actually have any money to pay the bill for one thing that they seem to still pay: teachers’ salaries, but please, let’s not get me started on Prop 13 or we’ll be here forever) without corresponding days off of work for me and my dashing husband, which is always a somewhat fraught situation. Then on to a Lunar New Year’s banquet organized by fabulous Cousin Katie and her friend, and then a truly lovely dinner party the next night, all against a backdrop of weather a description of which would torture those suffering from early-onset cabin fever due to all the winter storms this year (okay, I’ll say this much – I was trotting around town in a sundress, a sundress, people!  It’s February for goodness sake!).

All that is to say that Sunday night popped up out of nowhere and despite the fact that I hadn’t cooked for days I still wasn’t all that anxious to get back at the stove. I was even less interested in going to the store or drawing up a list for someone else to go to the store. To the cupboard I turned and the cupboard revealed unto me:

Sardine olive caper pasta

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. While that happens mince a few cloves of garlic and/or shallots, a chile if you have it (use some red pepper flakes if you don’t), a handful or two of olives (pit them first if need be), a spoonful or two of capers, and – these are nice to add if you have them and I always do because it’s so nice to add them to things when you have them – a few pickled green peppercorns. Put the pasta to boil and cook until tender to the bite with that bit of give in the middle – just a little more than you want at the end. Pull out a cup or so of the pasta water before you drain the pasta. Put the pot back on the stove and add a bunch of olive oil and all that stuff you chopped up. Stir until everything is sizzling and yummy smelling. Add about 1/2 cup white wine and cook until about half the wine is evaporated. Add a can or two of sardines (tuna works too), stir to break them up and add the pasta and reserved pasta water. Stir to combine everything and cook, stirring now and again, until the pasta is perfectly done. You can chop up some parsley and add that if you have it and you’re so inclined. If you have a bit of last-chance arugula sitting in the fridge that is going to be tossed the next day if you don’t use it now, pile some on top of each serving of pasta along with the freshly ground black pepper.

My dashing husband proclaimed it the “best pasta of 2010-2011.” I inhaled a bowlful and went back for more. My son sat and poked at his.

“But you like sardines,” said my dashing husband.

No response, just more poking at the pasta.

“And you like olives.”

Silence.

“And we all know how much you like pasta.”

Silence.

“So you must like this!”

Our son turned to me and asked: “Mama, can I just get an apple?”

I sometimes worry that I’ll become too much like my grandmother. My voice isn’t unlike hers and once in awhile I come out with a doozy of a “really!” that even I recognize sounds just like her. I loved her very much and she was an amazing woman. Inspirational in many, many ways. But she was hard on her sons and daughters-in-law and could be dismissive and cold (not to her eldest grandchild, but I saw her be that way to others – including other grandkids – plenty of times). As with so many people, her hard shell was a protective one, and she was a gooey mess on the inside full of endless love for and pride in all of us, but she never came to terms with some of life’s blows and it wore on her. I learned a lot of things from her. I learned to speak my mind. I learned to play a mean game of Scrabble. I learned you belong anywhere you decide you belong. I learned a delicious meal is worth seeking out and worth sharing with others. I also learned that no matter how hard you try, no matter how perfect the logic and well laid-out your argument, you simply cannot talk someone into liking food they don’t like.

It was comforting to learn that maybe I wasn’t turning into my grandmother; perhaps I’d just married her instead.

Last night our making-dinner snack was a bowl of plain olives and sardines straight from the can. We all happily ate our fair share.

I have been here and there and seemingly everywhere this past month. The last stop was Santa Barbara where I attended the Edible Institute, a 2-day conference put on by the Edible Communities magazines.* As I wrote over at Local Foods, I came home humbled and inspired – not a bad combination.

Of the many things I’m excited about after this conference – rooftop produce gardens, the notion of having food labeled when it’s been sprayed with pesticides instead of when it hasn’t, of food writing as the ultimate liberal arts exercise (thanks for that one, Molly O’Neill) – what I’m really jazzed about is beans.

I’ve been a fan of Steve Sando and his Rancho Gordo beans for years. I honestly don’t remember when I first had them or saw them or heard about them. I know, from his talk, that it was in the last 8 – 10 years, since that’s how long he’s been growing and selling heirloom beans. Now I could go into how Sando revives heirloom varieties of beans, or is forming partnerships with Mexican growers to create a market for their traditional crops and products, or emphasize the degree to which he should seriously consider changing his career path to include stand-up comedy. Instead, I will stick to what was most amazing.

Most of the dried beans sold in the U.S. are old. I sort of knew this. I thought they were all at least a year if not two years old by the time we all brought them into our kitchens.

If only.

A year or two is just fine, claims Sando. The problem is that for the most part we’re not getting beans a year or two old. We’re getting beans that have been sitting in silos for up to ten years, or even longer. Yeah. I know. It explains a lot. It explains why they are often so dusty – not dirty from the field, but dusty from being in storage. It also explains why they don’t tend to cook evenly and why they often go from pebble-like to mush in a single stir of the spoon.

Last night I cooked up a pot of Rancho Gordo cannellini beans just as Sando suggested: sauté some mirepoix (onion, carrot, and celery peeled or cleaned and diced – I used 1 onion, 2 carrots, and 3 stalks of celery, but that’s me) and garlic (I used 4 cloves, but we’re a garlic-loving bunch at our house) in olive oil, add beans (I had put a pound of them up to soak that morning, but Steve claims it’s not really necessary) and enough water to cover generously; bring to a boil then down to a simmer and cook until the beans are tender – allow 2 hours but they are likely to be done more in the hour to an hour-and-a half range.

Besides just using water and not bothering to add any broth and not worrying too much about remembering to soak the beans, the other great tip I got was when to salt. Salt supposedly toughens bean skins, so many people warn against salting beans during cooking. Yet unsalted beans and unsalted broth are, well, not so delicious. I’ve always added salt at the end and allowed the mixture to sit so the beans pick up some of the salt added to the cooking liquid. Steve recommends salting 3/4 of the way through cooking – when the cooking smell shifts from the aromatics (onions, etc.) to the beans themselves. This involves paying a bit of attention, of course, but I find well-tended food tastes better in the end, anyway.

To these creamy, soft, distinctive beans I added a drizzle of fancy olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper, and a dollop of chile-green onion relish (1 red fresno chile, 1 anaheim chile, 4 green onions, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3 tablespoons olive oil, and 2 teaspoons lemon juice).

And that delicious liquid in which the beans have cooked? It’s called “pot liquor” (sometimes less appetizingly written “pot licker”). Oh yeah. Have a spoon or bread nearby with which to eat it up.

This “recipe” may not be original, but in the ever-sage words of Russ Parsons: stories that aren’t original are suspect, recipes that are original are suspect. Words for a food writer to live by.

* Full disclosure: As regular readers know, I frequently write for Edible San Francisco.