Pictures of Noodles

I made some pasta.  It was fun.  Even after everyone got home from work/activities and suggested that perhaps there wouldn't be enough to make a full dinner and I made a second batch.  Since I am super extra I used the recipe for fresh pasta from Serious Eats, but didn't pay attention and made it with Semolina flour, then panicked and threw in some olive oil at the last minute while kneading the dough.  The second batch I made with a 50/50 ratio Semolina to All Purpose flour.  I thought these noodles (which got the pesto treatment) were the better ones.

Look at my beautiful pile well of eggs! 
Now I just masterfully mix in the eggs bit by bit....

Flee!  The dam has been breached!  
Run for your lives!  Spoiler alert: this happened both times.

This bitch is TOUGH to roll out by hand! 
How many folds did you say I need to do? Three?! 

That is very pretty though!  

Also, because I am extra (as previously mentioned) I made some marinara to go with the noods.  I started it out making a garlic and onion confit, which basically just means I gently sautéed an entire bag of pre-peeled garlic and two onions in a cup of olive oil and an entire stick of butter for several hours on low.  Unlike a high heat roasting process (which I also use a lot on garlic) this low heat process cooks the garlic gently and really brings out the sweetness without any of the acidic or bitter notes that garlic can have.  Which is a lot of words to say I started with a lot of garlic and onions.

I saved back around two cups of the confit to use later, and had a bout a cup of it in the bottom of the pan as my sauce base.  From there I added all the tomatoes that I had.  Three slightly winkled on the vine tomatoes, one carton of seriously wrinkled cherry tomatoes, one can of whole tomatoes and one can of crushed tomatoes.  A splash of pinot noir, and left that baby on to simmer for the rest of the day.  I did end up pureeing it a little bit with my hand blender because I know the girls prefer a smoother sauce.

In the beginning there were...garlic and onions.

Just put in whatever you have I guess?

This was pretty fun to try, even though rolling out the noodles was difficult.  Don and I had a "who's tougher" moment when he came up from working out and I was rolling my shoulders out from wielding the rolling pin.  In the end I am pretty sure I won because his workout just gives him physical, emotional, familial and psychological benefits while mine gives me homemade noodles!  The noodles lasted less than 24 hours in the house, and now I have a large jar of marinara to use the next time I make them.

Scarfing the scraps.  B approved of both noodles and sauce,
a glowing endorsement from this persnickety one.

The lighting was just 👌

Dinner!  Also they were right - we definitely needed a double batch. 
That is why Double Batch is my DJ name.

I had eight leftover egg whites so I made this chocolate pavlova the next day.  This is my go to recipe for leftover egg whites, and birthdays during cold months.  Deb's infallible recipe calls for six egg whites, and I had eight, so I just increased the other ingredients by the correct percentage using no math whatsoever.  Which is why my pavlova came out looking like this.  

Win win win!

That is a huge fluffy air brownie.

Note, if you can, the inch high gap between crust and gooey interior. 
Pretty sure that is because I messed up the bake.  No handshake from Paul Hollywood.

 

A Tale of Two Salsas

Roasty and Fresh.

If you are in a relationship, intimate or otherwise, where you and your partner/friend/work spouse/etc like the same type of salsa please stop and take a moment to consider yourself blessed.  If you don’t like salsa stop and take a moment to consider the life choices that led you to this point, because I don’t understand you and you should please contact eat some chips and salsa immediately.  In my relationship with my husband we are simpatico on a number of very important culinary issues (our mutual dislike of bad restaurant and grocery store foil packet hollandaise sauce is a foundational block in our marriage), but salsa is not one of them.

The depth of our feelings on this issue come out in the way we describe our own salsa preferences versus the way we describe the others.  I say that I love a nice charred, or double roasted salsa, whereas he prefers his salsa raw.  He says I like my salsa burned or charcoaled while he prefers his salsas fresh.  We both like a little heat, enough so you feel it building in the back of our throat but not enough to induce a trickle of forehead sweat the moment the first bite passes your lips, so hey, we’ve got that going for us.

You should make some nachos to go with your salsa!

It is hard, for me at least, not to start off like a Thoroughbred at Churchill Downs in reading a ton of personality traits into that salsa choice.  A double roasted salsa is smokey, spicy, and a little bitter.  It is complex, and layered.  A fresh salsa is bright, present, flavorful, and accessible.  It can be spicy and acidic too, but relies on the quality and freshness of its ingredients to really shine.  In a roasted salsa can throw any old wrinkled tomato, tomatillo, onion and pepper under a broiler or onto the grill and, as long as it is not moldy and spoilt, it will come out shinning.  Not pictured below is a tray full of wizened cherry tomatoes and if you look closely at those red jalapeños they have definitely seen better weeks, let alone days.

You see where I am going here?

Don is fresh and sunny and full of quality.

I am charred, smokey, and full of nearly spoiled things.

Sigh.

Seriously though, it is funny.  Correspondingly humorous was how easy it was to make Don’s fresh salsa, and how much the burn hurts on my hand from where the boiling hot salsa oil splattered on my middle finger while I was making my charred salsa (read: much more difficult!).

Ouch, and also worth it.

So, without further ago, recipes for two salsas.

Notice how I hid all of the squashy
parts of these veggies by piling
them in a bowl!

Charred Tomato and Tomatillo Salsa

Ingredients:

-1 1/2 to 2 lbs of tomatoes and tomatillos, in whatever ratio you have them, husks removed, split in half (about 10-13 medium)

-1 carton of really old cherry tomatoes

-1 medium white onion, peeled and split in half or quarters

-3 jalapeño and Hungarian wax chiles (remove ribs and seeds if you want it milder, or omit the chiles, or use a milder variety.  Honestly one came in the CSA so I am not sure what it was to be honest)

-1 small to medium bunch of cilantro, bottom of stems cut off

-6 cloves of garlic

-1 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used like 1/4 cup which could account for why I have a burn on my middle finger from boiling hot salsa oil splatter.  I did not follow Kenji’s instructions, and I have paid the price)

-Kosher Salt

Directions:

1. Place your oven rack about 4 inches below the broiler and preheat it to high.  I used the convection broiler in my oven because I had two pans of ingredients to char.  Place tomatoes, tomatillos, onions and chiles on a foil Ines, rimmed baking sheet.  Broil them until they are really dark and blackened on top, and the tomatoes and tomatillos are form tender.  Throw the garlic in HALFWAY through once you start to see color on the other veggies.  DO NOT put it in at the beginning because you want roasty garlic, but you don’t want the garlic charred.  This is the only veg you don’t want to char.
   
   

   

   Nicely charred!

   
   
   
2. Transfer veggies and juices to the cup of an immersion blender (which I had) or a blender.  Add in half of the cilantro, and blend in pulses until it is a rough puree.  No big chunks!  You may need to blend in batches, and if so mix all of the batches together in a large bowl before next step.

   

   Jam it all in and get blending!

   
   
3. Heat oil (not too much!) in a medium saucepan or dutch oven until it is shimmering.  Pour the salsa into the hot oil ALL AT ONCE NOT SLOWLY.  It will steam and sputter like the devil in a holy water rain shower, so be prepared.  If you do it slowly it will only be worse!  Start stirring immediately and continue to cook until it darkens and thickens, about 3 minutes.  Remove from heat.

   

   Splatters here.

   

   Splatters there.

   
   
4. Finally chop the remaining cilantro and stir into salsa.  Season to taste with salt.  Let cool and then serve with chips, or serve warm with grilled meats, veg or enchiladas.  Or eat straight from the jar!

   

   Stir that baby.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

Ingredients:

-30 oz of tomatoes, fresh or canned or mixed (the famous recipe calls for one 28oz can of tomatoes and one 10oz can of Rotel, which I sadly did not have on hand.  I love Rotel)

-1 cup of cilantro, NOT chopped

-1/2 lemon, juiced

-1/2 lime, juiced

-1 tbsp white vinegar

-3/4 tsp salt

-1/4 tsp black pepper

-1/4 tsp cumin

-3 whole garlic cloves (recipe called for 1, you know I abode by a tripling policy when it comes to garlic)

-1/2 white onion, roughly chopped

Directions:

1.  Put everything in the cup of the immersion blender or the stand blender, with the cilantro on top.  Blend to your textural preference!

Blend that baby!

Recipe Notes: 
The recipe for charred salsa is based on the great Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recipe for Charred Salsa Verde: The One Salsa To Rule Them All salsa found on the always perfect Serious Eats website.  Any tweaks I made are because I was using the produce we had from our garden and a two week old CSA box.  Also, can we talk about how Chef Lopez-Alt and I agree on the best kind of salsa, and also how funny he is!?  This recipe is NOT difficult, it is just more involved than chopping and blending, because it requires chopping, roasting, blending and stirring.  Calm down, its also SUPER easy.  

The recipe for fresh salsa is an old family recipe from consummate cook and baker Rebecca Ann Walton’s personal files.  She gifted us with a jar of this salsa several months ago and we immediately ate the whole jar in half an hour and then begged her for a picture of the recipe card.  Shared with her permission (Becca is it ok that I shared this?  Thank you!). Any changes I made are also because of produce availability and the fact that I over blended the salsa.

Did I really need to make more salsa?
OF COURSE I DID!

Cher Amies en Fromage, or Dear Cheese Friends

To the couple seated next to us at dinner on Saturday evening at L’Albatross in Cleveland, OH, I want to extend my sincerest apologies.  If it appears that my husband and I were eavesdropping on your entire evening, I have the simplest of explanations…we were.  We were hanging on every single word you were saying.  I think you know why.  It seems, after all, that we have a very specific interest in common. Yes, yes, you know exactly what I am talking about:

Cheese.

From the moment you sat down next to us on the little banquette, our tables separated by the barest 6 inches, I knew that we were true companions at heart.  You, with your funky cats-eye glasses and your husband (Don maintains that you were unmarried but had been together for several years, but I know better) with his more practical CPA style frames.  You accidentally threw your fork at my foot while moving your water glass, and I laughed it off so casually because my Olive Suede Thursday boots could never be troubled by a mere salad fork. Don’t give it another thought, I said.  

And then the magic between us truly began.  Then you began to talk about cheese.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of dining at L’Albatross they offer a titillating surprise for the uninitiated.  Their menu features a small inset on the bottom left side outlining a cheese course, an Assiette de Fromage offering your choice of three, five or seven cheeses.  A simple enough offering, very often looked over I am sure.  But not by you, learned companions.  You knew better.  You were initiated.  You came to L’Albatross for this very reason.  You came for the cheese.

After you made your drink selections, you fell to discussing the menu with true vigor.  Two hors-d’oeuvres, or a potage and salade?  Well, the onion soup gratinée, of course (!), and then a salad perhaps so as to not get too heavy too quickly (one should rarely get too heavy too quickly, both Don and I agree!).  And then, of course, the fromage.  Should we get three or…no definitely five.  But not seven, that is too much.  Five.  Definitely.

By this time Don and I were riveted.  I fear our own conversation was coming in fits and starts because we were so enthralled by the intensity of your discourse.  I mean, cheese is exciting (believe me girl, I do my share of drooling at a wedge of Humboldt Fog or Mt. Tam or a nice goats milk Gouda) but I have never before seen people more excited by cheese outside of an actual creamery. 

You placed your order, finally, and Don and I fell back into our conversation. We laughed.  We ate prodigious amounts of liver pâté and pork belly and skate wing.  We looked forward to our concert date to follow, and wondered if our girls were behaving well or if they had locked their Uncle Dainty in the basement and taken over the house yet.  Then your our server came to clear away your first courses and we remembered: after the first comes…the cheese!

Dearest dining companions, I can tell you now, it was everything we hoped it would be.  And more.  So much more.

Minutes after your table was cleared, a man entered the room with an enormous cheese board.  You knew this was coming, of course.  It was what you were waiting for, after all!  But, you see, Don and I had no true comprehension of the Assiette de Fromage before this moment.  We assumed when you ordered your selection of five cheeses that the selection would be made for you, in the kitchen, by the chef or one of his more cheese obsessed underlings.  We assumed these selections would be sent out to you on a stylish board, perhaps a slate or a live edged hardwood, along with their house baked bread and some garnishes and jams and a whole grain mustard.  Oh no, such a thing is much too pedestrian for L’Albatross.

It was an enormous wooden board with twenty to thirty cheeses on it.  The gentleman, tattoos running up his arms, placed the board on a waiting tray stand right next to your table and proceeded to discourse on the cheeses with you for the next fifteen minutes.  I know because I propped my chin in my hand, elbow gauchely on my table, leaned forward toward your table and just watched.  All pretense of conversation between Don and I was lost, as I myself was lost to the magic of the cheese board presentation.  Fresh goats milk cheeses, soft French cheeses, washed rind cheeses, your blues, your hard cheeses and sheep milk cheeses.  Cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese YES!

CHEESE! 
Assiette de Fromage 26 October, 2016 - contributed by Yelp user Sheena W.

“Where do you think we should start?  Oh, never mind I know…let’s start hard and then work our way back around.” You proclaimed your plan with delight, your husband nodding excitedly and Cheese Man nodding sagely and markedly more sedately.  An excellent idea, m'am.

Don and I shared a pregnant glance.  Start hard and work our way back around.  A wise plan in any circumstance — we nod sagely as well.

You made your selections, and I will be honest in admitting to you, since we are so close, that I did not fully agree with all of your decisions.  The fresh goats milk, absolutely!  The nutty, aged manchego, clearly.  The full and heady Maytag, you go girl!  However, as much as I love cheese, I have never been able to get completely behind the washed rind cheeses.  I know, I know.  Do I even really love cheese if I can’t do a washed rind?  Jesus, what a poseur!

Funky, gooey Red Hawk, photo courtesy of cheesenotes.com

Believe me, I have tried.  I just can’t.  The Red Hawk defeated me utterly.  

In fact, I am ashamed to admit to you, I once returned an entire round of Red Hawk to a store because I was convinced it had gone bad in the wrapper after I opened it and cut my first slice.  I hadn’t bothered to look it up and research it, and I hadn’t asked the cheese man at the store about it when I purchased it.  I love Cowgirl Creamery's Mt. Tam and Devil's Gulch, so I just went balls to the wall and bought an entire round, convinced that I was enough of a cheese lover to fully embrace anything short of a casu marzu.  After opening it up at home, ready to use it as the centerpiece to my epic Friendsgiving cheese board, I completely panicked.  As a Red Hawk lover (I know this because that is the washed rind cheese you picked) I know that you relish the funky, beefy aroma that I was met with when I unwrapped it, but perhaps you will forgive me when you realize I was not expecting the reddish brown color and moist texture of its rind.  I had another 30 minutes before picking up the kids at school, so I wrapped it back up, hopped back in the car, determined to get justice for myself and my obviously incorrectly stored cheese.

What followed was the most embarrassing customer service exchange I have ever had the misfortune to initiate.  They were patient.  They were kind.  They tried to explain the cheese without fully calling me an idiot.  In the end it is my belief that they just wanted my crazy bourgeoise cheese returning ass to go away since it was a holiday weekend and they had too much shit to do to bother with me.  I called my sister-in-law, the chef, on my way out of the store and sent her pictures I had taken and she soon set me straight.  Um, Crystal....Red Hawk is a washed rind cheese.  Washed rind cheeses grow extra funk, because, you know, moisture.  Red, funky and moist is exactly how Red Hawk is supposed to be.  Now excuse me while I laugh my ass off at the thought of you self righteously returning this expensive cheese to a Whole Foods on a holiday weekend!

Yup.  I think the only thing more bourgeoise than eavesdropping on someone else ordering five pounds of cheese at a sumptuous French restaurant is returning a full pound of cheese because you don’t understand what you bought in the first place.  Le sigh.

But I digress.  I wanted to share this little anecdote with you the other night, but didn’t dare take the chance that it would diminish your enjoyment of your own funky assemblage de fromage!  You see I feel we shared a certain simpatico that even our differing opinions of washed rind cheeses couldn’t diminish.  I was even willing to overlook your apparent interest, as I do for so many of my juniper scented friends and family, in gin cocktails!  In hindsight it is probably all for the best that I was unable to bring myself to interrupt your dinner and regale you with my own cheese themed stories -- I can only imagine the blog post you yourself could have written the next day: Dear Woman Who Continually Interrupted Our Valentine's Celebration With Stories About Cheese...

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  Don and I eventually finished our main courses, and were far too stuffed to contemplate either a dessert or, dare I even suggest it, our own cheese course.  We paid our bill and departed.  I presume you luxuriated in the absence of two other human beings seated six inches from you and visibly intruding on your romantic evening for the five minutes it took the staff to clear off, change the linens, and reseat our table.

For our part, we think of you often, dear cheese friends, and we wish you only the best in life.  We pray that life does not get too heavy too quickly for you, and that you are always able to start hard and then work your way back around.  We should all be so lucky.

Your Amies en Fromage,

Crystal and Donald Zimmer

P.S. For your delight, a selection of pictures featuring L'Albatross' Assiette de Fromage:

Assiette de Fromage 29 August 2018 - contributed by Yelp user Philip R.

Assiette de Fromage 1 May 2019 - contributed by Yelp user Philip R (this guy loves cheese too!)

P.P.S. For your comparison, a selection of cheese boards that suck compared with the Assiette de Fromage:

Ooohh, four types of cheeses, some dry salami and a
half ass bowl of mixed olives!  Pathetic.

It's a nice attempt at a linear presentation, but...no.

What is this peasant fare, a midmorning snack for an infant hobbit? 
There is barely an ounce of cheese on this plate.  Go home.

Meat Sweats or Leftoverpalooza or We Have The Meat! or How To Cook and Eat Twenty Two Pounds of Prime Rib

This Christmas we took a page from traditional Whoville celebrations in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and made a real roast beast for Christmas Eve dinner.  I think Don’s dad had been watching The Grinch and the Christmas Carol on repeat, and when he went to the butcher’s he asked for the largest goose in the window and ended up with a 22lb bone-in prime rib roast.  I don’t really know how a description can possibly do it justice, and I didn’t think to take pictures of it, but it was a BEAST (in fact, I started referring to it as the Beast Rabban in my head, but then that got kind of weird, so I had to stop).  It came in the largest foil roasting pan available at your local grocery store, wrapped in butcher paper, and it busted out both sides of the roasting pan.  

Don and I took the Beast on as a project, and decided to cook it as a whole, rather than cutting it up into two or three roasts.  For more information about our favorite method of cooking prime rib, Serious Eats has several articles detailing the methodology and a great recipe as well.  Reverse Searing For Life!  While the recipe shown references a 3 to 12lb rib roast, I can now testify that the methodology works for a 22lb roast as well.  Just make sure you give yourself enough time, and if your roast is rarer around the rib bones you can always carve off the outside pieces and then put your roast back into a low oven to keep cooking the inside as you eat.

Note: also make sure you have a roasting pan that has not been bent and crumpled under the weight of your beast to roast.  Especially if your husband is taking your kids to the grocery store on Christmas Eve morning and asks you forty times if he needs to get anything else and you assure him that you are definitely good to go, nothing more needed.  Then he comes home and asks what you are cooking the beast in and you say “a roasting pan” and realize the roasting pan you are thinking of is actually the Platonic Ideal of a roasting pan, and does not, in fact, inhabit the physical plane of your in-laws house.  

So, perfect medium rare prime rib (and when I say perfect, I mean if you like medium rare meat then you need to make yourself an occasion and cook this immediately because this method is foolproof and amazing), Christmas Eve dinner.  22lbs.  We ate about 3lbs of it that night.  A few more pounds were sliced off for Christmas Day dinner to complement the turkey.  I would estimate that left about 16lbs of prime rib leftover after Christmas.  Don and I sliced that in half, and took one of the halves home when we left the morning of the 27th.  Call it 6-7lbs of prime rib per half at that point.  A goodly chunk of the original beast, which in reality was a full Christmas roast for a family in its own right!

Would you ever go to the grocery store and order 6lbs of sliced roast beef?  Well, now that I think about it, that sounds like a sandwich party to me, but still.  That would be crazy.  So what do you do with that much leftover, perfectly rare prime rib?

Well, really whatever you want!

Here is a list of the meals we ended up getting out of the Beast:

Prime Rib Christmas Eve Dinner.  Accompanied by mashed potatoes, Hawaiian bread rolls, sautéed green beans.
Prime Rib Second Christmas Dinner.  Accompanied by horsey sauce, baked creamed spinach, and garlic bread.

Prime Rib Second
Christmas Dinner

Prime Rib Ramen.  I broke out the last bag of dashi broth from the deep freeze, leftover from that time I went insane in 2016 and spent three days making David Chang’s  ramen broth.  Combined with beef stock, and purloined three bricks of noodles from our pantry store of Top  Ramen.  Combined with thin shaved prime rib, shaved carrots, onion and thinly sliced sugar snap peas.
Prime Rib Scrambled Eggs.  I didn’t really want to mess with making the potatoes for a full hash, and now I regret that.  Hash is one of my favorite breakfast or breakfast for dinner meals!  Instead I just cut up some cubes of prime rib, cooked them on medium high in a nonstick skillet to crisp up the fat, and then added some eggs beaten with a bit of half and half and garlic salt.  In retrospect I should have combined the prime rib bits and eggs after they were cooked separately so that the crispy bits did not get soggy with egg!  Still good!
Prime Rib Sandwiches.  The second to last leftover meal, this used a serious chunk of prime rib and was delicious.  Toasted hoagie buns, homemade horseradish sauce, cartelized onions, and sharp white cheddar.  Sandwiches broiled open faced in the oven for 6 minutes, then devoured.  I wanted to add some baby arugula to these but we only had romaine, and that did not seem right.  Lucy had hers without onions and horsey sauce.  R requested a ham and cheese with extra mayo, served neither hot nor cold, but medium, please.
Christmas Leftover Poutine.  This was the ultimate leftover meal.  Take leftover french fries from your prime rib sandwich night, top with leftover creamed spinach from Second Christmas, and top with chopped prime rib from the very last four inch by four inch chunk and shredded gruyere and parmesan from the creamed spinach.  Broil in the oven on low for 10 minutes, or until the smell drives you insane and you try to grab the cast iron skillet with your bare hands.  Ouch.

Delicious leftover chimera of french fries,
creamed spinach, prime rib and gruyere

This may not seem like a lot, but at the time it felt like we had been eating prime rib for two weeks.  Which is kind of true.  No one got food poisoning.  Not sure I would be up for cooking that large of a beast again in the future!

Here are some other meal ideas I considered in the leftovering process:

Prime Rib curry with sweet potatoes

Prime Rib and mushroom stroganoff

Prime rib soup with barley and carrots

Leftover scrambled eggs, sausage gravy and
creamed spinach atop leftover biscuits

Leftover poblano chile puff and sharp cheddar on toast

Chocolate Chip and Toffee Cookies

To say I am a devote of Smitten Kitchen would be an understatement.  I love Deb, I love her recipes, I love her attention to detail and her dedication to making things easier for home cooks.  Her preternatural tales for winnowing recipes down to one pot or pan has made it so that she is the only website bookmarked on my phone.  Whenever I have an idea for a meal or want to know something more about a recipe I check in with Smitten Kitchen first (usually followed by a check in with Ina, Nigella, Kenji, and Stella just to see what else is floating around).  

That being said, sometimes you mess with perfection just because you can’t help yourself.  I have been making Deb’s perfected version of David Leite’s consummate chocolate chunk cookies for years now, and I adore them.  I make them when we have guests to stay and leave warm cookies in people’s rooms.  I make them for tailgates or birthdays.  They are a thing now.  And sometimes I really go nuts and say “But what if I added bacon?” or “Maybe some toasted oats?” or “Oh look, a bag of toffee nuggets!” or "How much chocolate is too much?"

Mmmm...add cocoa powder!

Double chocolate cookies (answer: no amount of chocolate is too much)!

 Several months ago two friends of mine had their first baby, and I jumped on the chance to bring them a meal (yay Joanne, Kieran and baby Clodagh!).  Bringing families postpartum meals is one of my faaaavorite things to do.  Not only do you get to snuggle a sweet babe when you drop off the goods, but you get a chance to really delve into someone’s food joys and think about making something that will deliver love, care, and some essential recovery nutrients.  Two of my college roommates are pregnant now, and I am seriously looking into some Chinese postpartum herbs and coolers with dry-ice so I can ship bone broth cross country! 

Along with a veggie curry, I brought a batch of Consummate Chocolate Chunk Cookies Plus Toffee.  They politely asked me for the cookie recipe several days later, which I promptly ignored.  I usually ignore a first request because I think people are sometimes asking out of politeness and I forget that they asked 5 seconds after the subject is changed.  But they asked again, and then a third time.  So I knuckled down and scratched out the following:

This recipe is based on Deb Perelman's recipe on Smitten Kitchen, which is in turn based on David Leite’s amazing recipe from the NY Times.  If you want to bake these cookies check here first in case you decide you want to bake THOSE cookies.  If you are still here, then proceed below.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces, 280 grams or 2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature (if you are strapped for time and didn’t set the butter out you can soften it in the microwave by cutting it up and heating it in 10 second bursts)
• 1 1/4 cups (240 grams) light brown sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (225 grams) granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons (10 ml) vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse or kosher salt
• 3 1/2 cups plus 2 teaspoons (yes, really) (445 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1 bag Ghiradelli’s milk chocolate chips
• 1 bag toffee chips
• Sea salt
• If you want to include oatmeal, I add in 1/3 cup rolled oats, and take out around 2 tbps of flour :)

Method (after a fashion):

With a hand or stand mixer (I really prefer a stand mixer for this with the paddle attachment), cream the butter and sugars together until light, fluffy and then some, about 3 to 4 minutes.  What is light and fluffy?  Kind of a café au last color, and looking pillowy and increased in volume.  You have whipped air into the butter and sugar — good job!

Now add the eggs, one at a time, and mix on low to combine.  I sometimes scrape down the bowl in between each egg or after two eggs. Then add the vanilla, mix to combine, and then scrape down the bowl again. Sprinkle baking soda, baking powder and salt over dough and mix it until fully combined.  Instead of adding the leaveners into the flour and distributing them evenly into the dough that way, you are doing it here instead.  Mix very well on this step so that the leaveners are really well mixed into the batter at this point, then you won’t have to mix the flour a lot later.

Next, add flour all at once and mix it in short bursts until it almost completely disappears (put on the mixer cover for this one!). You don’t want to over-mix it at this stage. 

Add chocolate chips and toffee chips and mix them in by hand with a spatula or with your dough hook.  Now comes the hard part: cover your bowl with plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge for a minimum of 24 hours and up to 72 hours, although I have totally had it in there up to 5 days are we’re all just fine.

When you want to bake:

Take your dough out of the fridge around 30 minutes to an hour before you want to bake.  You need to warm that dough up a bit so you can scoop it!

Heat oven to 360 degrees and line a couple large baking sheets with parchment paper ( I strongly prefer parchment paper to silicone mats or foil for baking cookies!) Form dough into 3 1/2-ounce (100 gram) balls, which will seem completely absurd.  They are larger than golf balls, they look absurdly large, but they will give you the proportions you need.  Arrange balls of dough very far apart on sheets (these cookies will be up to 5 inches wide once baked, so I do only 8 cookies per sheet) and sprinkle the tops of each with a few flecks of sea salt.  

Note the spacing (not the burned cookie)!  I only fit 8 cookies on this pan.

For me, the size of the cookie CAN be variable, as long as you make sure each pan has the same size cookie on it.  I have made smaller ones for kids, so the dough ball will be about a golf ball and you just start checking the dough at 11 minutes.  

Bake the larger sized cookies for 12 to 17 minutes, until golden all over.  This is a large time range, but you should start checking around 12 minutes.  They will spread a lot, and each oven is different, so use your first batch to test the correct timing for your own oven.

Cool the cookies on the tray for a few minutes until they are set enough to transfer to a cooling rack.  I find a metal fish spatula works well for this transfer!

So much deliciousness!