Message in a Cookbook

Once in a while I have days where, for one reason or another, I'm not feeling great. My desire to mope and sit in my pajamas watching old episodes of the Great British Bake Off is strong. Sometimes it's for a specific reason. Someone has said or done something that hurt more than the logical part of my brain thinks it should. I'm questioning what I'm doing or if it's enough. I'm trying to figure out how to be better at being social. Other times, there’s no significant reason. The weather is crummy. I finished a good book. I ruined a simple dish with too much heat, or salt.

Sometimes the mood goes away as quickly as it came. Sometimes it stays for as long as it wants. There is, of course, no quick fix. But I’m a problem solver by nature - so I try. I go to the book store.

It’s a 5 minute stroll from my front door. I walk in the door whisper a quick hello to the folks at the counter, and scurry to the small room all the way in the back of the long rectangular shop where used cookbooks, food writing, children's books, and (oddly) sports biographies all share space.

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“Elissa, May everything you create in and out of the kitchen turn out just the way you want it. Much love, Mom + Steve. 12/25/97”

I quickly scan the shelves for one of the most gifted cookbooks of the last 50+ years - The Joy of Cooking. Inevitably, there are 3-4 tattered copies waiting for me - some spiral bound, some hard bound - and I pull them all off of the shelf. I sit in one of the way-too-tiny chairs from the kids corner of the room, carefully pry each copy open, and eagerly flip through the first few pages.

Usually, the gift giver has inscribed one of the first pages of the Joy of Cooking for the recipient. Sometimes from friend to friend, sometimes from parent to child. No context other than the note itself and the book’s print date.

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“Christmas, 1985. For Lucille, with affection from Jane. (on the occasion of another Christmas meeting of the nutsy bridge club).”

I imagine how the book made its way to this tiny corner of the world. How someone decided on this classic (if outdated) cookbook for their loved one, decided what to write, how to wrap it. I imagine the recipient cooking from it for a few years before deciding to sell it to my local book store. I wonder how they were able to part with it; how they knew to trust this store to ferry the book to its next owner.

I have my own copy of Joy, gifted to me by my dad for Christmas many years ago - one of my first cookbooks. I don’t remember the last time I referred to it. But it feels like a bookshelf requirement at this point. Table stakes in a cookbook collection.

Inevitably, I leave the bookstore in slightly better spirits with some other book in hand - most recently MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating. I had been looking for it on the recommendation of a close friend and was excited to see a copy in wonderful condition. I couldn't resist checking the first few pages. Just in case.

“To Shelby - Christmas 1999. You'll enjoy just reading this one - xxoo M + D”

I believe it.

The Era of Cookies

Cookies generally had a bit of a moment in 2018 (see: Alison Roman “The Cookies”). And in the same year, coming off of a back-to-back pie fueled existential crisis, I turned to them for redemption.

Here’s the thing about cookies - you can go as far down the rabbit hole as you’d like. Just looking for a cookie or two? A classic Nestlé Tollhouse will do you just fine. Want to make the perfect crisp edge, chewy center chocolate chunk masterpiece? We’ve got those too. Want a dozen? Want 4 dozen? No problem. The dough seems loose? Let it see to see if the flour hydrates more. Lacey cookies where they shouldn’t be? Refrigerate. Cooking too fast on the bottom and too slow on the top? Adjust the rack, adjust the heat. And on, and on, and on. These are solvable problems. And all in a matter of minutes. You’re not baking a whole cake only to realize when you cut into it that the fruit has all dropped to the bottom and it’s soggy (sorry, Mary Berry). Or a pie that turned into applesauce and is pale, sad, and underbaked.

Dull apple pies aside, there’s nothing inherently wrong with going back to the same recipe over and over. Some are just so dang good it’s impossible to put them down. Others have been in the family so long they remind you of why you loved to cook in the first place - like my mom’s fudge crackles. I’ll say this right now -- the chocolate crinkle cookies you’ve seen in the grocery store are good and fine. I’m sure they’re chock full of fudgy goodness, rolled in powdered sugar, and delicious as all cookies should be. But there are few things as comforting as one of my mom’s lumpy, misshapen, warm fudge crackle cookies fresh from the oven and drowning in enough powdered sugar to cake onto your fingertips long after the cookie has disappeared and you’re reaching for the next. 

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Rosemary Lemon Cookies - September Daughter

So as I looked down the barrel of a year dedicated to cooking things I gave a shit about, cookies seemed like a pretty spectacular start. And they were. I learned so much about the nuances of heat, ingredients, texture, and timing. I found recipes I loved and developed others that became notorious enough for a friend at work to roll by my desk and say “hey so I want a savory cookie…” and walk away leaving me to ponder.

My Rosemary Lemon Shortbread cookies came from that moment. They’re definitely more sweet than savory - but what they lack in accuracy to brief, they make up for in super tender texture and not-too-sugary balance. This is a cookie for that friend you have who says “I don’t really have a sweet tooth” but like…they definitely still want dessert, what are they trying to prove?

The recipe is extremely simple, but does require chill time. I know people hate that in this universe of instant gratification. But you know what’s better than snapping your fingers and having a cookie immediately? Chilling your dough and eating a great cookie.

These little babies went through a few rounds of tweaking (too much lemon? not enough rosemary?), and the effort was worth it. These are a part of the exclusive club of cookie recipes for which I’ve had people ask hey, can you send me the recipe? And definitely ask more than once. Or twice. Sorry - the wait is over.

What I’ve learned beyond the skill of making kickass cookies (not-so-humble brag) is that baking and bringing my bakes to work helped me connect with some of the most wonderful human beings, who I love dearly. Let me tell you - people love being offered a chance to taste cookies and be opinionated. Not shocking.

A Resolution and a Shitty Pie

Over the holidays in 2017, I made two apple pies. The first one was okay. Homemade shortcrust pastry elevated what was otherwise a pretty uninspired combination of granny smith apples, cinnamon, sugar, butter, nutmeg, a little lemon juice to keep the apples bright after being baked into melty submission. It was fine - the major saving grace was working on it with one of my little sisters, and seeing how excited she was when it came out of the oven. 

The No Good, Very Bad Pie (seriously it was bad)

The second was plain awful. I had forgotten about it until the day before Christmas, and upon being reminded that I was on pie duty, asked my mom to pick up the above mentioned ingredients, plus two pre-made roll out crusts. They would be perfectly fine, I told myself. It’s not like I hadn’t used them before, and everyone was expecting this pie anyways. I rushed through the peeling, seasoning, and crust pre-bake, deciding last minute to just throw the top crust on whole, rather than lattice-style as I had always done. What would it matter anyways? The pie was safe. Always the same - no big deal. 

Wrong. It was a disaster. 

The holes I quickly cut into the top didn’t give the steam enough opportunity to escape, and so it created a sauna - turning my usual golden beauty into what was essentially applesauce between two pale crusts. I served it up with a sheepish apology about experimentation not always working out. I was asked by my partner, spending our first Thanksgiving dinner together, if I wanted a slice and gave my usual response, “No, I don’t really like to eat my own bakes.” Typically this gets sort of shrugged off and ignored - a diet thing, maybe. This time, no. “Why? Shouldn’t you taste what you’re serving?” My excuse was that I knew the pie - it was the same. Just apples. Not a big deal. But this time I was pushed to think about it. Why not? What does it say about you (or your pie) that you don’t want to eat it? It was an hour long conversation/bicker session. And he was right.

Until then, I’d been making the same pie every holiday season for 14 years. The same combination of ingredients. The same result - a decent apple pie, helped along by a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of cool vanilla ice cream. I’d read new recipes of all types - excitedly flipping through Bon Appetit magazines when they arrived in my mailbox, counting the days until a new cookbook came out from my favorite chefs  - but never trying anything different. My family asked for “the pie,” and I delivered; a sorry excuse, I know they would have welcomed anything new I wanted to try.

It started to creep into my regular eating habits. 

Claiming a lack of time for cooking and a desire for convenience, I’d settle for delivery services - whomever could get my food to me faster. Sometimes the grocery store hot bar while going from place to place. I had moved to the city, finished grad school, my career picked up, and the kitchen was the first thing to be pushed aside. For months my oven lie dormant. Baking sheets untouched, saucepans empty. When I did cook, it was uninteresting - for nutrition, not fulfillment. While most things I was spending my time on were still worthy, I hadn’t carved out time for cooking. Something that had always excited me - spending my days as a teen watching the Food Network religiously, fueling my desire to work in the food and beverage industry - was now on the backburner. Where was the excitement and sense of exploration? Why had I forgotten how much I loved baking? The subpar pies were a reminder.

I spent the last week of 2017 deciding on a few goals for the new year (generally, I hate “resolutions” -- not nearly enough room or forgiveness for trial and error). I wanted to retry all of the foods I claimed to dislike to see if I was right, or just holding onto an outdated opinion based on a bad experience. I wanted to cook and bake and try new recipes alone and with friends, turning my kitchen back into my happy place. I wanted to make culinary exploration my reason for travel and experience food everywhere.

And I wanted to stop making that fucking pie.