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Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Cookies
Recipes go into the Test Kitchen (which publishes Cook’s Illustrated) and reappear as runway models of their former selves. Inefficiencies, widely accepted rumors of what works, weird unnecessary steps, and disproportionate ingredients are trimmed, firmly reprimanded, frisked, or tugged into place.
Their recipe for chocolate chip cookies is full of just these alterations, challenging everyone’s favorite back o’ the box recipe by Toll House. Lighter on the flour, more and darker brown sugar, higher oven temperature, one less egg white…everything focused with undivided attention upon creating the chewiest cookie possible, with flavors of toffee, butterscotch, and serious butter love hiding inside.
The result speaks for itself. In your mouth. While you debate eating three in a row.
You can get their detailed recipe to add to your repertoire (do) right here, and here’s a visual guide to the key elements.
This post is my entry into Cook’s Illustrated delightful blogging contest. Read more about it right here, and see the other contestants here, here, here.UPDATE: E&D won! Joe and I get to visit the Test Kitchen next week! You can see the top finalists here, I love the judges’ comments. In true Test Kitchen fashion, they took the contest seriously and gave great commentary on what they liked. So fun to participate with all the other bloggers. Read about our visit to the Test Kitchen right here! -
Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum
We spent Mother’s Day at the Arnold Arboretum, a free park located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, sticking our noses into the dozens of newly bloomed lilacs. Loads of people were there and it felt like a fair, but all about flowers! (I’m just realizing the strange parallel to us spending last weekend at the Daffodil Festival….)
Something I love about the Arboretum is that almost every tree and bush is labeled with a little tag. It’s so nice to immediately learn what you are looking at. (Of course, if I wanted to go around using this app, like an iPhone addict, I might have labeled them all myself.) A bunch of the lilac varieties had beautiful names like Mme. Lemoine.
The best part of the day was spotting tough guys carrying roses, teddy bears, balloons, bundles of flowers—everything in shades of red, pink and floral, all heading to the significant mom in their lives.
Joe wore blue which looked just great next to all the shades of purple. I wore horizontal stripes (why?) so I’ll spare us the photo of that.
Have you spotted lilacs in your neighborhood? When I worked at a flower store we would sell them for their tiny season and it was always sad because they just aren’t meant to be cut flowers. They die so quickly. So now I just appreciate them happily grounded in the dirt.
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Remembering Recipes
I love the theme of this week’s contest over at Food52: The Recipe You Want to Be Remembered for. What a great way to spark creativity in recipe hunting and honing. They are sure to, as always, get some amazing recipes out of it.
The above is a little snapshot of my favorite breakfast these days: vanilla pancakes with caramelized bananas, before or after church, at the Beacon Hill Bistro, which is down the street from our apartment and puts clean paper over the tables, serves their coffee with tiny stirring spoons, and takes it for granted that you want real maple syrup with your pancakes.
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WSJ on Boston
I love the Wall Street Journal‘s style of city reviews: asking significant locals about their favorite places.
They just did Boston.
(although it’s not a great sign when the significant locals cross-recommend each other’s businesses. Small town.)
ps: There’s an ORIGINAL Dunkin’ Donuts location? WHAT? I would post a photo, but turns out it looks exactly like every other Dunkin’ location. Extra credit for branding consistency.
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Belgian in Boston: Saus
Over the weekend Joe and I were lucky enough to try out Saus, the new Belgian street food place down the street from Faneuil Hall. It was started by a couple of young people, who might be the same people working behind the counter when you are there, which is always cool. And they’re a non-bar open late every night, which is almost impossible to find right now.
First we tried the waffles which were made of hefty yeasty dough, edged with sticky caramelized sugar. Delicious. I got lemon curd sauce and Joe got berry berry mixed with salted caramel. I liked mine the best.
Obviously they immediately get points for serving it in a beautiful scalloped and lemon-curd colored dish. If you get it to go, which I will as soon as the weather shapes up, you just take a piece of tissue with it, street style.
We came back that night for fresh, house-cut, crispy frites. We tried the garlic mayo, truffle ketchup and chive sour cream dipping sauces. The truffle ketchup was the table favorite. I love that this is a place you can meet friends, spend a few dollars, shares some fries, and head out. A more savory version of the coffee shop meet-up.
AND: their walls are covered with Tintin comics.
Incidentally, they started tweeting their progress almost a year before they opened. If I hadn’t followed their progression on Twitter for so long, I don’t think I would have visited in the first week of their opening, or started telling my friends about them before they even opened. So, if you’re considering whether Twitter is worth your small business’s time: it is.
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Printing Press Auction Update
A little update on what happened at the printing press auction I mentioned two weeks ago.
The guys behind the in-the-works film Linotype were there filming how that part of the auction went down.
The linotype machine went to a museum for $10 (it cost $2600 just to move) and the rest of the room—all the beautiful old lead type, wooden storage boxes, etc—went for almost $10,000, to a guy who (I think) was going to resell it all separately or possibly for just the metal value. There was a collective sigh of resolution in the room after the winning bid was settled, and the new owner was immediately surrounded by type nerds hoping to buy specific pieces from him.
After three hours, I had to sneak out to find a sandwich. Fortunately we were in the North End, so I found this amazing balsamic, mozzerella, proscuitto creation just up the street at Salumeria Italiana:
One of the very last things auctioned off—when only the curious stragglers remained—was the file cabinet we had our eye on. We got it for $10! Cheaper than any of our other crappier, newer cabinets. It has five small drawers, just the right size to hold Joe’s clothes, and was made by Steelcase in my hometown. How perfect.
There’s something great about auctions: a bunch of strangers standing around examining the oddest assortment of things, with one fast-talking gentleman trying to entice you to bid for something you don’t want, or do want, but are pretending not to. We had a lot of fun and it was way more exciting than typical window shopping. It might be a new hobby!
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For sale: Boston’s Printing Plant
Joe and I spent the afternoon peering around the preview of Boston’s retired printing plant. The contents of the printing plant—previously used for everything from city employee’s business cards, voting ballots, and parking tickets—will be auctioned tomorrow.
The building is in one of my favorite neighborhoods: the North End, Boston’s little Italy. A former employee watching over the preview said they would have a pastry in the morning, garlic in the afternoon. He seemed to be feeling a little gloomy.
Most of the machines are enormous, some made of solid cast iron that will cost almost $1000 just to move from the building. (This linotype machine reminded me of Rabbit in John Updike’s books, who happily set linotype for a living in the first novel.)
The whole building felt like it had been a wonderful place to work–chock full of windows, warm yellow brick, breezy views of the North End on all sides.
City seals were everywhere.
No one seems to know how the auction will go tomorrow–the printers are afraid the metal will go to salvagers for scrap, but most printers don’t have the money or need for new machinery. To complicate matters, much of the letterpress stuff is being sold in large lots–meaning you can’t just pick up a few things, like this beautiful set of type drawers below.
The crowd at the preview was hushed group of respectful visitors—representatives from universities’ with print shops, mournful typophiles running their hands through the bins of metal slugs, experienced printers with their own shops eyeing the machinery, sightseers like us wishing we had more money and more space.
We’ll be at the auction tomorrow–I’ll let you know how it goes!
174 North St. Boston. Opens at 9am, open to the public.
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Neighborhoods Reviewed
This is a very good idea. What’s the most difficult part about moving (aside from the dreaded visit to U-Haul, what is the deal with that place)? Savvily picking a new neighborhood that will be just what you want for your new home. Craigslist, where “steps away” usually means a ten minute walk, obviously can’t be trusted on this count. No thank you.
NabWise has launched a well designed, user-content-contributed site for reviewing and rating neighborhoods. Right now, it is only in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Austin. I’ve been clicking around the Boston page and finding neighborhoods I’d never even heard of that sound great. Random people’s opinions can only take a site so far, and the reason I really like NabeWise is because of their handy integration of maps and graphics. Mapping the boundaries of a neighborhood alone, particularly when you’re clicking around Craigslist, is super helpful for newcomers to a city.
Here’s my review of Beacon Hill. I’d love to read your thoughts if you review a neighborhood as well!
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A Bookplate Fund
The Athenaeum is a library we joined last year because when you live in a little apartment in a cold city and the coffee shops seem to have sold all their chairs and tables, it becomes difficult not feel absolutely stir crazy for most of the winter. So we joined the Athenaeum which is up the street from our apartment, and is one of the oldest libraries in the country with George Washington’s personal library, ancient maps of Boston, yellowed books of death tolls, etc. The real reason we go there is for the reading rooms which are full of tables by tall windows that look out over Boston and everyone is hushed and typing away.
Almost all of their books are purchased from endowed funds which means–bookplates! Every new book, no matter how insignificant it might turn out to be, is marked with a bookplate, each with its own design. Of the many choices one has to stow money in and keep their name in circulation after they’re gone–park benches, college buildings, patenting a strain of bacteria–a small fund for book purchasing with your own bookplate seems like the best idea.
How could they have planned that the book purchased–Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing–would turn out to be robin’s egg blue?
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The Thinking Cup
Finally someone noticed the great potential hidden in that desolate strip of businesses along the Boston Common on Tremont Street. The thinking cup opens today serving Brooklyn darling Stumptown Coffee, loose tea, mini cupcakes, sandwiches, the usual. Joe and I stumbled on their soft opening yesterday and were super impressed. They have lots of seating–small tables intentionally designed for lone customers with laptops–and it’s cozy inside, tastefully decorated, and spacious. Those of you not in Boston probably think new coffee shops are not that big of a deal, but remarkably, it takes work to find a good spot among the zillions of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks downtown.
I rated this a generous-sized tea mug.
