Cookie Party: Volume 7

I don't know what it is about cookies that brings out the mad scientist in me. When it comes to savory dishes, I'll tinker with recipes, but mostly do so in an attempt to refine a dish to its best classical form. When it comes to cookies, though, I'm apparently happiest when the result is monumentally weird. My radar went off when a friend of mine posted a lovely shot of some shortbread cookies she'd recently made, and when I saw that they incorporated fresh basil into the dough, I knew I'd have to give them a whirl.

Lemon Basil Shortbread Cookies
An English Garden in Every Bite

It's the perfect season to try these out. Lemon and basil are so refreshing in the June heat, and while shortbread can tend to be overly dry, summer refrigerators are usually stocked with cool drinks. This recipe requires a lot of butter, but aside from the lemon and basil, none of the ingredients are different from any other standard shortbread.

I used my mixer to cream the butter with powdered sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest, and the basil, then mixed in some flour and salt. This was the point where I reached the biggest challenge of the process. The recipe asks that you take the resultant sticky dough, separate it into two balls, then roll them out to a quarter-inch thickness and cut shapes. My dough was far too soft to even consider rolling, let alone cutting shapes. Anything I cut would immediately fall apart, as the softened butter made the dough too pliable to work with. I wound up just tearing off balls of dough to flatten into circles with my palm.

I'm not sure how I'll correct for this issue next time. I could either add more flour to make the dough stiffer, or perhaps try chilling the dough for a while to firm it up. I believe I'll try the latter, since excessive flour can make the cookies dry and impairs the flavor. While the cookies baked, I whipped up the glaze, which consists of powdered sugar, milk, and lemon juice. I should have seen the next problem coming, since I was baking more cookies than the recipe stated would result. I didn't have enough glaze to cover all the cookies, and for the ones that did get glaze, some of them got short shrift.

Still, I was pretty happy with the flavor. As with most of my odd cookie creations, the response I got from other people was decidedly one of confusion. I'm not sure these were entirely successful, because the black pepper/cumin cookies are far stranger than these, but got a better reception from the people I gave them to. I liked them, though, and I think that with some tweaks, I can turn out a better batch next time. Maybe I'll even get to finally use the alphabet cookie cutters I've been itching to try out.

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Top Chef

Back in 2012, I listed the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi as my #3 favorite movie of the year. It's not hard to see why. Combine a compelling topic with an innate love of sushi, and toss in some fantastic food photography, and of course I'd be magnetically drawn to it. When I heard that director David Gelb was developing a similar documentary style as a television series for Netflix, I was overjoyed.

That first season of Chef's Table has been out for a while now, but it wasn't until I heard that Season 2 episodes were being released that I finally carved out some free time to wrap up those first six episodes. Each of the episodes focuses on a single chef, and delves into not only his or her most well-known dishes, but their backgrounds and what made cooking such an important part of their lives. The overwhelmingly beautiful food photography is back, and it's fascinating to see how fine dining has diverged into such wildly different concepts, depending on the creative mind behind it.

The six chefs that the first season revolves around are from all across the world, and all have different motivations for wanting to excel in the food world. One will want to spread a message of sustainable eating and how the next generation will source its ingredients, while another got her start just wanting to prove to her family that she has the skill and drive necessary to be a success.

As with Jiro Dreams of Sushi, part of the appeal is getting behind the magic of the beautiful food to get at the stories behind it. Food as a business is constantly locked in a struggle between artistry and commerce, and I'm always interested in seeing how people succeed or fail at threading that needle. Here are six stories of people who hit the bullseye, and whose cooking has attracted worldwide attention. It's wonderful to see people achieve their dreams and achieve such a vast measure of success, of course, but in a weird twist, these chefs' prominence is also the series' biggest flaw.

In Jiro Dreams of Sushi, there was no illusion that Jiro was an ordinary guy. He is rightly depicted as the king of his castle. He may be artistic, but he's also a stern and demanding taskmaster, whose rigidity has made him a reliable and consistent force in the culinary world. Chef's Table takes the weird tack of trying to sell a "common thread" narrative, positing that since food unites us all as people, these chefs should be hailed for building strong fellowships and a sense of community.

That just doesn't work. As nice as some of these chefs are (and most seem like perfectly decent sorts, if a little emotionally distant), they are not "of the people". These are the best of the best, and while it's perfectly acceptable to celebrate their talent, that talent is only shared with diners with sizable bank accounts and the connections necessary to getting a sought-after seat in a very small dining room.

That misstep aside, this is still a must-watch for anyone as obsessive about the world of food as I am, or for those who like to see what drives the creative spark behind some truly impressive art. I just wish the show would stop pretending that any of us plebeians will ever get to experience it.

Chef's Table - Season 1: B

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American Plate - Bite #33: Ice Cream

Wow, I'm really whipping through the simple ones, aren't I? I suppose it makes sense to front-load the entries for the Bites that enter my life most often, but at some point, I'm going to have to start tracking down the rarer stuff. Not today, though! Today is all about an American favorite that's all too easy to lay our hands on. Hot weather is upon us, and that means it's time for our annual love affair with ice cream.

Not that the love affair is in any way new. Ice cream arrived on the culinary scene in the late 1600s, and by the mid-1700s, it was being served at fancy colonial parties. Ice cream got its biggest boost from Dolley Madison, who by all accounts was one hell of a hostess. She served ice cream at James Madison's second inaugural ball, and it became a kind of signature dessert served at her White House dinners. That sparked a national craze for ice cream that has never abated.

Still, ice cream was tough to make, requiring a lot of physical labor and a massive amount of chipped ice (a tricky ingredient in itself, at it was difficult to prevent from melting). Enter two unsung pioneers. The first was Augustus Jackson, an African-American cook who had once worked in the White House and invented a prototype ice cream churn in 1832. Unfortunately, he didn't get a patent, but that didn't stop him from establishing himself as a popular ice cream purveyor. In 1843, a Philadelphia woman named Nancy Johnson received the first U.S. patent for a hand-cranked "artificial freezer". Made from a pewter cylinder, it became the basis for all the ice cream machines that have come after. Once ice cream became a more attainable treat for all, its place in America's heart was forever cemented.

The American Plate ends its entry on ice cream there, but as a proud citizen of St. Louis, it would be remiss of me not to mention ice cream cones. OK, fine... There was a 1903 patent for ice cream cones for Italo Marchiony, a New Yorker. But any ice cream lover worth their salted caramel knows that the ice cream cone was independently invented and popularized in America at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. As the story goes, a Syrian immigrant named Ernest A. Hamwi was running a zalabia cart at the fair. Zalabias are waffle-like pastries, and when Hamwi noticed his neighboring vendor Arnold Fornachou had run out of serving dishes for his ice cream, he formed his zalabia into a cone, and the idea took off from there. Later, Hamwi would form the Missouri Cone Company, and the Show-Me state became a manufacturing hub for ice cream's best friend.

These days, there's a huge variety of ways to enjoy ice cream, only a few of which are pictured here: There's the ultra-fancy scoop of vanilla streaked with caramel and topped with salt flakes, and an outstanding standing banana split, as well as a shot of me enjoying a spicy scoop of ginger ice cream that just about burned my taste buds off. In a good way. That's hardly the extent of the ice cream types I've eaten recently, though. From a bland, discount tub of plain vanilla to the rich decadence of chocolate/peanut butter Häagen-Dazs. From the zany mixture of Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby to experimental goat cheese milkshakes from the local sandwich shop. From a high-end scoop of light, refreshing lemon/olive oil verbena to shame-eating Edy's cookie dough in front of the TV, ice cream has been well-represented in this American's diet. And despite my alarmingly expanding waistline, I wouldn't have it any other way.

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