Cooking takes time. As Mark Bittman noted in his blog on The New York Times nearly a year ago, more potential cooks are turning to the television to satisfy their taste for the gourmet, instead of heading to the kitchen. An hour spent watching the Food Network seems far more relaxing (and more comfortable) than an hour preparing roast lamb in a hot kitchen.
When Conde Nast shut down House and Garden magazine in November 2007, editor-in-chief Dominique Browning suddenly found herself with a lot of time to spare. But cooking seemed too great of a challenge to tackle, despite the six shelves of cookbooks that sat in the house, many given as gifts and mostly untouched despite their glossy photos of perfect tablescapes. “The fantasies triggered by cookbooks are unending and exhausting,” Browning writes in her new memoir, Slow Love.
And when you finally do pull the cookbook off the shelf and try out a recipe, the food rarely looks as good as it does on the page or taste as good as it did in your imagination. When Browning gets a recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookies from her friend Caroline, they fall flat. What went wrong? Why can’t we make the meals in the books and on TV?
“That’s when it hits me,” Browning writes. “Those cookies have nothing to do with flour or eggs or water. They are about her touch, her spirit. Cooking has nothing to do with ingredients, and everything to do with love–that’s why everyone with the desire can cook.”
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Mom’s Chocolate Chip Cookies – Caroline Cunningham
(via Browning’s article in Eating Well)
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup white sugar
1 generous tablespoon vanilla extract
Mix well.
Add 2 large eggs.
Mix well.
1 cup, plus 1/3 cup, plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
Mix all dry ingredients together, then add to batter and mix well. Add one large (12-ounce) package of chocolate chips. Mix again.
Lightly grease a cookie sheet (you only have to do this for the first batch) with unsalted butter. Put 12 tablespoon-size dollops onto tray and bake at 350°F until golden brown. Allow to cool on tray for a minute before removing to a rack to cool. Repeat with the remaining batter. Enjoy!