For June 4

Last week, we had a short sesshin begin on Thursday night, so there were no cookies. This week, I am going very early Thursday morning to Tassajara for a poetry workshop that begins on Thursday evening; however, while I will not be around to put out the cookies on Thursday, I (with a lot of help from Andrew) have baked them to leave behind. So for this Thursday, June 4:

Spago's Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Sherry Yard, The Secrets of Baking

Nibby Buckwheat Butter Cookies, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

Both of these are repeats - and rightly so, because they are both delicious cookies! I am a big fan of Sherry Yard's chocolate chip cookies. They are a bit more crisp than my ideal chocolate chip cookie, but they are very good nevertheless. These are very interesting cookies - rather than use chocolate chips, I hand cut the bittersweet chocolate, so they have a very dramatic appearance, with these big blotches of chocolate on the face of the cookie.

Alice Medrich's cookies go in a completely different direction. These are from her Pure Dessert cookbook, in which she strips down recipes to their very basics to bring out the essential flavors. Here, the flavors are three: butter, buckwheat and cacao nibs. The cacao nibs and the buckwheat both have very earthy flavors, while the butter provides a counterbalance. I realized last night that I made these in October as a "leave behind" when we went to China - I guess I am fated never to be around when these cookies are actually served. But I brought some of them for our China pilgrims, and we savored them for the first few days of the trip. Tasting it now, it did bring back some associations with China.

It is interesting to have these two cookies together, because they are so different. The powerful chocolate and brown sugar flavors from the chocolate chip cookies, and their crunchy texture contrast starkly with the flavors and textures of the butter cookies.

I had originally thought I was going to make a cookie with hazelnut this week, maybe a chocolate and hazelnut combination. But since my schedule is messed up, I decided to fall back on a couple of tried and true recipes that both involved making the dough and then refrigerating it, so that I could make the dough on Monday night and then bake it on Tuesday. So maybe next week we will resume our hunt for the perfect chocolate and hazelnut cookie.