We’re looking forward to gathering with friends for our annual raclette dinner this weekend. This snowy week brought the perfect weather for putting us in the mood for melted cheese.
Have a lovely weekend.
With all the cooking that I do, I’ve learned some tricks to make cooking go smoothly. Read the recipe entirely before beginning to cook. Mise en place is an essential part of cooking, with most ingredients chopped, measured, and set aside in bowls before I start actually making a dish.
Still, I’ve had my share of cooking disasters. Experiments gone wrong. Measurement mistakes. Cooking times misjudged.
I recently made oatmeal cookies to deliver to neighbors: one who had had surgery, another who broke his arm skiing. I was experimenting with the recipe by using a blend of wheat flour and oat flour. I needed a double recipe, so that there would be enough for the neighbors and for us. It seemed simple enough.
I ground the oats and mixed the dough, which was very, very dry. I had a hard time adding the additional oats, chocolate chips, and walnuts. The balls of dough didn’t stick together. I loaded two baking sheets and put them in the oven to see how they came out. While they were baking, I filled two more pans.
The cookies weren’t baking right and didn’t melt and spread out. I pulled them out of the oven and used a spatula to flatten them. The dough stuck to the spatula. The cookies crumbled and I tried to squeeze them back together with my fingers. Back into the oven they went.
When I reluctantly deemed the cookies done and pulled them out of the oven, I tasted one and it wasn’t right. It was dry and not sweet enough. I had probably used too much flour.
I’m too frugal to throw out all of those quality ingredients. I quickly blended a little melted butter, an egg, and some sugar and stirred it into to the remaining dough in the bowl. I baked a small pan of cookies with that dough and they were better, but a little overcooked. I scraped the two pans of uncooked cookies back in the bowl. I mixed more butter, egg, and sugar, added it to the dough, and made the remaining cookies. They were better.
I was exhausted.
I delivered the cookies with a warnings about them not being quite right and everyone enthusiastically thanked me. One of these days, I need to make them another batch.
Along with my long tale, here’s what I have to share this weekend.
- Two takes on mise en place:
- Mise en Place Is the Restaurant Technique Every Home Cook Should Know — An argument for having all ingredients and tools at the ready. (Kitchn)
- What Is Mise En Place? — A suggestion that you don’t have to prep everything. (The Spruce Eats)
- Turn your nonworking fireplace into something beautiful — I love the clever designs for these fireplaces. (The Washington Post)
- The True Story of Lidia Poët — While the Netflix series based on the first female lawyer in Italy is not historically accurate in the details, I watched every episode of Lidia Poët as soon as it came out and I’m hoping for another season. (Town & Country)
- The Case for Chilling — Fewer scheduled plans and more spontaneous outings. What do you think? (The New York Times)
- Woven Totes, Summer 2023 — If you need a new tote for summer, here are some suggestions. (Sea Salt and Sailor Stripes)
- Goodness: Three Couples on Interracial Relationships — This is a nice piece about sharing and acceptance. (Cup of Jo)
About the photo: Sea shells washed up on the beach at Parker River Wildlife Refuge in Newburyport, MA.