Dear reader,
Remember that sinus infection from last week? Turns out it was pneumonia—what a fun plot twist! Plans were cancelled and the usual festive food groups (chocolate, cheese, charcuterie, chips and dip) were replaced with herbal tea, soup and cough drops. But, thanks to all that and a round of antibiotics, I’m back to the land of the living and ready to make up for everything I’ve missed out on. It’s crunch time, so I have tickets for a wine-and-cheese event this evening and I’ve scheduled an appointment for tomorrow night that just reads “boozy egg nog.” (I bet you thought you were in the clear, liver! Think again!) To be fair, though, I like the divisive yolk-based elixir even without the obligatory shot of spiced rum—and even better with some kind of cookie to dunk.
I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, but I’ve never been able to resist a cookie. And while I won’t throw any biscuit out of bed, I have a fondness for the classic chocolate chip variety. They were one of the first desserts I learned how to bake, my mom walking me through the steps using a handwritten recipe from her sister-in-law. We made them so often that, over the years, that little cue card became translucent with butter. My aunt’s cookies were just the right amount of chewy, sweet and salty, never overloaded with chocolate chips—and, as it turned out, not her own recipe. She eventually confessed that the recipe belonged to Fannie Farmer, a professional cook born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts (much like my aunt, so there’s the connection), who is credited as being the inventor of the modern chocolate chip cookie. It was my Phoebe Buffay/Nestlé Tollhouse moment—but they will always be Aunt Jan’s chocolate chip cookies to me.
Though we skipped this step, Farmer’s original recipe calls for walnuts. So does the recipe Christina Cho uses to make her crazy-good (and aptly named) Milky Walnut cookies at Cosette Coffee, her High Park–adjacent café. Farmer realized that baking was an actual science (she’s not called “the mother of level measurements” for nothing), and Cho is an aerospace engineer turned baker. Which means that, at Cosette, baking isn’t just science—it’s rocket science. Read on to get the inside scoop on her out-of-this-world cookies.
Also in this week’s newsletter, a tale of two new restaurants: a cute, cozy snack bar in the east and a big, bold steakhouse downtown.
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