A few years ago, I ate some spoiled mussels in Anadolu Kavagi, a town in Turkey near where the Bosphorus Strait meets the Black Sea. My biggest concern in the aftermath was whether the bad bites would ruin my taste for mussels permanently, or even for a few weeks or months. It didn’t.
Thank god; I love mussels, and now I happen to live pretty close to a restaurant known for having D.C.’s best. My husband and I went there last night, and — this could be recency bias — but I’m not sure how many better back-to-back bites there are than a well-steamed mussel followed by a handful of fries dunked in its broth.
Today’s newsletter has nothing to do with mussels, but a lot to do with happiness and food I love.
There are a ton of chocolate chip cookies on the internet. A lot of them are very similar. A whole other subset of them are downright weird, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, one recipe in this bracket features not a single egg.
I landed on these 16 cookies through methods not at all scientific. A few of you sent in suggestions, which was a huge help. Beyond that, I tried to make sure (especially on the traditional side of the bracket) that no two recipes were too much alike, and I tried to get my recipes from sources I trust — which means a lot of New York Times and Smitten Kitchen. That’s not at all to denigrate your recipe site of choice; it’s just that the infinite online recipe loop is bound to lead to some duds, and I figured I could at least control for sites and bakers in which I have a good bit of confidence.
I’ve baked five of these cookies before: the Toll House (obviously), the salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread, the salted tahini, the salted chocolate chunk and Jacques Torres’s. Can you sense a trend? My experience with those recipes factored into my seeding, but beyond that, I seeded based on my own opinion of what sounded good. So if you think one of the four seeds is a lock to win, well, your tastebuds might just have different opinions than mine — or you might be spot-on. I’m going into this experiment with no expectations and plenty of curiosity.
Without further ado, here are the matchups, with links to 15 of the 16 recipes. (One doesn’t appear to be available online.) Several of the recipes require subscriptions, but many are free.
(1) Lahb Co’s Moroccan-spiced sweet potato miso chocolate chunk cookies vs. (2) Mokonuts’ rye-cranberry chocolate chunk cookies
(2) Molly Baz’s pistachio, brown butter and halva chocolate chunk cookies vs. (3) the New York Times’ adobo chocolate chip cookies
(1) the New York Times’ salted tahini chocolate chip cookies vs. (4) Levain-inspired chocolate chip cookies
(2) Alison Roman’s salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread vs. (3) Neiman Marcus’ “the $250 cookie recipe”
(1) Jacques Torres’s chocolate chip cookies vs. (4) Smitten Kitchen’s oatmeal, chocolate chip and pecan cookies
(2) Joy of Cooking chocolate chip cookies vs. (3) Smitten Kitchen’s “our favorite” chocolate chip cookies
(1) Smitten Kitchen’s salted chocolate chunk cookies vs. (4) Smitten Kitchen’s crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies
(2) the New York Times’ perfect chocolate chip cookies vs. (3) Toll House chocolate chip cookies
For the past few days, I’ve been using Notes, which is a new space on Substack for writers and readers to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. More than anything, it just feels like an extremely civil version of Elon’s bird app that shows you things you’d actually want to read, look at and think about.
I plan to use notes to share things that don’t necessarily have a home in the newsletter and quicker thoughts about things I’m cooking and eating. So far I’ve shared a very handsome head of lettuce, some photos from neighborhood walks and my very favorite chicken recipe.
If you’re interested in following along, it’s super easy. Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in your app. As a subscriber to Grazing, you’ll automatically see my notes. Like ’em, reply to ’em and maybe even share ’em, please.
Anyways, it’s time to start baking. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be coming down from a sugar high.