Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Kind of blue


I'm not at all a food blogger, for a number of reasons. Primarily, I cannot follow a recipe to save my life. Halfway through I always decide a recipe is really more like a guideline or a suggestion. As I've mentioned before, if I ever had a food blog it would have to be called "Whatever; It's Probably Fine."

But mostly, I'm just not very interested in writing about food. I prefer to eat it.

That said, there is something beguiling about the vast assortment of grains available at Your DeKalb Farmer's Market, the enormous and bizarre food purveyor in Decatur that is filling in the gap in my life where the Berkeley Bowl used to be. And it's autumn, so, in short, I've made some cookies.

Let's call them "Kind of blue" cookies, or "I am easily distracted by grains" for short. This makes a small batch, because, in addition to being easily distracted by grains, I live alone and never need a zillion cookies at a time. I imagine the recipe could be scaled up, although I haven't bothered to try.

Ingredients:

1/4 c softened unsalted butter (or salted; who cares?)
1/2 c white sugar
1 large egg

1/4 c each: coarse semolina; white flour
1/3 c blue cornmeal (or a little more)
1/4 tsp baking powder (I say this as if I measured it, but obviously I didn't; just dump a little in)
sea salt: use your judgment

If you care about form, use Standard Cookie Procedure: cream the sugar into the butter, add the egg, combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then put the dry ingredients into the wet and stir until just combined. I think the butter/sugar step is the only one that really needs to be kept separate.

This does not call for a Kitchen-Aid.

Drop the dough onto parchment paper (trust me, I speak from bitter experience) with a spoon (use your judgment) and bake at 400F (or whatever) until they're, you know, done.

If you should happen to forget the salt and wind up sprinkling it on top of the cookies while they're in the oven, not that I have done this or anything, the results are, I think, intriguing in a good way.

Nobody cares if they're uneven. They're made of sugar, for God's sake.

N.b. there is no vanilla extract in this recipe. If you are one of those people who dumps vanilla in everything willy-nilly, well, go for it. I, however, am a believer in the flavor of flour and butter, and prefer to protect its purity. Long-time acquaintences will recognize in this philosophy the origins of the Scone Principle as well.

No comments: