My Dad's Sauce Can Kick Your Dad's Sauce's Butt!

One summer afternoon, Angie, my BFF during fifth and sixth grade, and I took a break from playing Barbie to eat lunch.  As she reheated last night's leftover spaghetti, she declared, "My dad makes the best spaghetti sauce ever."  I went on to proclaim that my dad made pretty good spaghetti sauce as well and readied myself for something bordering on awesome as she assured me her father's was unquestionably better than my dad's.  The microwave finally dinged, and we took our seats opposite each other in the dining room.  At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a jar of Prego paired with some overcooked pasta.  If my first impression told me anything, it was that this was surely not the best sauce in the world.  I skeptically twisted a forkful of spaghetti around the tines, put the "best" spaghetti into my mouth, and discovered that it was, in fact, nothing more than Prego paired with overcooked spaghetti.  Not one to insult a hostess, I kept my opinion to myself but remained steadfast in my belief that my father did, in fact, make the best spaghetti sauce in all the world.

Twenty years later, and I'm still convinced.  His recipe has been significantly transformed from what it was when I was a kid, but it remains the benchmark against which I measure all other spaghetti sauces, even those I encounter at "authentic" Italian restaurants.  His current concoction was inspired by an episode of Lidia's Italy, which demonstrated how quickly a really good pot of spaghetti sauce could go together.  Accustomed to spending an entire day cooking the sauce, my father was intrigued when Lidia threw together a fantastic recipe in thirty minutes.  He has stuck to her recipe pretty closely, but I deviate (cheat) by adding a jar of my favorite spaghetti sauce and cooking it for at least a couple hours to allow the flavors to meld.  The jar of spaghetti sauce is to accommodate my husband, who didn't particularly enjoy the overly "tomatoey" flavor Lidia's recipe delivered.  This three cheese spaghetti sauce does a pretty good job of mellowing the acids in the tomatoes.

An intriguing note about how Lidia cooked her pasta:  she partially cooked it in boiling water for about six minutes and then finished it off in the sauce, adding as much as two cups of water from the pasta pot to account for the liquid the pasta absorbed while it cooked in the sauce.  Doing this not only made a more cohesive dish than the "traditional" method of serving ladlefuls of sauce atop "naked" pasta, but it also allowed the pasta to take on more of the sauce's flavor during cooking.  The result was exquisite!  A couple notes on cooking pasta.  According to Lidia, who is Italian so I figure an expert on the matter of Italian cooking, one should never add olive oil (or oil of any kind) to the boiling water.  Doing so will only coat the pasta and prevent it from absorbing whatever sauce it's to be served with.  Additionally, rinsing pasta is a mortal sin, or so Lidia tells me.  Rinsing washes away the pasta's external starches which contain a lot of flavor and also help the sauce stick to the pasta.  Sauce sticking to pasta = a good thing.  Naked pasta = blech!  My father and I found this technique, and the reasons behind it, so convincing that we both use it anytime we cook pasta that is to be served with a sauce...well, a red sauce.  I don't know if I'd do this with a cheese sauce.

My recipe follows, but take out the jarred sauce and cook for thirty minutes, and you have something quite similar to what my dad makes today.  Both are fantastic, but my husband is a lot more enthusiastic about the version that follows.  Some readers, particularly those who are avid foodies or are accustomed to good, authentic Italian cooking, will surely scoff at my use of canned products.  I can only say that I'm a lazy American and hope you'll forgive my crudeness.

Playground Warriors Spaghetti Sauce:

1 lb. Italian sausage (hot), removed from casings
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions, diced
1 green pepper, diced
8 oz. mushrooms, washed and sliced
6 oz. can of tomato paste
14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
26 oz. jar of spaghetti sauce
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp each of basil, oregano and thyme
2 tsp sugar

1.  Cook sausage in 6-quart sauce pot breaking up into small chunks.  Remove from pot leaving grease behind.

2.  Brown vegetables in sausage grease until onions are transparent.  Move vegetables to the sides of the pot leaving a clear spot in the center.

3.  Add tomato paste to center of pot and stir to "caramelize."  Paste will become fragrant and will leave a fond behind on the bottom of the pot.  Once this happens, return sausage to the pot and stir everything together.

4.  Add diced tomatoes, spaghetti sauce (plus a little water to clean the remaining sauce out of the jar), spices and mix thoroughly.

5.  Cover and cook for several hours (at least two, but I prefer longer).  Maintain a low simmer and stir every fifteen minutes or so.  Be sure to taste the sauce periodically and adjust seasonings to suit your palate.

This recipe yields a lot of sauce, so I typically cook a full pound of pasta to go along with it.  If you're going to finish off your pasta in the spaghetti sauce as I do, after you cook the pasta in about 8 quarts of salted water for 6 minutes, use tongs to add all the pasta to the spaghetti sauce as well as a full cup of the pasta water.  Stir thoroughly.  Cover and cook for about 20 minutes, or until pasta has reached the tenderness you desire.  Stir every few minutes and add pasta water as needed.  The pasta will absorb a lot, so don't be surprised if you find yourself adding upwards of 2 cups of water.

6.  Serve and enjoy!

Wine note:  So, my husband and I are trying to expand our wine palate (we hear it's supposedly good for you).  Tonight, we paired the above with a glass of Kiarna's Cabernet Sauvignon (v. 2009).  Paired with this sauce, this wine is quite good.  At first sip, you can clearly taste the smooth, fruity flavors of this full-bodied wine, but its aftertaste is a bit too bitter for my liking.

Pie: Crust or Bust!

I've always been somewhat offended by the phrase "easy as pie" because after fifteen years of pie-making, I'm still on a seemingly endless journey for the perfect crust recipe/technique. Pie-making has never been easy for me, so I couldn't help but muse over the fact that whoever came up with that obnoxious phrase must have been somebody who never once tried their hand at actually making a pie. However, I can't help but wonder if perhaps the cliche holds and I'm just incompetent. I've tried everything from an all-butter crust and minimal handling to incorporating vodka, which did nothing for the texture but made eating the monstrosity of a pie at least a little entertaining.

The closest I've come to making a light and flaky crust came when I combined the technique offered up by America's Test Kitchen and Betty Crocker's basic pie crust recipe, which is nothing more than flour, salt, shortening, and water. The recipe is nothing special, and it can be modified to suit your needs by adding any number of spices appropriate for the filling of your choice. But the technique, when explained in scientific terms of course, seemed to make all the difference. According to Test Kitchen, and I think we all agree here, the goal in making a "good" pie crust is producing one that is light and flaky. The only way to achieve this, they say, is to avoid forming long gluten strands (those things that make bread oh-so-yummy). Hence the golden rule of making a pie crust: don't over-handle the dough! Unfortunately, even the slightest amount of handling once the recipe is combined will produce these gluten strands, which makes pie crust dense and difficult to handle (i.e. crust that springs back as soon as you roll it out). To prevent this from happening Test Kitchen suggests modifying the way a typical crust is mixed to help avoid the formation of long gluten strands. Ordinarily, recipes call for cutting in half the fat (be it butter or shortening or a combination thereof) until you're left with a mealy texture and then cutting in the second half until you have something resembling peas (always with the peas!). Test Kitchen instead cuts in all the fat with half the flour first to encapsulate each grain of flour with a little fat, and then they add the rest of the flour. The theory is that the "fattened" flour won't be able to form gluten strands, and you'll be left with a crust that is light and flaky even after over-handling. They call for then adding enough of a water-vodka mixture to hold the dough together, but I find the vodka affects the flavor in unpalatable ways. But their technique has been the key for me in at least producing a somewhat reliable crust.

That's Amore!

When I was a young kid, dinnertime was always a strictly enforced, highly predictable routine. Mom would make dinner while Dad finished up the day's work on whatever painting he was working on in the studio. My brother and sister would play in the backyard, usually with me chasing after trying desperately to be included in whatever intrigue they'd thought up for the afternoon. We'd sit down to dinner, I'd dawdle over my peas until everybody else was excused, long after dessert, and I was left pushing my peas around on the plate until I finally managed to choke the last one down. Then it was usually time for bed.

New Year's Eve was different though. New Year's Eve was one of the only nights of the year when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to love dinner. I'd spend what felt like the entire day watching my dad work in the kitchen, slaving over his dough and assembling ingredients for homemade pizza pies. Our house would smell like a pizza shop, the welcoming aroma of mozzarella cheese drifting through the air whetting our appetites, until finally, dinner would be ready and we'd (gasp!) sit down with our pizza in front of the television to watch the beginnings of Dick Clark's New Year's Eve Special. It was one of the meals I looked forward to all year, for many reasons not the least of which being that I knew I wouldn't spend the evening fighting with my dad about eating those god-forsaken peas. To this day, I look forward to homemade pizza pies with the enthusiasm of a child, and tonight is no different. It's not New Year's Eve, but that doesn't mean it's not a perfect day for pizza!

One of the most important elements of any pizza is its crust. Yes, the ingredients you elect to put on top of that crust are certainly crucial as well, but the crust is the foundation upon which the success of the entire recipe rests. I've tried several of the options available at the grocery store for pizza crusts: Pillsbury's refrigerated pizza crust, pizza crust mixes, even Boboli (and store brand) pre-made crusts. Nothing even comes close in quality to the taste and texture of homemade dough. "AAAACCKKK!" scream my readers with the fear of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. No, seriously, homemade pizza dough is really quite easy to make. And, believe me, once you've learned how to make it, you too will find yourself turning your nose up at the "conveniences" offered at the grocery.

The ingredients for a basic pizza dough are, well, pretty basic: flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil. You can infuse your dough with any number of seasonings, if you like, but these basic ingredients do well on their own to make quite a tasty crust. The first critical secret to making successful homemade yeast bread, including pizza, is in weighing your ingredients instead of measuring them by volume. Water, salt, and yeast are pretty easy to measure accurately by volume, but flour packs very easily, making volume measurements inconsistent. If you measure your flour by volume, you can end up with too little or far too much flour, and then you'll have a dough either too wet or dry to work with. Invest in a good digital scale, start measuring your flour (at least for yeast bread recipes), and you'll see consistent results each time you make homemade bread. The second critical secret to successful homemade yeast bread is in adding all your flour in the beginning of the mixing process instead of adding it gradually as almost every major cookbook (Betty Crocker, Joy of Cooking, etc.) directs you. Follow the cues of professional artisan bakers like Jeffrey Hamelman and Eric Kastel who expand on the scientific reasons for why adding the flour all at once is critical to good bread. According to them, flour added after the mixing process has begun will never be as hydrated as the flour added in the beginning. The goal during the mixing/kneading process is to create long gluten strands, which are the bedrock of any bread's structure, and these under-hydrated particles of flour actually impede these gluten strands from forming. Ideally, you wouldn't adjust your recipe once the mixing process has begun, but if you do have to adjust, they'd prefer you add water to a dough that is too dry rather than adding flour to a watery dough.

And, finally, the pizza crust recipe!

Pleasantly Pea-less Pizza Crust
(Makes two crusts)

Ingredients:
21.4 ounces flour
14.1 ounces warm water
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. active dry yeast
2 tbsp. olive oil

1. Mix yeast and water and allow to rest for a couple minutes before mixing process begins.

2. Add yeast-water mixture, flour, and salt to stand mixer equipped with the dough hook attachment. You can use your hands, but the process is much easier with a mixer.

3. Mix on Speed 1 for 3 minutes, watching to make sure dough is not too wet or too dry. You want to have a little bit of dough (about the size of a silver dollar) stuck in the bottom of the mixer bowl.

4. Turn off mixer, lift hook, and remove dough from hook and place back into bowl. Add olive oil.

5. Mix on Speed 2 for 4 minutes.

6. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently.

7. Shape into a ball and place in a buttered bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Rise for 1 1/2 hours.

8. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and fold. Return to bowl and allow to rise for another 1 1/2 hours.

9. Turn out onto floured work surface. Divide the dough evenly, shape into rounds, allow to rest for 10 minutes, and shape into pizza crusts. These videos are especially good for demonstrating the shaping techniques, but I would go much leaner on the flour they use to dust the dough during the shaping process.

10. Preheat oven to 500. Yes, 500.

11. Dress with toppings of your choice and bake for 18-20 minutes. Rest for five minutes before serving and enjoying your very own homemade, pleasantly pea-less pizza pie!

Delectably Adaptable Banana Bread

If you know me at all, you know how particular I am about the ripeness of bananas I'm willing to eat. By my standards, bananas only have one or two days, at the most, when they're palatable. Too green and they taste like grass; speckled even a bit and they're mushy. I once left a banana in the bottom of my book bag in sixth grade, and I ended up with a history book that smelled like old garbage. I suspect this is where my persnickety banana preferences originated. Regardless, unless I buy only a couple bananas at a time, I frequently find myself stuck with overly ripe bananas sitting on my counter attracting more and more fruit flies with each passing hour. I found myself in this exact situation this morning, thankfully minus the fruit flies, and so I decided to embark upon a baking adventure and whip up a batch of banana bread.

As I was assembling my batter, I realized that, while I have a tried-and-true recipe (courtesy of Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition), I never adhere completely to any banana bread recipe. Maybe this is because I hate to follow rules without putting my own spin on them, or maybe this is because banana bread, with its neutral, mild flavor, lends itself quite nicely to many different variations. Depending on your mood, you can end up with an Autumn Harvest banana bread featuring vanilla extract, chopped pecans, granola, and maybe even dried cranberries. Substitute almond extract for the vanilla, almonds for the pecans, and nix the granola and cranberries, and you've created something completely different but equally delicious. Today, I've made my banana bread with 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, and 3/4 cup granola and have topped it with Pampered Chef's Sweet Caramel Sprinkle. Today's recipe, which is JoC's basic plus my additions, follows. Give it a try or be adventurous and experiment with your own additions. The sky's the limit for what you can do!

Waste-not, Want-not Banana Bread

Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
4 overly ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Sweet Caramel Sprinkle to top

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease a loaf pan.

2. Cream shortening and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy, about five minutes.

3. Add eggs, bananas, vanilla, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Mix thoroughly.

4. Slowly add flour and mix completely, scraping down the edges of the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

5. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and smooth out with a spatula. Top with Sweet Caramel Sprinkle.

6. Bake for 75 minutes, or until bread is golden and toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

7. Allow to rest for 20 minutes and then remove from loaf pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Wrap in foil and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

A Taste of the South -- Chicken Jambalaya

My Granddaddy was born and raised in South Carolina, and though he passed away three years before I was born, in many ways, his Southern upbringing lived on in the foods we ate and played a significant role in the development of my culinary palate. Ham and grits with red-eye gray was a regular staple on my Grandma's Sunday dinner table, and you better believe it was considered a mortal sin to ever dress those grits with anything even closely resembling sugar. Leftover grits were put away in a tall glass and then found their way to the morning's stove sliced thin and fried in butter accompanied by eggs, ham, and toast. Cornbread was, and still is, considered a sacred vessel of bacony  goodness (again, light on the sugar), and we never shied away from greens (collard, mustard, turnip, kale, and the list continues...). I've grown up on foods that many of my "Yankee" friends have never even heard of, like hominy and Hoppin' John. Or tonight's fare: Chicken Jambalaya.

If you've ever watched Emeril or visited any creole restaurant, you've no doubt heard of Jambalaya. Its basic components are meat, vegetables, tomatoes, and rice, but, of course, the personality of the dish comes out in the details. I typically make my Jambalaya with chicken or shrimp but have seen recipes that include more exotic treats like crawdads, oysters, even alligator. Peppers, onions, garlic, and sometimes celery are the standard fare, but I grew up eating my Dad's recipe which included a full pound of hot peppers, the kind of spice that lingers on your lips hours after you've finished your dessert.  My husband shares his affinity for spicy food, but now that I'm the one doing the cooking, I crank back the heat quite a bit. Seasoning this dish can be as easy as adding salt and freshly cracked black pepper, which allows the natural flavors of the dish's headliners to blossom and flourish. But tonight I also tried using some of Emeril's Essence and was quite pleased with the added kick (or BAM!) it offered. In fact, I'm so impressed with Emeril's recipe that I'll probably keep a mixture of it on hand. It's easy enough to make and neutral enough to use in many different applications from battered fish and fried chicken to gumbo and possibly greens.

Alright, enough blabbing. Here's my recipe.

Mild-Mannered Chicken Jambalaya:

Ingredients:

6 bone-in chicken thighs
1 green pepper, seeds and membranes removed, diced
3 cubanelle peppers, seeds and membranes removed, diced
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup rice
1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken broth
Salt & freshly cracked black pepper & Emeril's Essence to taste
1/4 cup vegetable oil

1. Pat chicken thighs dry and season each side with Emeril's Essence, salt and pepper. Meanwhile, heat oil in a 12" skillet over medium heat.

2. Once oil is fragrant and ripples appear on the surface, place thighs skin-side up and allow to brown (about 4 minutes). Flip thighs and allow second side to brown. Remove chicken and place on a plate lined with paper towels to drain.

3. Add vegetables to the skillet and saute until onions are transparent (about 5-8) minutes.

4. Add tomatoes, rice, 1 1/2 cups chicken broth and seasoning and stir thoroughly. You will not stir this again before it's done, so be sure it's well mixed. Place thighs, skin-side up, evenly throughout the skillet.

5. Cover and cook for about 30 minutes, until rice is tender. Check periodically (but not too frequently because you don't want to let all the steam out) to make sure it hasn't dried up. Add broth as needed.

6. Serve and enjoy!

"Ruined Nostalgia" Peach & Blueberry Cobbler

I remember once when I was a very young child watching my mother prepare peaches for peach cobbler.  She sat on the footstool in the kitchen, leaning over the garbage can with a peeler in hand as juice dripped off the edge of her pinky, sternly warning me to keep my distance from the already pealed peaches.  I've always been a pretty good kid, so I imagine I left well enough alone and went along my merry way.

As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember indulging in that evening's dessert, so I'm nearly positive I did walk away because there's no dimension (not even in a parallel universe) in which I would have disobeyed either of my parents like that and still gotten dessert.  No, I would have been the one sitting at the table watching enviously while everybody else in my family gorged themselves beyond any rational level of fullness just so I'd never get even a smidgen of that dessert.  Ever.

But, I digress.

So, my mother made peach cobbler.  I ate it.  Loved it.  And was always over the moon anytime she fired up the oven and pulled out the peaches with a warning glance in my direction.  (Really, I was a good kid.  I don't know why all these warning glances were tossed about in my general direction.)

Fast-forward maybe twenty years, and I found myself now making it on my own.  Well, sort of.  I lived with three close friends during college in what we've lovingly come to refer to as "The Crouse House," and it was during this stage in my life, sometime during my senior year in college, that I was given my very own copy of The Joy of Cooking.  Commence bad cooking thrust upon the unsuspecting (and very kind) roommates and friends who gratefully devoured (almost) anything I offered them (the most notable exception to that being the key lime "pie" I made that never quite gelled but instead jiggled in a gooey mass in the fridge for a week before I finally dumped it down the disposal).

One Sunday evening, probably sometime in the middle of the summer, I got the bright idea that I'd make peach cobbler like mom used to.  I hauled out my cookbook, paged through until I found the recipe, and set to recreating the summer treat I so loved.

But as I read the recipe, I became a little suspicious.  This didn't sound anything like mom's peach cobbler.  Not even in the least.  Well, okay, the recipe called for peaches, flour, and sugar, but really, that's where the similarities ended.  Chalking it up to my own inexperience in the kitchen and a child's vague memory, I plodded on, meticulously following each step Irma Rombaur laid out.  But in the end, when I shoveled out a heaping spoonful, I was not met with my mother's "peach cobbler."  Don't get me wrong, it was peach cobbler.  The same peach cobbler you're probably imagining right now...with that yummy warm puddle of fruit topped with a fluffy, golden cobblestone crust (plus ice cream and whipped cream, no doubt!).

But imagine my disappointment when I thought I'd be creating a dessert I'd adored throughout my entire childhood and then came away with something entirely different.  My best guess is that my mom was actually making some kind of peach cake because the best way I can describe it is...well, a cake with peaches thrown in the bottom.  Absolutely delicious.  And, sadly, still a distant memory.  Why she told me it was peach cobbler when it clearly was not?  Your guess is as good as mine.   Someday, I'll find or develop the long-lost cake from my childhood.  Until then...real cobbler is a pretty good second-best.

And so I give you:

"Ruined Nostalgia" Peach & Blueberry Cobbler


Fruit filling:
3 cups peaches, peeled and sliced (about five peaches)
2 cups blueberries
1/3 cup plus 2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp cornstarch

Cobblestone topping:
1 3/4 cups flour
3 tsp double-acting baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick), chilled and cut into 1/4" cubes
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425.
1.  Mix fruit in medium bowl.  Add in 1/3 cup sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.  Let sit for ten minutes.
2.  Meanwhile, mix together remaining sugar and cornstarch.  After ten minutes, mix the cornstarch mixture into the fruit and dump into a greased baking dish with ample room at the top for the cobbler.
3.  In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
4.  Cut in butter until mixture is course (like cornmeal).
5.  Add vanilla to milk and stir into the flour mixture, stirring only just until the dry ingredients are wet.  Too much stirring will murder the cobblestone's fluff.
6.  Drop topping over fruit in small dollops.  You want to create the effect of a cobblestone road...hence the name.  Sprinkle with some cinnamon & sugar.
7.  Pop into the oven uncovered for thirty minutes, or until the topping is fluffy and golden.
8.  Allow to cool slightly.  Top with ice cream (vanilla bean is the best), a dollop of whipped cream, and enjoy!

Decadent Hotel Chain Chocolate Crack Cookies

There's something so sinfully delicious about a hotel handing out cookies to guests upon arrival that I simply cannot resist.  If you know me, or have even had a five-minute conversation with me, this comes as no surprise.  I swear, instead of formula, my mother must have fed me ice cream because I have always been and will forever be ruled by my enormous sweet tooth (or mouthful of sweet teeth).  Even after gorging on a three-course meal, I will turn to my husband and enthusiastically ask whether he's ready for dessert.  For there is always dessert.  Even if said dessert is nothing more than a piece of candy, there is always dessert.  And I could be stuffed to the gills, nauseated by the thought of even another bite of dinner, but let somebody present the possibility of dessert, and I'm the first with a fork in hand ready for my massive helping.

So you can imagine my overwhelming glee the first time I checked into a hotel and was offered a fresh-from-the-oven, "homemade" chocolate chip cookie.  Even as I accepted the cookie, the skeptical part of my brain knew it (a) wasn't really free or (b) wasn't that good of a cookie if they were just giving them away.  Okay, so the cost was probably made up in the price of our room.  And the cookie?  Oh my, was that a good cookie.  Arguably the best chocolate chip cookie I've ever had in my entire life.  I'm not exaggerating.  And, as you can imagine, I've sampled many a cookie.  So that's saying something.  The idea was pure genius.  It was as if somebody had tapped into my id and had come away with the most sinfully indulgent idea:  keep people coming back by giving them free cookies seemingly laced with crack.

Of course, the first hotel I went to that did this only offered cookies at check-in...not whenever you just happened to be circling the lobby, hoping for a fresh batch of cookies to magically appear on the front desk.  The second time I found myself staying in a hotel using the crack-laced-cookie method for keeping customers loyal, I was on vacation in Atlantic City with three of the best girlfriends a woman could ask for, and we were offered not only one cookie, but an entire sack of warm-from-the-microwave chocolate chip cookies whenever we wandered through the lobby, which happened every time we found ourselves meandering toward the beach.

These cookies were so good, I found myself, once home, trying to recreate their flavor.  But every batch came up short.  I could tell I was missing a key ingredient but couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly.  And then, my friend forwarded me a link to a website known for providing insider recipes from the country's best restaurants, and, wonder of wonders, the recipe for this particular hotel chain's chocolate chip cookies was included in the site's vast repertoire.  From the first batch, I could tell these were the real deal.  A perfect replica of my first hotel-chain cookie.  But you know me, I got to tweaking a few things and eventually came away with a recipe that is uniquely my own, and if I do say so myself, produces cookies even better than those prepared by the hotel kitchen staff.

And so, I give you...

The Id's Crack-free, Chocolate Chip Cookie
1 cup shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon juice
3 cups chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts, finely ground

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Process oats in food processor or blender until finely ground.
3. Add flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg and process until well mixed/sifted.
4. Cream shortening and sugars until light and fluffy.
5. Add vanilla and lemon juice and mix thoroughly.
6. Add eggs and mix thoroughly.
7. Slowly add flour while mixing.  Mix thoroughly.
8. Add finely ground walnuts and mix.
9. Remove bowl from stand mixer and stir in chocolate chips by hand.
10. Shape into 1 1/2" balls and place onto ungreased cookie sheet.
11. Bake approx. 20 minutes, until golden. 
12. Cool completely on wire racks. 
13. Enjoy!