Crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies

Big chocolate chip cookies, crispy on the edges, chewy and dense inside, loaded with chocolate bits and full of a caramelly flavour, are an iconic treat in America. I grew up overseas, going to an American school, and so most of the parties of my childhood featured chocolate chip cookies alongside the crudités and ranch dip. Many a snowy weekend afternoon was spent making chocolate chip cookies with my sister, using the classic Nestle Tollhouse recipe. I would eat so many of the cookies still melty and gooey from the oven that I would inevitably feel ill. But of course I’d have more cookies after dinner.

So please imagine my horror, combined with terrible disappointment, the first time I was confronted with what passes as a chocolate chip cookie in South Africa. Tiny shortbready biscuits – not cookies, there is a world of difference – with little specks of chocolate. I know chocolate chip shortbread is good, but: 1) it’s not good when you expect a proper chocolate chip cookie, and 2) these alleged chocolate chip biscuits aren’t even real shortbread, they’re less buttery (and therefore less delicious, in my opinion).

Who's afraid of salmonella? Not me!

Since then, I’ve had to make my own chocolate chip cookies at all times, to prevent the shock of an impostor when I want the real thing. And because chocolate chip cookies seem to be necessary quite often, and I’ve lived in this country for more than eight years now (!), I’ve had to make a lot of batches, to the point where I became bored of using the same recipe every time. A few years ago I started to experiment with recipes, going so far as to try the infamous New York Times recipe developed by David Leite after months of research on what constitutes the ideal chocolate chip cookie. It was indeed a very good recipe, but not good if you need the cookies in approximately 37 minutes, which tends to be the case with me. So I kept searching and trying out recipes, until I became stuck on Smitten Kitchen recipe for crispy, chewy chocolate chip cookies. So, so good, and exactly as the recipe title describes them. No doubt I’ll eventually get bored again and move on, but for now, this is my go-to recipe when the need for proper chocolate chip cookies strikes.

Crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies

It’s difficult to know how many cookies this recipe makes, since I eat so much of the raw dough when I make them (salmonella be damned). And also so many of the warm cookies, before I even have time to count. More than 24, definitely. Probably closer to 36.

2 c cake flour

½ t baking soda

1 t salt

¾ c butter, melted

1 c packed treacle sugar

½ c white sugar

1 tb vanilla

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 c dark chocolate chunks (I use chopped dark chocolate, usually Bourneville)

1 cup chopped nuts of your choice - optional

Sift together the flour, soda, and salt. In another bowl, whisk the melted butter and sugars. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla and whisk until light. Add sifted ingredients and blend, then add chocolate chips, and nuts if using, and blend. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and drop tablespoonfuls of dough 3 in apart. (At this point, I like to sprinkle each cookie with a generous pinch of Maldon salt. I like the salt with the sweet, but maybe I just need all the salt to offset – slightly – the massive amounts of sugar I consume when I bake these cookies)

Bake at 165 C for 10-12 minutes, and remove from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack.

Recently produced by munch

Soups in honour of National Soup day on the 26th, and salted chocolate chip cookies in honour of a brand new baby boy's arrival. Recipes coming soon!

Sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach

My first real memory of gnocchi is from around ten years ago, when my sister made a special meal for my family – eggplant involtini followed by gnocchi with napoletana sauce. She didn’t like the gnocchi, she said they were slimy, but I thought they were nice, and that was that.

Six years later, I was a chef and my boss and I were catering for a big fancy dinner. One of the items on the menu was sautéed gnocchi with spinach and bacon. My boss made such a drama of how careful I had to be when making the gnocchi that I panicked and found other things to do, leaving him with the gnocchi. The dish turned out to be delicious and a big hit.

One year ago, I invited my best friend round for dinner and, after a glass of wine, decided to not only attempt gnocchi for the first time, but to play with the idea, too. So instead of traditional gnocchi, I made sweet potato gnocchi, sautéed with mushrooms and spinach. It was delicious and a big hit. It was also surprisingly easy to make, even with all the glasses of wine consumed during the cooking process.

About one month ago, I made the same sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach for a function, along with several other dishes. Apparently the gnocchi disappeared first. Lucky for me, I had made and frozen extra gnocchi, and could make the dish again for dinner the other night.

The moral of the story: gnocchi may take a bit of time to make, but they’re easy, delicious, and you can always make a big batch and freeze what you don’t need to use later. I’d recommend making some gnocchi.

Truly terrible photo courtesy of my non-existent skills.

For the gnocchi:

4 medium sweet potatoes

2 medium floury potatoes

1 egg

Flour – I used cake flour because that’s what I had at the time

Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Bake the sweet potatoes and potatoes for 1 – 2 hours, until they start to smell slightly caramelized and begin to go quite hard on the outside. Remove from the oven and cool enough so that they can be handled.

Cut the sweet potatoes and potatoes in half lengthwise and scoop the flesh out into a large bowl. Mash the warm potato mixture with a fork or masher – if it doesn’t seem very smooth, press the mixture through a sieve using the back of a spoon.

Once the mixture is very smooth, add the egg and lots of salt and pepper, and mix thoroughly. Now add a large handful of flour and mix carefully, using big movements, and keep an eye on the consistency of the dough. If it looks like the dough will be firm enough to roll out, mix till just combined and roll out. If not, continue adding handfuls of flour, mixing carefully all the while, until the dough looks like it is firm enough to roll out. Be careful not to add too much flour, and don’t overwork the dough.*

When the dough is ready, sprinkle your countertop with more flour, and also sprinkle a large baking sheet with flour.

Divide the dough into six pieces, and place one piece on the floured countertop. Dust the piece of dough with more flour, and then use your hands to roll the dough into a long rope, about the thickness of a thumb. Use a very sharp knife to cut the rope of dough into little dumplings, cutting at a diagonal, and making every piece around 2cm long. Place the gnocchi on the prepared baking sheet.

Repeat the process with the remaining pieces of dough.

(At this point, you can freeze some or all of the gnocchi by placing the baking sheet straight into the freezer until the gnocchi are hard, and then tossing them into a freezer-safe bag. These can be cooked straight from the freezer – just toss the frozen gnocchi into rapidly boiling, well-salted water.)

Now fill a large pot with water and a teaspoon of salt, and bring to the boil. When the water is boiling rapidly, drop the gnocchi in one by one, about twenty at a time. After two or three minutes they’ll start bobbing to the surface, which is the sign that they’re cooked through. Remove them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon. I toss the cooked gnocchi with a little olive oil before once cooked, and while the other gnocchi are cooking, to prevent them sticking to one another.

You can add any sauce or vegetables to the gnocchi once cooked and eat them straight away, or you can sauté them in olive oil to a bit of colour and texture, which is what I like to do.

Sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach

Sautéed sweet potato gnocchi – half recipe

250g button mushroom, sliced thickly

30ml brandy

Sprig of thyme

10g dried porcini, soaked in 50ml boiling water

1 clove garlic, crushed

250ml cream **

50g grated Parmesan

250g baby spinach

Splash of lemon juice

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

Place a cast iron pan over medium heat, add about a tablespoon of olive oil and then the sliced mushrooms.

Cook the mushrooms, moving them around now and then, until they’ve released their water. Turn the heat up and continue cooking till the mushrooms are well browned.

Add the brandy and cook off the alcohol for a few seconds, then add the thyme, porcini with the soaking water, and garlic. Give it all a good stir and simmer for a few minutes, until the water has mostly cooked away.

Lower the heat a little and add the cream and Parmesan, stir it all together, and simmer for five or ten minutes, until the cream has thickened.

Add the spinach and stir through till wilted, then remove from the heat and season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Add the gnocchi and toss until it’s all well mixed, and serve with more grated Parmesan.

*This is the bit that made me panic and abandon gnocchi-making during my second confrontation with them. It’s not that complicated – just be slow and gentle.

**I have, with success, attempted to lighten up this recipe by replacing the cream with fat free yoghurt. Use 150 – 200ml yoghurt instead of 250ml, add the yoghurt and parmesan along with the spinach and don’t simmer, remove immediately from the heat. Then proceed as usual.

Recently produced by munch

All for a birthday function for one of munch's favourite clients, along with some unpictured dinner dishes (prawn gumbo, traditional lasagne, and sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach. Gnocchi recipe coming soon). These photos will be made pretty and loaded onto the website gallery soon.

Oysters, crab, and Black Label

Recently, munch went AWOL for three weeks. The holiday was a road trip involving camping and lots of braaing which, whilst being completely delicious, doesn’t make for very interesting food stories. Especially since we became particularly attached to sweet potatoes and sweet corn wrapped in foil and roasted in the coals, and pretty much stuck to those two as our vegetable options for the entire trip.

Two important food events took place for me, though. I ate my first oyster, and my first crab. It is embarrassing to admit that I only now ate my first oyster. I blame my mother: whenever oysters are mentioned, she tells the story of how her brothers forced an oyster down her throat when she was very small. As you can imagine, it was an unpleasant experience, and my mother’s description of the oyster getting stuck in her throat always comes back to me whenever I’m confronted with any. As a result, I’d managed to avoid them very well. But while we were at Andrew’s parents’ house three weeks ago, having a party for his sister’s birthday, I walked into the kitchen after midnight and was confronted with Andrew’s dad, two shucked oysters, lemon juice, and black pepper. Andrew’s dad was shocked that I’d never had an oyster, and took it upon himself to feed me my first, one of several he had collected on the beach earlier that day.

It was enormous. It also unfortunately looked just like oysters always do look. There didn’t seem to be the option of declining, and I couldn’t quickly enough think of a way to toss a giant oyster over my shoulder and make it disappear while pretending to chomp down on it. I decided to block out potential consequences, worst of which would be losing a bellyful of party snacks onto my in-laws’ kitchen floor, and try to just get the oyster down as quickly as possible.

That wasn't very quick, though, because the oyster was so massive. I had to chew a bit. And – it was good. Not snotty at all! Quite mild-tasting, and with a texture almost like fillet. I may not be running around trying to cram every available oyster down my throat, but if confronted with them again, I’d happily eat a few. (Apologies for the anticlimactic ending. I am very happy that I did not, in fact, throw up mini quiches onto the kitchen floor, although that would have made for a more amusing story. And apologies for no pictures - it was, as I mentioned, midnight and unexpected.)

   

The second important food event was my first whole crab. Crabs can be difficult to come by here, at least at affordable prices, so I’m not as embarrassed that this was my first time eating a whole crab. We were at a restaurant in Mozambique, and the crab “carry” (we assumed it was crab curry) was cheap. I was a bit confounded when it arrived, pretty orange claws in a coconutty broth that were impossible to crack open. I tore at them for a few minutes, then wailed to Andrew that I’d never be able to eat my dinner. Luckily the restaurant was a casual establishment that didn’t pay too much attention to customers, since at this point I discovered the tongs intended for cracking the crab shell, right next to the bowl of crab. The tongs made everything much easier, I was able to eat my dinner, and it was good. Again, I’m not going to go on a hunt for crab whenever possible, but I’d happily eat it again.

So there you have it, the two important food events of my holiday. Unless you can count becoming quite attached to Black Label quarts, which also happened.