We went over to our friends’ house to see them off before they moved out of town. I made chocolate chip cookies and brought over takeout Vietnamese: bún with pork and spring rolls, and chicken bánh mì. The ideal chocolate chip cookie, which I strive to create, is soft enough that the body of the cookie is just as soft as the chocolate chips, and it should be a pleasant surprise when you find your teeth sinking deeper into the cookie than you’d expected, and you should be reminded of Keebler elves. Chocolate chip cookies, like peanut butter cookies, originated with Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. Legend has it that she got the idea when some chocolate fell down from the shelf. The first chocolate chip cookie recipe was published in Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes, and I do indeed think chocolate chip cookies would be a pleasant snack for anyone waiting at a toll house. The recipe on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bags is supposed to be the original Toll House recipe, but an investigation has determined that this is not so. One major difference is that in the original, the dough was chilled overnight. Also, the baking soda was dissolved into the wet ingredients instead of being mixed with the flour (and I don’t know what the effect of this is but that’s how I did it as well). I made the cookies using only brown sugar and no granulated sugar, leaving them with a bit of a coffee taste: good, but not quite what you expect from a classic.

(Photo: Chinese restaurant, Rockville, Maryland.)

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