Chocolate Chip Cookie: Chapter 1

The right chocolate chip cookie may just be the most perfect food in the world.

To me, this "right" cookie has these qualities: it is thick, the outside is crispy, the inside has the right balance of chip to non-chip territory and has just enough goo to it. It is not flat, nor is it cakey. It does not contain nuts (I realize that this is a polarizing statement). It leaves a bit of a grease stain on your napkin.

There is a cookie that is almost this pinnacle of cookie goodness. Its lone flaw is that it contains nuts. Despite that, and I realize I'm contradicting myself, this is the best chocolate chip cookie I have ever eaten. It can be found at the Old World Deli in Freeport ME (at the Big Indian, or the BFI as it is called). A friend and I used to do in-depth analysis on these cookies.  All butter or butter/crisco combined, just crisco? Oven temp? Fat to flour ratio? Chilled dough or fresh? We were a bit obsessed. We used to pump the deli workers for information. They did not disclose much.

I was recently talking to a butcher who told me that he had made chocolate chip cookies with beef lard. Beef lard - brilliant. He did say that during baking you get a bit of a funky smell - think rendering beef, chocolate and sugar combined. However, this was the best chocolate chip cookie he had ever had. Unlike the deli folks, he was very willing to share his recipe. I'll give this a try at some point and let you know how it turns out.

I have come pretty close to replicating the deli cookie (sans nuts) on a couple of occasions. Like most good things, it requires a bit of pre-planning, time and good ingredients.

As good - no - as divinely sublime as that chocolate chip cookie is, sometimes I just make the basic, back o' the chip bag cookie. These are fine, they make me happy, the house smells good.The dough is better than the final product and I eat too much of it. When I make these cookies now, I don't have to scheme with anyone so someone can distract the cookie-maker while the other person sneaks into the kitchen and runs off with the dough.

Recently, I made the back of the bag type of cookie and packed them off to Molly - a willing recipient of baked treats, and a happy tester of anything new I want to try. A bit undercooked is the key to this type of cookie.

I haven't made the sublime type of cookie in a while. It has actually been so long I need to go back through my recipes, notes (yes - I have notes about this type of cookie) and do a quick baking chemistry reminder before I embark on this effort. I'll do this soon, and will update with the next chapter of Chocolate Chip Cookies.

In the meantime, get out there and bake whatever chocolate chip cookie suits your fancy, and eat some dough.

The best part.

Sadly flat, but tasty nevertheless.