the “i hate gristedes” post

ever since the new york times posted its definitive recipe for chocolate chip cookies, i’ve been meaning to do a taste test between those and our trusty standby, toll house. we all know i’m a sucker for taste tests; the best ones that come to mind include the shaws whole chicken v. chinatown whole chicken (the chinatown chicken tasted surprising like a chinatown chicken you would get in a restaurant, which was really surprising to me) and the apple pie taste test, after which i swore off cinnamon in apple pies.

so, gristedes. i had decided to do three batches of chocolate chip cookies, since the gimmick of the new york times recipe lies in both proportions of sugar/flour/butter and also in how long the dough is chilled. the three batches are then: (1) the new york times recipe; (2) toll house, chilled as long as the ny times recipe; and (3) toll house, chilled the normal amount (about an hour, until the dough is firm enough to use). i went to gristedes to get ingredients, assuming that a supermarket would definitely have all of the ingredients i needed for my experiment. (because that’s what this is, folks: a geeky experiment. so sue me.) of course, i was wrong, and this is why gristedes makes me hate new york. because they don’t carry the chocolate chips i use in chocolate chip cookies, which is not an exotic brand and is basically carried in every other grocery store known to man. the brand, incidentally, is simply ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips. i like the size and shape of these chips in particular – they’re chubbier, and a little bigger and flatter, so they’re more pleasing to the eye and consequently make them more attractive to eat. kind of like the way that arborio rice is more pleasing to me to eat than basmati rice.

gristedes: you cost me a day, and my curiosity has increased accordingly as time has elapsed. i’d like to point out that whole foods did not disappoint me, and that i was able to procure my non-exotic chocolate chips there. technically, the ny times recipe calls for feves, which are the flat chocolate disks sold with all of the bulk chocolate, but i didn’t really have that much faith in my ability not to break them when stirring them into the dough, so i just used regular chocolate chips.

so right now, two bags of chocolate chip cookie dough are slowly chilling in the fridge. the rationale is that the liquid ingredients absorb better into the dough with a longer chilling period, which i know to be true: the buckwheat cocoa nib cookies require overnight chilling because they consist of flour, butter, sugar, and cocoa nibs. you have to wait for the dough to get to the right consistency or it won’t bake correctly. i’m curious to see just how much of a difference it makes, since i often chill my dough for up to 12 hours anyway, so that the butter doesn’t melt too fast when you bake the cookies. for some reason, i find chocolate chip cookies with really flat edges to be kind of unappetizing. i don’t really know why, and i know it’s weird, but that’s just the way it is.

my initial thoughts are that the doughs really are significantly different. the ny times recipe has more flour per tablespoon butter than the toll house recipe – you could tell with the two doughs that the toll house recipe was a lot goopier and harder to handle than the ny times recipe. i wonder if i should have used the typical brown sugar that i use – just dark instead of light – because the dough looked really pale to me, too. the last batch of chocolate chip cookies i made were at s+l’s place, and i made those with billington’s dark brown sugar, since that’s what i’d bought at the supermarket (not a gristedes). they were a rather pleasing golden brown; using dark brown sugar definitely helps color-wise. i also happen to like the flavor of dark brown sugar, which is especially nice since i don’t use vanilla extract. i can only stand to use real vanilla beans these days – i’ve discovered that i don’t really like the flavor of vanilla extract, and that i don’t want to obscure the flavor of sugar and butter with the vanilla.

well, that’s about it. i’ll report back about how the cookies turn out tomorrow.