Marcus Wareing's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Despite protestations that I don't care for cookies, I notice that I write a lot about them:  cantuccini, macaroons, Madeleines, lace cookies, jam cookies and my all time favorite, Russian Tea Cakes (aka The "Heroin Cookie").  And let us not forget my particular Achilles heel, the Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie.  So maybe the truth is that I don't like certain cookies.  Or maybe I've gotten over my decades-long cookie aversion. 

I grew up eating Chips Ahoy.  Perfectly good cookie.  Processed to the hilt and overly sweet but a good proxy in a house that never made them (because my mother grew up making croissant and cream puffs, not peanut butter cookies or sandies and so wouldn't have the foggiest what a chocolate chip cookie was supposed to be).  A French friend spent a summer with us and became addicted to Chips Ahoy (having grown up on croissant and cream puffs he was enamored of the overly processed and sweet Chips Ahoy.  You see the irony here, yes?).  Staying with his family the following summer, I won huge (ahem) brownie points with the family when I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch for them.

After years of eating Chips Ahoy, Oreos and Mint MIlanos and other sundry store-bought cookies, I finally burnt out in college.  For nearly a decade and a half I couldn't bear to look at, or bake, much less consume, a cookie -- any cookie.  I can't really say what happened.  I'm odd that way:  I can go decades without eating something then suddenly desire it overnight (pineapples), or lose complete and utter interest in a particularly favorite food.  I'm not sure what changed; I think it was the cantuccini that Janine gave me at Alon's Bakery.  Suddenly there were cookies of sophisticated textures and subtle flavor to which I'd been previously unexposed.  From that cantuccini I found my way to other cookies but I never went back to the more plebian chocolate chip cookie. Until Marcus Wareing. 

This is currently my favorite cookbook:  Marcus Wareing's Cook The Perfect...He's a former Gordon Ramsay protege, and one of Ramsay's partners and head chef at Pétrus at the Berkeley, and at the Savoy Grill.   We had the opportunity to eat at Pétrus a couple of years ago and it was an absolutely stunning meal; Hubby says that after our first French Laundry foray, this was the second best meal we'd ever had.  Chef Wareing even signed his page in Off Duty, a collection of recipes from U.K. based chefs.  This cookbook is a compendium of some of his favorite dishes and does not pretend to be an haute cuisine cookbook.  He offers little tips on how best to cook or bake to achieve success; I have cooked almost every recipe in the book and not one dish went astray.

His take on chocolate chip cookies is absolutely simple and utterly delicious, although I made a change (due to preference rather than any fault of his instruction):  I prefer to shave my block(s) of Valrhona or Callebaut for nice un-uniform chunks of chocolate rather than using chips.  He recommends rolling the dough into a log and keeping it chilled, ready to slice and bake -- my freezer has about four rolls for last minute snacks or desserts (they have replaced the depleted Girl Scout Thin Mints supply).  Another recipe I'd like to try shortly:  shortbread.  I'll let you know how I like that cookie, too.

Marcus Wareing's Chocolate Chip Cookie

If you would like the recipe, please email me at ablithepalate (AT) gmail (DOT) (COM)

Comments

[Holly]

Those look and sound wonderful. I'm like you and prefer to cut my own chocolate instead of using store-bought chips. Lovely!

[cath]

Hi Holly -- let me know how you like the recipe. :-)