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It really is a small world. If I hadn’t known it
before, it was brought home to me three years ago in New Zealand. My
younger daughter, Ashley, had enrolled at Lincoln University in
Christchurch to study viticulture and oenology (grape-growing and
winemaking). Down under, the school year starts in late February,
equivalent to our August, because the seasons are reversed. So that
January, Ashley and I made the long flight to tour one of the most
beautiful places on Earth before getting her settled into college. Ashley had decided to study winemaking in New Zealand
for several reasons. We had a friend in Springfield from New Zealand in the
wine business. We’d become close to him and knew his family and other
New Zealand friends from their visits here, so she’d have a support
group there. New Zealand’s wine industry was relatively new but has
been receiving worldwide accolades for its quality. The only winemaking
degree available in the United States was at the University of California,
Davis, and it was difficult to impossible for out-of-state students to be
accepted there. A bonus was the favorable New Zealand/U.S. exchange rate
(which, I am sad to say, worsened immediately after her arrival). New Zealand consists of two large islands,
unimaginatively named North and South. We flew into Auckland, a city of 1
million in the northern part of the North Island (the largest city in a
country of 4 million), and stayed with friends for a few days before
heading south in a rental car. (Lincoln University is located in the
central part of the South Island.) The scenery was breathtaking, and we
quickly tired of exclaiming, “This is the most beautiful place
I’ve ever seen!” only to repeat ourselves minutes later.
We had adventures on our trip (not least because of the
need to drive on the “wrong” side of the road) and would put
7,000 kilometers on our rental car in a month. When not staying with
friends, we found bed & breakfast homes. In a suburb of Wellington, the capital city, located
on the southern tip of the North Island, we found a bed & breakfast
that was easily the nicest of our entire journey. It had a beautiful
garden, and our room was thoughtfully furnished with every convenience,
including a tin of cookies. We were hungry, and we each took one.
“What do you think? Ashley asked. “It’s good but too
short” (meaning that it had too much fat/shortening), I replied, ever
the food critic.
We settled in, freshened up, and went into the kitchen
to chat with our hostess. We had a lot in common. She was in charge of the
music curriculum for the Wellington schools and loved to cook. “Do you know who Jo Seagar is?” I asked.
I’d met Jo, known as the Julia Child of New Zealand, a couple of
years earlier, when she’d stopped in Springfield to visit some of our
New Zealand friends on her way to a convention in Chicago. We’d had a
fun evening, and my husband, Peter, had helped her the next day with a
dental emergency. “Of course,” our hostess replied
enthusiastically. “I have all of her cookbooks. In fact, the
cookies in your room are from her latest book. I have to say, though, I was
a bit disappointed in them.” She turned to her shelf of cookbooks,
pulled one out, opened it to the appropriate page, and handed it to me. I
looked at it, dumbfounded. It was my recipe. Well, not exactly. She’d called them “Nuts
and Bolts Cookies,” with a subtitle of “Dentist’s
Revenge” — a tribute to Peter, no doubt. I hadn’t given
her the recipe, but I knew where she’d gotten it: the friends with
whom we’d had dinner in Springfield. Ashley and our hostess figured
out why the cookies were too greasy: Jo had halved the ingredients in the
recipe, except for the amount of butter, which was expressed in grams, so
the proportion of butter was roughly twice that of the original recipe.
She’d also reduced the amount of nuts. I certainly wasn’t
offended, though I did wish she’d gotten the butter part right. Disclaimer: I said that this was my recipe, but I
can’t lay claim to having invented it. I don’t remember where I
first came across it, but it was many years ago. These cookies are probably the best-loved, most popular
things I’ve ever made.
Send questions and comments to Julianne Glatz at
realcuisine@insightbb.com.
Three-Chocolate, Three-Nut Cookies
1 cup hazelnuts 1 cup walnuts 1 cup pecans 2 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 cups sugar 2 cups dark brown sugar 4 large eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour 5 cups oatmeal 8 ounces milk chocolate 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 2 teaspoons baking soda One bag (approximately 12 ounces) white chocolate chips One bag (approximately 12 ounces) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Put the hazelnuts in
single layer on a baking sheet, then put the sheet in the oven and toast
the nuts until their skins have begun to crack and the nuts are fragrant
and lightly browned, five to 10 minutes. Wrap the hazelnuts in a lint-free
towel or old pillowcase and let them rest until they are cool enough to
handle. Massage the nuts in the towel or pillowcase to loosen as much of
the skin as possible. Discard the loosened skins and chop the hazelnuts
very coarsely. Toast the walnuts and pecans separately (because the times
may differ) until they are lightly browned. Let them cool, then chop them
very coarsely and set them aside with the hazelnuts. Cream the butter and sugars and add the eggs and
vanilla. Place the oats and milk chocolate in the bowl of a food processor
and grind them to a fine powder. Combine this powder with the remaining dry
ingredients and mix them into the butter/egg/sugar mixture. Stir in the
nuts and chocolate chips. Form dough into golf-ball-size balls and bake for
15 to 20 minutes. Cookies are best if they are slightly underdone. Makes
two to three dozen cookies.
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2007.
