Gourmet's Best Cookies: A sweet goodbye.

Watch Cookie Monster Muppets Sesame Street Letter C in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Since this last November, Gourmet magazine has shut its presses.  This tragedy in the world of food journalism is both a telling sign of the times and a chilling reminder of Bon Appetite's monolithic presence as the cold indifferent journalistic face of big-agro and big-food-services(well....maybe not so much).  Anyways, to relive this magazines historic journey and explore the ever evolving American palate, they have posted a journey through the best cookies of the past 70 years.  Because of my particular geography, I am deciding to single out the black and white cookie as a recipe to post.

MINI BLACK-AND-WHITE COOKIES

MAKESABOUT 5 DOZEN COOKIES

• ACTIVE TIME:1 HR
 
• START TO FINISH:1 1/2 HR

DECEMBER 2005

The unofficial cookie of New York City is shrunken down to dainty proportions just right for the holiday dessert tray. Using a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch tip, pipe rounds 2 inches apart.

This is just one of Gourmet’s Favorite Cookies: 1941-2008. Although we’ve retested the recipes, in the interest of authenticity we’ve left them unchanged: The instructions below are still exactly as they were originally printed.

FOR COOKIES

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg

FOR ICINGS

• 2 3/4 cup confectioners sugar
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 to 6 tablespoons water
• 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

• 
  

  SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: 

  a small offset spatula
  
  

MAKE COOKIES:

• Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 2 large baking sheets.
  
  
  
  
• Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Stir together buttermilk and vanilla in a cup.
  
  
  
  
• Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes, then add egg, beating until combined well. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture, and mixing just until smooth.
  
  
  
  
• Drop rounded teaspoons of batter 1 inch apart onto baking sheets. Bake, switching positions of sheets halfway through baking, until tops are puffed, edges are pale golden, and cookies spring back when touched, 6 to 8 minutes total. Transfer to a rack to cool.
  
  

MAKE ICING WHILE COOKIES COOL:

• Stir together confectioners sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl until smooth. If icing is not easily spreadable, add more water, 1/2 teaspoon at a time. Transfer half of icing to another bowl and stir in cocoa, adding more water, 1/2 teaspoon at a time, to thin to same consistency as vanilla icing. Cover surface with a dampened paper towel, then cover bowl with plastic wrap.
  
  
  
  

ICE COOKIES:

• With offset spatula, spread white icing over half of flat side of each cookie. Starting with cookies you iced first, spread chocolate icing over other half.
  
  
  COOKS’ NOTE: Once icing is dry, cookies keep, layered between sheets of wax paper or parchment, in an airtight container at room temperature 4 days.
  

An Audio Representation:

Black and White World - Elvis Costello

Avante Undergrad: the Undergraduate Composers Concert

So last night we had the undergraduate composers' concert in the Silver Building at NYU.  This is the highly anticipated recording of our concert that I made.  If anyone else in the class has recordings let me know if/where you post them online.
To those of you who weren't in attendance this recording is the culmination of my principals of composition course that I took this past semester.  It was a great night with a great array of different sounds and insights into the compositional process. Thanks a lot to prof. Kampela for being such a dedicated instructor and everyone in the class for providing your insight.  It was great seeing what we all did this semester, I wish you all the best with your music in the future!

Introduction

A Display of Mackerel - Adam Waller

To Whom it May Concern...

(or: To the Customer Service Dept. at Shoe Mania in Union Square) - Joshua Cahan

Fluid Foliage - Nana Kaneko

Sunrise Blinding - Melisa Magrath

But you have a song - Christine Malvasi

Flutequartet Paralysis - Chris Shim

A Transfigured Home - David Aragona

This is what I wrote about my piece:

First and foremost I would like to thank prof. Kampela for guiding us all along our way with our pieces.  Without his direction, insight and gentle critical hand my piece, to its detriment, would not have taken the form it did.  To Whom it May Concern... is about ideas and memory.  About the places we go in our mind that excite and intrigue us.  Whether writing a letter or composing a piece of music, turning conception into representation at any level requires fluency, logic, and the common decency of art.  But what occurs between an idea and its eventual representation; the carving, the molding, the frustration, inspiration, and resultant feelings involved are all part of the creative process.

The mysticism with which the creative process is represented, as being ascribed to genius or the result of an opportunity, I feel dilutes the emotional journey involved in art, science, or even something as mundane as writing a letter.  Roland Barthes speaks of Einstein as being popularly characterized by his simultaneously magical and mechanical brain.  This places the realm of creativity relegated to a gifted few at one end and tediously manufactured by drones. at the other.  Neither is true in my mind.  My conception of conception, so to speak, is closer to that of a feeling grounded by experience, delving into the essence of ones intuition. That making and recognizing beauty is an act of involving oneself in ones undertakings speaks to the very impulse of art, thought, and science. Which is what I attempt to represent and present with To Whom it May Concern... .

As a mind begins putting idea to paper, knowledge from all areas are drawn upon, compared, related, and prioritized.  Often we prepare, but if we are ruminating over the years or days we meander through our momentary recollections. If, through our efforts, we are lucky enough to land upon something exciting or intriguing (regardless of intellectual weight, revolutionary implication, or even individualism), pride bubbles through in that we can now hold on to a new facet that may have never appeared weren't it for the chance encounter of mind, effort, and experience within ourselves.  Confusion, anxiety, rays of hope, and (in the case of this piece) triumphant conclusion are all part of the story of art, science, faith, relationships, and study.  Day in day out.  Sense, common sense, and uncommon sense are all manifested through  passion and insight - always producing, jotting down, remembering, reconciling, relating and often times relenting, walking through a world with ones head blissfully above the clouds, but only if we listen...

                                               piano m.26 

The Momofuku : David Chang

Meet David Chang.  I mentioned one of his many east village establishments not too long ago, Momofuku Milk Bar, with their very delicious pastries and cereal milk soft serve.  A new "it" chef, of sorts, in New York City, Chang is quite the character.   This is a great video of him getting drunk, eating korean fried chicken, and then cooking up some munchies... its as good as it sounds. If only they could find someone. in addition to Anthony Bourdain, to do this on T.V.



David Changs Pork Recipe (From video)

"A couple teaspoons of salt

Some black pepper

And a couple hours of don't fuckin' worry about it."

Momofuku's Milk Bar and Bill Withers

So the other night I was having dinner at the Redhead, a great restaurant on 13th St. btwn 1st and 2nd with my Sister her boyfriend and a friend of theirs from law school, a foodie and brooklyn native. I had a great burger there and my sisters fried Chicken was excellent as well (maybe, just maybe better than Harold's in Chicago). I didn't taste the tenderloin or the beet green ravioli, but all reports were positive as well. Also the complimentary cookie they provided at the end of the most excellent repast, was superb. A chocolate fudge cookie devilishly garnished with coarse salt on top. After a chance encounter with an old freind of my sister's on the street we continued down 13th to Momo Fuku's Milk Bar, the home of the famed Cereal Milk Soft Serve. I tried a sample of this frozen, sweetened cornflake milk and was pleasantly surprised by the delicacy and non-grossness of its nostalgic corn-flake essence (though I have lately been into weird ice cream flavors. To wit, be on the look out for an avocado ice cream recipe). We also tried their blueberry pie, and compost cookie which was made with everything from pretzels to coffee. My favorite treat however was their so called "Crack Pie", which is kinda like a pecan pie without the pecan's, so needless to say it is pretty rich. This carmely pie with an oat cookie crust I describe "as almost as good as crack, but not really as good as crack". Overall Momo Fuku's was full of delicious surprises with a nice village vibe that helps to keep the place packed on most nights. I don't normally do restaurant reviews, though I have been told I should (and may do more), the reason I am writing about this particular night was because of the music I heard when I first walked in to Momo Fuku's. Though I didn't know it at the time the familiar voice accompanying my funky funky entrance music was that of Bill Withers, the man behind the ubiquitous singles Lean on Me and Ain't No Sunshine. The song instantly hit me, so much so I had to ask my server what we were listening to so I could share it with you, my loyal reader. So here it is a Bill Withers Remix (though it is not too different from the original) of Lovely Day to go with your crack, or your crack pie, or maybe just some old cereal milk you had lying around.

The Big # 4...

So here I am presenting a pretty rock and rollin' mix to commemorate the beginning of my (and perhaps yours too) senior year of college. Now with most playlists I put up, at this time I would wax poetic about what the mix means to me but in all truth I don't have much to say, but I will try. It is a playlist about excitement and trepidation, certainly something anybody about to enter a new stage in their life feels. It has been a fun and strange three years. The places I've seen, the people that have come and gone, and the times that have been shared. I am happy to be reunited with old friends after a long summer in Chicago, don't know what I want to do after this year, and am pissed as all hell about taking hebrew again... That pretty much sums it up

Here are some key tracks:
Destroy The Heart - House of Love
Knuckles - The Hold Steady
We're Almost There - Michael Jackson
Paris (Aeroplane Remix feat. Au Revoir Simone) - Friendly Fires


THE MIX

Destroy The Heart 2:40 House of Love 12" A side
What Ever Happened? 2:50 The Strokes Room On Fire
What Am I Fighting For? (LA Priest Remix) 3:39 Unklejam What Am I Fighting For? CDS
Dont change your plans 5:11 Ben Folds Five The unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
September Gurls 2:48 Big Star #1 Record / Radio City
In The Fade 4:26 Queens of the Stone Age Rated R
Rock And Roll Remedy 4:09 Alpha Blondy Revolution
Range Life 4:55 Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Waterlooville 2:19 The Minders Cul-de-Sacs & Dead Ends
We're Almost There 3:45 Michael Jackson The Motown Years
Ashes To Ashes 4:22 David Bowie The Singles Collection CD 2
03 - Mr. HUDSON & THE LIBRARY - Too Late, Too Late 3:08 Mr. Hudson & the Library
Brian and Robert 3:03 Phish The Story of the Ghost
Fake Empire 3:25 The National Boxer
Gimmie Panic 3:13 Perspects The Third and Final Report-EP
Knuckles 3:46 The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me
Paris (Aeroplane Remix Feat. Au Revoir Simone) 7:43 Friendly Fires discodust.blogspot.com


-MC Sauce

Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus: Weary Blues

This is an album I picked up from my good friend DJ Joe-sephus, mad mad respect . It is a great recording, and needless to say because of the brilliance and high regard of its collaborators, is an important and interesting American cultural artifact.

Recorded in 1958 this album takes the groundbreaking 1926 work of Langston Hughes' Weary Blues (which includes the famous "A Dream Deffered") and pairs it with compositions written in collaboration by Charles Mingus, Leonard Feather, and Horace Parlan. Mingus has a knack, I feel, for making music that is sometimes rousing, sometimes chilling, always original, and always eloquent music. This combined with Hughes "cool" prose that itself is written with rhythms straight out of harlem makes a perfect pairing. I feel that this album, because of its stirring poetry and pristine music, can be enjoyed by jazz and non-jazz enthusiasts alike.

The effect of this recording I feel exemplifies a lot of what I look for in music; something that is both interesting and moving which in my opinion (as was previously stated) is duly accomplished both on a musical and literary level. Overall though I just love the music and the poetry. Hughes voice is unparalleled in his delivery, and the words have never meant more as a result. This album is hard to find a copy of, I saw it on Amazon with new copy's going for as much as 40 dollars. Luckily DJ Joe-sephus l was so generous, and luckily you read this blog.

Personnel

Langston Hughes -	poetry
Shafi Hadi (Curtis Porter) -	tenor sax
Jimmy Knepper -	trombone
Horace Parlan -	piano, leader
Charles Mingus -	bass
Kenny Dennis -	drums

"I'm a Bad Man"- Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus

A Dream Deffered - Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus

"Democracy Will Not Come Today" - Langston Hughes & Charles Mingus

The Whole Thing:

http://www.zshare.net/download/5838186662489c46/#