Although somewhat variable depending if you get them fresh or not Chili’s fries rate a solid 4 out of 5 for me. These are strip fries that generally are slightly crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. They hold their salt well and have a pleasant peppery seasoning sprinkled over them.
Category: Gastronomy
Taco Mac – Good fries to be had
I *do* like my french fries. While you must head to North Africa, specifically Morocco, for the best fries that I’ve found to date, there are plenty of great offerings here in continental North America.
On a scale of 5, with 5 being the best, I’d give the fries at Taco Mac a solid 4.
Cookie Lesson Learned
My department at work held its annual Thanksgiving potluck lunch. I decided I’d make some of my chocolate chip cookies for this event and set to work.
I’ve been tailoring this recipe for years now. When I found I was going to be a little light on the flour I rationalized that the original recipe had actually only called for exactly as much flour as I had available so I would just go with what I had.
Unfortunately, it seems some of the other “tweaks” I’ve made to the recipe over the years depend on the right proportion of flour and the dough melted rapidly and spread out on the cookie sheets. There it browned rather nicely and became somewhat crispy such that, when I tried to pull up the cookies with a spatula, the outer, crisped edges broke away. Leaving me with a bunch of soft “cookie hearts” that, while still tasting great, looked absolutely wretched.
I *was* able to salvage some cookies (they turned out OK due, presumably, to temperature differences between the upper and lower oven racks) but the vast majority I didn’t think looked very appealing (they’re in the foreground below)…
So I ended up buying some pastries and will next time go out and get the flour when I’m low!
Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
I’ve been tailoring a bunch of recipes for years. This is my always-tasty recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. I originally pulled it off of a “Chipits” package nearly two decades ago and have been tweaking it ever since.
Try it, you’ll like it!
Marc’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 c shortening
3/4 c brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1-1/4 c all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c chipits semi-sweet chips
1/2 c Milk chocolate Chips
Cream together shortening and brown sugar.
Beat in egg and vanilla.
Combine flour, baking soda and salt.
Add flour mixture gradually to creamed mixture, mixing well.
Stir in Chipits and nuts.
Drop by teaspoonfuls (generous in size) onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F
for 10 minutes (final cookies should about 2 inches in diameter).
Bake for 2 more minutes for crispy cookies (maybe less).
Notes:
– It’s *much* easier to make 2 single batches than to make a double batch.
– It’s critical to have a uniform consistency after both the first creaming step and after beating in the egg and vanilla. This makes or breaks the recipe.
Chocomap!
If you know me, you know I love chocolate (yeah, yeah, and fries too..), King sent me this link to a resource that shows a little promise.
Heh, maybe someday this will grow into a useful resource. I took a peek and couldn’t find any of the places I like. Most notably absent is Rheo Thompson Candies in Stratford Ontario (their milk chocolate mint smoothies are out of this world!).
I wanted to add them but they seem to only want the actual chocolatiers to do that. I’m pretty sure this site won’t *really* take off until they encourage chocolate *lovers* to keep it up-to-date. It’s been my experience that “artistes” and the computer savvy crowd frequently do not overlap…