News and Fun Facts   My Toll House Cookie recipe I sent you was a bit of a loser in The Pancake Princess’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake Off.  The winners were Cooks Illustrated (I almost always love their recipes) and the college student tasters chose the All Recipe one.

Classes this week: Milk Chocolate Cookies, Indian Butter Chicken, Profiteroles.

Top Tip  Salmon know how!  Check this out and then try the salmon recipe below.

Snap and Cook Photo Drawing  Above is this week’s winner of a free class, a student making smoked salmon pasta in class. Send me a photo from a recent class or a photo of the rosemary salmon purses or even a chocolate chip cookie to enter the drawing.

What I’m Reading  Fall is cookbook season.  They are top of mind as the gift giving season will soon be upon us.    It’s no surprise many cocktail books are being published in this unsettling 2020.  But I wanted to highlight Ina Gartner’s “Comfort Food” and Yotam Ottolenghi’s  “Flavor”.  If you watched Nadiya Hussain’s Netflix cooking series you may want to check out her “Time to Eat”.  And then I’d like to steer you away from restaurant cookbooks and celebrity chefs.  They are fun and often have fabulous photos but I often find them using difficult to find ingredients and sometime hve errors in the instructions or ingredient lists.  Support a small business and buy them from bookshop.org or Omnivore Books.

What I’m Listening To The Proof podcast from American’s Test Kitchen is very fun.  While it’s not exactly about cooking, it certainly is about food.  Listen to the latest about Oreo cookies or the history of tofu.

What I’m Cooking  This is a simple recipe that’s fancy enough for a dinner party.  I’ve been teaching this for years and it’s been a favorite of my students: Rosemary Salmon Purses.  Just buy some good quality salmon (see tip above), layer a few ingredients and wrap it up with parchment paper to make a purse.  It’s great for each guest to open it up at dinner time and to be surprised by what’s inside the purse.