Black & White & Delicious All Over

Seinfeld saw them as a symbol of racial harmony, but sometimes a cookie is just a cookie

My attempt at reproducing a Black & White deli cookie. They were a hit with my husband, except he said they were too small.

In my most recent post, we visited a Jewish deli in Palm Desert, CA, and, as usual, my husband Jeff had to have a black and white cookie because he grew up eating them at delis in New York City. These are oversized cake-like cookies iced with chocolate frosting on one half and vanilla on the other. Sometimes called “half-and-half cookies” or “half-moon cookies,” they were famously featured in an episode of Seinfeld called “The Dinner Party" in which Jerry rhapsodizes to Elaine about the lessons in racial harmony that can be learned from the cookie.

“I love the black and white,” he tells her. “Two races of flavor living side by side in harmony. It’s a wonderful thing.”¹

I love the idea of a cookie representing racial harmony, though it seems to me that if that were truly the goal, the frosting would probably be swirled together rather than divided into two separate halves. But putting that aside, sometimes a cookie is just a cookie, not a lesson, and I was determined to see if I could make a delicious version at home. At least they would be fresh, which is already an improvement on the ones you often get that are several days old and encased in plastic wrap.

I used a recipe from The New York Times’ Melissa Clark. Click here to find it, and check out Melissa’s enjoyable video (below) on how she came up with the recipe after much experimentation.

A few notes:

• My cookies were quite a bit smaller than those pictured here. I used a quarter-cup ice cream scoop, as Melissa suggested. Next time I may try a bigger scoop!

• Unfortunately, I forgot to put in the lemon zest in the batter, and I believe the white icing would also have benefited from a squeeze of lemon juice for an extra pop of flavor.

• I’m not sure how Melissa got the chocolate line so straight or the surface so smooth. I suspect the icing needs to be more liquid than mine was (adding a bit more hot water to the mix will accomplish this) and a more steady hand used in the application. Clearly, frosting is not my forte.

• I made 12 cookies, applied the icing to six and froze six to be iced later. Freezing frosted cookies isn’t suggested as the coating tends to melt.

• A few days later, I took a few liberties with the frozen half dozen, experimenting with a different recipe for the icing from Ina Garten. It included butter and whipping cream in the chocolate and was consequently more delicious, I thought. I also had some fun decorating the cookies, though the straight line still eluded me.

Playing around: The white side of the cookie looked like it needed a bit of decoration—and more chocolate! Not quite the classic look, but fun to do.

The verdict on the first batch from the resident taster, Jeff:

Mine were smaller than the ones he’s used to but “tasted fantastic,” though not quite as good as his favorites from Brent’s Deli in Northridge, CA.

I’m determined to keep trying. Maybe next time I’ll try a ruler to get that icing just right. Or I’ll try a swirl.

Am I a foodie?

Still Life with Ham, Lobster, and Fruit, by Jan Davidszoon de Heem, also known as Johannes de Heem, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

“A foodie is a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and who eats food not only out of hunger but also as a hobby.” (Wikipedia)

“When did you become such a foodie?”

The question came as a bit of a shock. We were having dinner with old friends we hadn’t seen in a while, and, for a moment, I was speechless.

“I’m not really a foodie,” I responded after a beat. “I mean, I’ve always loved food, but there’s a lot of other things that interest me…”

“Well, I don’t remember you being so into food in the past,” my friend said. “But you definitely are a foodie now.”

The evidence, she said, was clear from my blog: It’s all about food. Well, yeah, but does that make me a foodie?

I always thought a foodie was someone who was obsessed with the subject to the exclusion of other things—for example, a person who might go out of their way, spend mucho bucks for a chance to eat at Berkeley’s famed Chez Panisse or join the ranks of gastro tourists who fly halfway round the world to eat at Noma, the soon-to-be-shuttered 3-star restaurant in Copenhagen, considered one of the world’s best. Definitely not me!

Menu at Chez Panisse on an evening last fall when we happened to be passing through the neighborhood sometime referred to as Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. We ended up eating at a less pricey Indian restaurant.

I envisioned foodies as folks with bona fide credentials for claiming the title: some may have attended culinary school, published their own cookbooks and/or have ghostwritten those of others. Perhaps they’re restaurant reviewers, recipe developers, culinary teachers, or enormously adventurous home cooks. I’ve discovered a fair number of writers, some with those very credentials, right here on Substack, the same platform where I post this blog. At the bottom of this post are links to some whose work I enjoy. But I doubt they’d call themselves “foodies”either. It sounds pretentious. And what does it really mean anyway?

The extended version of the Wikipedia entry on foodie is only slightly more illuminating:

The related terms "gastronome" and "gourmet" define roughly the same thing, i.e. a person who enjoys food for pleasure. But the connotation of "foodie" differs slightly—a sort of everyman with a love for food culture and different foods.

I guess that’s broad enough to include me (and a lot of folks I know!) in the foodie club, though I’m still uncomfortable with the label. Anyway, I’m with Groucho Marx when it comes to clubs:

Groucho reportedly wrote these famous words in a letter when he resigned from the Friars Club. (Illustration by Tony Rubino, Saatchi Art)

If you’re not a foodie, why call your blog Ruth Talks Food?

Good question. It calls for a short detour into the history of this blog.

The Substack version began almost three years ago as a podcast with a newsletter attached. It was the start of the pandemic. There was a sudden surge in interest in making sourdough bread, something I’d been experimenting with for years. Everyone was rediscovering the joys (or at least the importance) of home cooking because, well, we were all stuck at home. Going out to restaurants was off the table—they were closed or only open for takeout. It seemed we’d better learn to cook again, assuming we’d forgotten, or up our game if we hadn’t. But that was something I’d been doing for a while, so why not talk about it? I thought I’d start close to home by interviewing my mother-in-law, Judy Graham, a professional knitter, healthy eater and soup lover, about how she was coping and what she was cooking. The first newsletter went out to about 10 people.

My mother-in-law, Judy Graham, making lentil soup at the very start of the pandemic. I interviewed her for a podcast/post in April 2020.

From there, I began interviewing friends, neighbors and family, gradually realizing I preferred writing to podcasting and that people were more likely to read than listen, but the name, Ruth Talks Food, stuck. In truth, it goes back even further to a blog I began in 2013 on a different platform. I’ve transferred several of those older posts to my Substack archives, but you can find a link to some more here. One of my favorite posts of that ancient batch was about the insane popularity of huckleberries, a summer berry beloved by both people and grizzlies and found almost exclusively in the Pacific Northwest.

Roadside stand near Hungry Horse, Montana, in late summer, 2013. I imagine you’ll find more stands like this come summer 2023.

But back to that foodie question. Why write about food when there are so many other things that interest me—politics, psychology, religion, literature, foreign languages, history, travel, art, music, science? In short, everything!

“Why don’t you just change the name of your blog to ‘Ruth Talks’?” my husband asks. “Then you can write about whatever you want.”

Because, I say, ultimately when you write about food, you eventually write about everything anyway. One day maybe I’ll get around to writing about everything.

A few shoutouts

As promised, here are some of my favorite bloggers who may just happen to be foodies—or not. It matters not. They’re all worth reading.

Vicki Smith, Easel to Table: Painting food is a tradition in art—witness the still life paintings of Picasso, Cezanne, Van Gogh and the Dutch painter whose work is pictured above. Vicki, an artist and teacher, creates beautiful pictures of food, weaves in stories about her life, then makes something that always sounds delicious. You can find a link to Vicki’s work and recipes below.

Mulligatawny Soup

Jolene Handy, Time Travel Kitchen: Do you want to know about the history of the Chemex coffee maker, the story of Elsie the Cow, or trace mentions of marmalade in literature? Or do you just want to make chocolate truffles or take a deep dive into the history of the Automat? Jolene is the perfect guide, a terrific writer and photographer with an amazing collection of vintage cookbooks, a quirky sense of humor and boundless curiosity.

How The Mundane Can Connect Us To The Marvelous

Anne Byrn, Between the Layers: Also known as the Cake Mix Doctor, Anne has written numerous cookbooks, including her latest, A New Take on Cake. But she writes about everything, from the egg shortage to elitism in the cooking world to a delicious-sounding chickpea, spinach and lemon soup to her signature cakes.

Pudding Mix is Having a Baking Moment - No. 184

Marg Moon, Book Chat: I’ve discovered so much pleasurable reading via Marg’s engaging blog, but also enjoy her recipes for salads, cakes and Australian (also British) specialties like toasties, which, from what I can tell, are a delicious-sounding version of grilled cheese. She also shares stories from her life Down Under, plus TV and podcast picks. I’m excited to participate in her international book club, beginning in March!

Book Chat Issue #47

Sìnu Fogarizzu, Dash of Prosecco: Sìnu describes her newsletter as “a monthly newsletter about food, identity and life on the mainland of Venice.” It’s a captivating window into Sìnu’s life and creative recipes and goes down well with or without a glass of Prosecco. She immediately swept me in to her December post when she wrote:

As if by magic, between November and March, our fridge turns into a cabbage parking lot. A slow, weekly accumulation, otherwise known as cabbage boredom, or cabbage overwhelm.

The King of the Frosty Vegetable Patch

Baking Muffins for good

Blueberry muffins.

Should you want not only to read about food but to do something to help those in need, please check out my friend Julia Levy’s post on celebrating National Muffin Day, a philanthropic food holiday that’s in its ninth year and going strong. The point is to bake muffins and give them away to needy folks in your town. You can invite friends and acquaintances over to bake with you, or you can connect virtually.

I’m not quite sure which Los Angeles-area organizations will accept homemade muffin donations, so I will need to do a bit of research. If you have any ideas, please let me know! Meanwhile, I’m also in the hunt for new muffin recipes! Do you have a few favorites to recommend? Please let me know in comments.

The date is Sunday, Feb. 26. For every “Muffinteer” who shares on social media with #givemuffins, Julia says at least $5 will be donated to causes that support people experiencing hunger and homelessness. Here’s the link:

Thanks for reading, liking, commenting and generally putting up with my ramblings. I’m excited by every new subscription, so please do add your name to the list.

See you next time.

Ruth

1. My friend Leslie Podkin wrote to tell me she’d discovered an episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee in which Jerry admits to comedian Lewis Black that he doesn’t really like black and white cookies. The moment when Jerry admits his true feelings about the cookies is about nine minutes in. Who knew?