Almond butter cookies

Carlotta, A Moveable Feast

Food news of the week:

Carlotta’s pumpkin ravioli (below) is a winner dinner, and it’s all about nut butter for today’s recipe. Had a wild compressed belated birthday weekend in Paris, where the scallops and noodles in an enticing savoury broth at Bouche made it to our own Bouche, and freshly-shot deer in French-inspired Italian spot Dilia was a tender, core scene.

Science of the week:

Everyone knows about the prefrontal cortex, but not so much its subunits. Revision for me: The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VmPFC) is a major link between our autonomous nervous system (the bit that controls unconscious processes like breathing and eating), and regulation of emotion and stress, suggesting its role in managing stressful environmental situations, emotional events, and even immune function.

Insight of the week:

Hemingway called Paris ‘a moveable feast’. In other words, a place that leaves the profound emotions it evokes, and experiences left in its wake, with you, no matter where you go in the world. It resonates after coming back from the city (don’t even have bedbugs on me), which is now frosty and gleaming with winter treats. Say what you will, but there’s just something different about the city of love.

Recipe of the week:

Excruciatingly easy, fun-to-make, no-brainer kind of recipe.

Almond Butter Cookies (flourless, makes around 16 medium cookies)

Ingredients

1 cup almond butter

1 teaspoon fine salt

75g white caster sugar

65g soft, light brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg

Optional: half a cup of chocolate chips/ nuts/ crushed biscuits

Directions

Preheat your oven to 177C (350F), and line and grease 2 cookie sheets. In a bowl, mix together all the ingredients listed above (yes, in that order, if you wish). Using 2 tablespoons, spoon a tablespoonful of mixture onto the cookie sheet(s), each circle of batter placed at least an inch apart from each other. There is no need to flatten the cookies as they will spread out on their own during the baking process; they should be slightly flattened balls of almond buttery goodness on the baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for 9-11 minutes. Mine were done by 9 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack for at least a half hour before touching, and then serve.

Restaurant of the week:

Incoming: the pretty new thing by the Big Mamma group. The sort of lavish that has furniture with rounded edges and draping on walls. Carlotta for a birthday treat, a bona fide blast. The dinner not only made me revel in the glory of all that is Italian, a cuisine I’ll probably never get sick of, but all that is empowering in my female friendships, through thick and thin, through heavens and hells.