Hot Salsa, Chocolate-Ginger Cookies, and French Bread

After a few weeks hiatus due to just-too-much-work, the Pittsburgh cookie railroad is back on track (ha! I managed to squeeze a pun-like thing in there). I promised to make cookies this week, but didn't feel quite up to the curry cardamom gems that I made last time. And then ate all of them, so I had nothing to deliver. I wanted something chocolate-y, but not chocolate chip. Something exotic.

I had purchased some candied ginger a few weeks ago, at my local Indian grocery. I had plenty of cocoa and chocolate squares, so I went to the trusty Internets and searched for something chocolate and ginger. And I found these:

Chocolate-Ginger Crinkle Cookies

I made up the dough, with minor changes. Just the usual, I didn't have quite enough chocolate, Drew wanted more brown sugar, etc. The dough was really liquidy, more like brownie dough, but I remembered that the regular chocolate crinkles are also like this, so I didn't try to fix it at all.

This morning, the dough was hard as a rock. More like fudge. So, I carved it up a teaspoonful at a time, and set to work baking. They came out awesome!!! I'll definitely be making these again.

Prior to the start of the cookies, I was struggling to come up with something for dinner. I made Indian earlier in the week, so that was out. We thought about grilling, but we need a new chimney coal starter thing, and our local True Value only had a gigantic, overpriced one. (We did pick up a bunch of new plants and some mushroom compost though, so I have a few veggies planted and happy in the back.)

We settled on chicken tacos, but I was out of most veggies that go into my usual salsa. I did have some canned tomatoes from two summers ago, but I was hesitant to use them. They're whole yellow grape and red cherry tomatoes, but I included 1/2 a habanero pepper in each jar, and from previous experience, this made everything I used them in unbearably hot, even when the habanero was not removed prior to cooking.

I ground them up anyway, and threw some fresh garden oregano, onion, and cilantro. It was still insanely hot, but seemed like it was still useable. The rest of the tacos is pretty standard - I use the packet method, and soft corn tortillas - but they were great! The salsa hotness mellowed after sitting for a while, and the taco seasoning stuff worked pretty well to tamp down more of the heat. So I know at least one more use for the remaining two jars sitting in my cupboard.

While the cookies were baking this morning, I got started on some more baguettes, but tried out King Arthur's bread flour and Fannie Farmer's recipe. It's always a challenge for me to not overknead the bread, especially since my trusty Kitchen-Aid mixer tends to make kneading unnecessary anyway. Dough is in first rising now, and my fingers are crossed that it will come out well :)