New Orleans food adventure (part 1)

Restaurant Cochon. We planned to go to Cochon and try as many foods as possible. They have a small plates menu, so we ordered pretty much one of everything from the small plates menu. Some of the highlights were:

Fried Rabbit Livers with Pepper Jelly Toast- The rabbit liver was very mild compared to chicken liver. This was one of my favorites.

Grilled Beets and Pickled Pork Tongue salad- Pork tongue is very lean, and can best be described as intensely porky.

Fried Alligator with chili garlic aioli- the best fried reptile i've every had

Boucherie Plate- This included some house cured bacon, ham, salumi, and probably the biggest suprise was the pork rillette. It would be best described as upscale potted meat, but you felt good eating it because rillette sounds so much better than potted meat.

Head cheese- We thought this would come on the boucherie plate we ordered, but our waitress went back to the kitchen and brought us out a plate with just headcheese. Head cheese is an adventure in textures: some soft bits, some chewy bits, but all delicious.

Fried Pigs Ears- I discovered pig ears were quite chewy, even when deep fried. The best way to describe them is that it is similiar in texture to fried clam strips.

Pork cheeks with cornbread bean cake- Pork cheeks are fabulous. Try them.

We had a total of 13 small plates shared among 4 people. I would highly recommend Cochon to anyone visiting New Orleans. Next up Commander's Palace.

The worlds best chocolate chip cookies.

I have it from several sources that this is indeed the worlds best chocolate chip cookie. There are a couple of key points, that I think make a difference.

1)Use chocolate chunks, not chips. Usually I use Nestle semi-sweet brand, nothing fancy.
2)Melted butter not softened butter. I don't know why this really makes a difference but it does.

Now for the recipe...

Preheat oven to 350

DRY INGREDIENTS2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

WET INGREDIENTS3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup unsalted butter -melted and slightly cooled (yes, that's 2 sticks)
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift dry ingredients together.
In another bowl combine sugars and butter thoroughly
Add egg yolks and vanilla and combine.
Add wet ingredients to dry and stir until batter comes together (don't try and stir it smooth).
Stir in 1- 12oz package of chocolate chunks

Drop by rounded spoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 11-12 minutes or until they turn light brown. Do not let them get golden brown, that will overcook them. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack. This makes around 30 cookies.