Hazelnuts and chocolate were meant for each other.   The rich, browned butter flavor of the nuts fairly cries out for the embrace of dark, dusky chocolate.  Together, they’re unbeatable.

I find the combination as inspiring as it is addictive.   (No jar of Nutella, or the organic alternative, Nocciolata, is safe around me.)

So it’s no surprise that I would be obsessed by the idea of a hazelnut cookie dipped in bittersweet chocolate for Valentine’s Day.  The cookie of my dreams would have a great sandy texture with just enough crunch to contrast with a smooth, dense coat of very good chocolate.   It should be elegant enough to pair with a flute of champagne but substantial enough to satisfy a serious sweet tooth.

The search led me to the classic Linzer, which usually sandwiches jam between spicy, buttery cookies.  I played with proportions, left out the spices to focus attention on the nuts and baked up a cookie worthy of a Valentine.  Dressed up in a velvet cloak of chocolate, it had my number.

Usually, a cookie with so much butter is as hard to handle as it is good to eat.  Right out of the refrigerator, the dough is difficult to roll. But after a few minutes, it’s too soft to cut into shapes.

Dorrie Greenspan, the baking genius, offers a clever solution in “Baking: From My Home to Yours” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006):  Roll the dough out between sheets of waxed paper before you chill it, then cut out the hearts and transfer them to a baking sheet while the dough is very cold.  It’s just short of a miracle.

To temper the chocolate, I used a microwave shortcut rather than the traditional method I used for chocolate bark (with hazelnuts, of course) in an earlier Valentine’s Day post.  I don’t think I would use it for candy, but it worked very well for cookies dipped not long before eating.

The chocolate was Callebaut, which is selling its couverture pieces at my local market now.  E. Guittard chocolate wafers are another good choice and any high-quality chocolate will suffice if you chop it roughly first.

You could bake the cookies ahead and freeze them if you wish. For the best results, though, dip within a day or so of serving.  The cookies soften if they’re stored too long after dipping.

That shouldn’t be a problem. Cookies this good don’t last long.

No matter how much I plan ahead for the holidays, it seems life starts spinning out of control about this time every year.

Here it is less than two weeks ’til Christmas and I still haven’t made any of the usual decorated cookies.  Maybe sometime next week.  Who knows?

With these buttery shortbread cookies in the house, I’m not too worried.  They’re so good in their natural state, one bite banishes all thought of frosting and sprinkles.

The beauty of these cookies is they’re so simple to make.  No rolling, no cutting into cutesy shapes, no decorating.   Just press the dough evenly into a fluted tart pan and bake.

Over the course of refining this classic recipe and it’s variations, though, I picked up a few tips to make Scottish-style shortbread even better:  Use the best butter, handle the dough as little as possible, and chill well before baking to let the flavors develop.

Butter is the heart and soul of shortbread, so you really don’t want to cut corners here.  I used some pricey vat-cultured butter from Sierra Nevada Cheese Company in one batch and the cookies were wonderful.  However, the Straus organic European-style butter at 85 percent butterfat also was incredibly good and a little less expensive.

Although most recipes call for letting the butter soften to room temperature first, I’ve had better results starting with cold butter, cutting it into small chunks and whirling it in the food processor.  If the butter is too soft and you beat it too long in an electric mixer, myriad tiny bubbles form in the dough, leading to unwanted rising and bubbling in the oven.

For the most tender results, you want the dough to be crumbly and loose before you press it into the pan.  Like pie dough, it shouldn’t be overworked.  It will continue to hydrate in the refrigerator and come together when the butter melts in the oven.

The vanilla bean shortbread should be a pale yellow when it emerges from the oven.  The equally delicious brown sugar variation is a little darker, hinting at its intriguing caramel flavor.

In deference to chocoholics, I’ve also developed a variation with cocoa and cacao nibs. Those chunky little bits of roasted cacao beans bring an extra layer of flavor to these cookies and it continues to develop as they’re stored after baking.  Scharffen Berger makes the nibs, which are readily found at most supermarkets.

After baking, cool the shortbread completely in the pan before cutting into the wedges known at petticoat tails in Scotland.

If you really must decorate, you could drizzle these cookies with melted chocolate.  But I wouldn’t.  They’re perfect just out of the pan.

The first granola bar I ever tasted came from a natural foods bakery in Oakland.  It was a tempting combination of chewy bar cookie and enough crunchy whole grains to make me feel virtuous about the indulgence.

I bought them whenever I could until the store that carried them went out of business.  I pined for something similar but no other commercial granola bar has even come close.  Most are hard bricks that taste little better than sawdust and are suited only for emergency rations in my book.

Recently, though, I’ve been working on my own recipe, prompted by a hike with a friend who was working very hard to make her calories count.  Not for her the chocolate chip cookies I usually bring along on hikes, even though they’re loaded with oats and granola, too.

For Sara, I came up with something new — a whole wheat blondie packed with as much good granola as possible without losing the moist, chewy foundation.

Admittedly, this granola bar still has butter and sugar.  (If you’re going to eat baked goods, I say, you should just go for the good stuff and eat less of it.)  But it also contains an extraordinarily generous portion of only lightly sweetened nuts and whole grains as well as dried fruit.

I’ve tweaked the recipe over the course of several hikes with other friends and like this version best.  Top quality granola is essential.  I’ve used homemade granola sweetened with maple syrup, although any good commercial granola will work, too.

The optional chocolate chips are a nice touch but don’t give in to the impulse to increase the quantity.  Too much chocolate changes the character of the bars altogether.

These bars received the seal of approval from a quartet of teenage boys on a backpacking trip to Point Reyes last month.  They devoured them all.  Of course, they also ate everything else in sight.

More to the point, perhaps, the adults hikers gave them their vote, too.

Meet my new favorite cookie.

I know, I’m a fickle cookie lover, easily distracted by the latest flavor sensation.  I’ve rarely met a homemade cookie I didn’t like.

But this combination of toffee and chocolate chips has my number.  It’s chewy and nutty at the center with crisp edges and the buttery flavor of toffee playing off  bittersweet chocolate chips. One just leads to another and another and…..

It all began with a cookie I spotted at the bakery counter at the local Whole Foods.  I was intrigued by the idea of a toffee cookie and the one I bought was pretty good.  But it was too sweet on balance and far too cakey for my taste.  I knew it could be much better with a few tweaks.

I started with a standard chocolate chip cookie batter and began playing around.  First I needed to find the toffee and, although I’ve read that toffee chips are available in markets, I couldn’t find any where I live.  So I settled on toffee candy bars — Skor brand were the best — and chopped them up myself.

I tweaked the proportions of ingredients, cutting the total amount of sweetener and shifting the balance from granulated to brown sugar for deeper flavor.  I added sea salt and doubled the vanilla.  Then I let the dough rest overnight in the refrigerator to allow it to hydrate.

The biggest change, though, was a switch from all purpose white to whole wheat pastry flour inspired by Alice Medrich’s incredible cookbook, “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies” (Artisan, 2010).  Alice is a wizard and her whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are so good that no one would ever compare them to dowdy health food store cookies.

The key is the pastry flour, which is softer and contains less protein than regular whole wheat flour.  It produces a tender cookie with a nicely nutty flavor set off by a generous portion of toasted walnuts.

I’ve been baking these cookies all winter.  The story I tell is that I need to test the recipe one more time to make sure it’s right.  But I’m not fooling anyone.  I’m hooked.

I hope you love them, too.

I’ve been looking for the ideal lemon bar recipe for ages.  Over the years, I’ve made bars with fabulous citrus zing and bars that held their shape when cut, but only rarely did I get both in the same pan.  More often than not, the very best tasting bars never set properly and I ended up chilling them to the edge of freezing before cutting. Or I’d just slurp up the soupy center squares with a spoon.

Leave it to Martha Stewart to solve the problem.  I found these luscious squares in “Martha Stewart’s Cookies,” Clarkson Potter, 2008, one of the best cookie cookbooks in my experience.

These bars are bright and fresh tasting with just enough mouth-puckering tartness to satisfy a real lemon lover.  Yet they’re also firm enough to slice into perfect squares when cooled.

The secret is a little milk in the topping, which adds body but doesn’t mask the tangy citrus flavor. I’ve also added the grated zest of a lemon to boost the flavor.   More lemon is always better, in my book, as long as there’s enough sugar for balance.

The crust is a bit unusual, too.  You grate frozen butter right into the flour and sugar mixture, pat the dough lightly into a pan, then freeze before baking.  The result is a very tender, light crust with crisp edges.

I like to use Meyer lemons for this recipe when I can mooch them from my friend Sheila or find them at the farmers market.  Their flavor is a little more complex and the floral aroma is especially lovely.  Ordinary Eurekas will do in a pinch, however.

When life hands you lemons, forget the lemonade.  Lemon squares are so much more satisfying.

As far as I’m concerned you can never have too many cookbooks.  My own collection spills out of bookcases in two rooms, upstairs and down.

Shelf space is at a premium, though, so I’m fairly selective about what I add to the collection these days.  A cookbook has to bring something new and unique to the kitchen before I give it a home.  I don’t need another compendium of Italian standards or repackaging of old cookie recipes and I’m hesitant to add a book from a cuisine I rarely cook because the ingredients are such a challenge to find.

Of all the cookbooks I’ve read about, riffled through, and cooked from in 2009, these are my keepers.  They range from the sophistication one expects from Thomas Keller even when he’s writing about family-style cooking, to the down home earthiness of Steve Sando, the heirloom bean guy.  Any one of them would make a great holiday gift for an enthusiastic cook.

There are many more that I would like to have given a test drive, but I no longer see virtually every cookbook that comes on the market as I did back when I was in newspapers.  I was so impressed with all of these that I bought them, with the exception of  “Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.” It’s a whole grain sequel to my favorite bread baking book of all time and I was pleased to receive a review copy.

“Ratio The Simple Codes behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking,” by Michael Ruhlman (Scribner, 2009, $27).

Any really ambitious cook will appreciate this book.  Ruhlman, who has collaborated on Thomas Keller’s cookbooks, shares the basic formulas for everything from bread to creme Anglaise that chefs learn in cooking school.  It’s the perfect springboard to creating your own recipes.

Pie dough, for example, is basically three parts flour, 2 parts fat and 1 part water by weight. You do need a good kitchen scale to use the ratios but Ruhlman offers actual recipes and numerous variations on the basic recipes, too.

With the ratios as my guide, I produced a good sourdough pizza crust, prepared a tempura batter for zucchini blossoms and perfected my basic vinaigrette.  It proved invaluable for researching questions about baking.

Curious cooks will want to keep this slender volume in the kitchen.

“Heirloom Beans,” by Steve Sando (Chronicle Books, 2008, $22.95).

Beans may well be the perfect food for our times.  They’re inexpensive, packed with protein and fiber, and offer a terrific background for all manner of vibrant flavors.  Not to mention the comfort factor of a hot bowl of well-seasoned beans on a cold night.

Steve Sando takes his beans seriously.  He’s made it his business to save the heirloom beans of the New World and offer them to discriminating eaters.   Among the beans he sells   online and at farmers markets in the Bay Area are some 30 varieties with names as intriguing as Eye of the Goat, Wren’s Egg, and Rio Zape. They’re so fresh and flavorful you’ll be forced to reconsider all your assumptions about the humble legume.

Even if you don’t have those exotic beans on hand, Sando’s recipes are terrific with supermarket beans.  I’m a fan of “Drunken Beans,” cooked with bacon, onion, chiles, mushrooms and a bottle of lager.  I made them with store brand pintos and was sad when they were gone.  His basic instructions for bean cooking are foolproof as well.

This is a cookbook for the frugal cook who wants the most flavor for the least expense.

“Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day,“ by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D., and Zoe Francois (Thomas Dunne Books. 2009, $27.99).

I was so smitten by Hertzberg and Francois’ first book, “Artisan Baking in 5 Minutes a Day” that I leaped at the chance to review this book.  Their stir-it-together-and-store-it-in-the-fridge technique revolutionized bread baking in my house.  No longer did I have to worry about keeping my thermostat high enough to raise dough.  And I had pizza or bread dough sitting in the refrigerator, waiting to be baked off.  The crust was crisp, the crumb nicely chewy.

This new cookbook applies the same principles to whole grain baking and the results have been wonderful.  I confess that I still prefer the earlier recipes, for the most part, but the authors have accomplished miracles with whole grains.  And the results are quite tasty.  The master recipe turned out perfectly the first time and I turned the 10-grain bread into rolls for Thanksgiving dinner.

Cooks who are trying to eat more healthfully will want this book.

“Gourmet Today,” edited by Ruth Reichl (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009, $40).

This hefty tome is my sentimental favorite this year.  When word came down that Gourmet Magazine was shutting down after 60 years, I ran out to buy this cookbook because I figured it would be the last word from my favorite food magazine.

The good news is that it turned out to be a wonderful cookbook, encyclopedic in its scope, and filled with recipes that I wanted to make, like the savory and sweet butternut squash risotto.  None are too complicated but neither are they dumbed down. I think of it as “Joy of Cooking” for the 21st century.

Here’s an eclectic collection of dishes spanning the world, from Italian seafood soup to grilled Peruvian chicken.  There are jap chae, noodles in the Korean style, and taramasalata, an addictive Greek dip made with carp roe. Vegetables play a prominent role and many vegetarian entrees are included.

Someone who’s beginning to explore all the international ingredients now found in regular markets would be a good candidate for this cookbook.  I’m giving a copy to one of my favorite young cooks this year.

“Ad Hoc at Home,” by Thomas Keller (Artisan, 2009, $50).

I’ve saved the best for last.  This cookbook from the chef and owner of The French Laundry is not just another of those chef’s showoff productions filled with gorgeous photos of food you would never venture to make on your own.

The photographs are magnificent, it’s true, but many of the recipes are eminently doable.  Although they’re not 30-minute wonders, the results taste so good they’re worth a little effort.  All are inspired by the food at Ad Hoc, the casual place Keller opened in a former diner not far from his Michelin-starred restaurants in Yountville.

A number of recipes may be too ambitious for the average home cook.  But others get their memorable flavors from inspired technique and careful attention to detail. “Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs” cooked with olives and strips of lemon zest get their impressively crisp skin from a pass under the broiler after about 20 minutes of braising in the oven.  Membrillo — a Spanish-style quince paste spiked with star anise — bakes in the oven with minimal attention.

The most delightful surprise is what Keller does with that homespun classic, chocolate chip cookies. His are nothing short of fabulous, with great texture and exceptional chocolate flavor, brought into high relief with a generous measure of kosher salt.  The difference comes in a few unique touches, hand-chopped chocolate, dark brown  sugar, and cold butter in two additions.  He uses not a drop of vanilla.

I’d buy the book again just for the tips sprinkled among its oversized pages.   I like the “lightbulb moments” in which Keller shares tricks such as keeping fried foods warm on racks placed on baking sheets in the oven so the food doesn’t get soggy.  The photographs of Keller shaping hamburger patties, cutting fennel into batons or tying a boneless roast are very helpful.

This extraordinary cookbook would put a smile on the face of any serious home cook .

Bakers, fire up your ovens.  Cookie season is upon us.

In the coming weeks, even people who usually buy their cookies in packages will be pulling mixers out of storage and dusting off baking sheets in preparation for their annual fling with butter, flour and sugar.   For some, it’s enough to recreate the chocolate chip cookies from their childhood, working from the recipe on the back of the Nestle Toll House package.   Others will spend hours decorating fanciful shapes cut out of buttery shortbread or pressing spritz cookies onto baking sheets.

Every year, I try to add a new cookie to my repertoire.  This season, it’s cucidati, elegant filled cookies originally from Sicily that I first tasted at Lupretta’s Delicatessen nearly a decade ago.  At that time the family business was still located on Stevens Creek Boulevard in San Jose.  It moved to the village of Saratoga a few years later but recently closed its doors.

Daryle Lupretta’s mom made her own cucidati for the holidays, meticulously wrapping pastry around a luscious filling of ground figs and nuts before baking them.  They were amazing cookies, unlike anything I had ever tasted before—not too sweet and hauntingly complex.   I was crestfallen to learn they weren’t available year-round.

My search for an authentic cucidati recipe this fall, led me to “Cookies Unlimited,” by Nick Malgieri (Harper Collins, 2000).   Malgieri is a a noted cooking teacher who showed Julia Child how to make a version of these cookies, cut in a distinctive X shape, on her PBS show, “Baking with Julia.”  His detailed instructions make it easy to recreate the cookies of my memory.

In the course of my research, though, I also found several variations, usually called Sicilian fig cookies.  I combined recipes to come up with a cookie that reminds me most of my first taste of cucidati.

Chopped semisweet chocolate, dark rum and espresso powder give these cookies a remarkable depth of flavor, balanced by a bright shot of orange zest.  They pair happily with a glass of wine.

Making cucidati can be a bit of a production.  But the recipe produces about 5 dozen and you can space out the work—making the dough one day, the fig filling the next and then shaping and baking the cookies on a third day.

Or invite some friends to help and make a party of it, which each person taking on a different step in the shaping process.  Once you pop the first batch of cookies into the oven, they fill the house with a tantalizing aroma of orange and spice.

The results are worth the effort.  With their graceful crescent shapes and festive sprinkling of colorful nonpareils,  cucidati will make a dramatic statement on any holiday dessert platter.

We eat green salads year-round at my house, but they become even more popular at this time of year, when the produce is gorgeous and temperatures jump into the high 80s.    Many a warm evening I abandon the stove altogether and throw together a huge salad for dinner.

Usually a simple vinaigrette is my first-choice dressing for a pile of impeccably fresh greens,  heirloom tomatoes and whatever else catches my eye at the farmers market.  Lately, though, I’ve been playing with more elaborate dressings to turn even the most basic salad into a memorable meal.   This updated Green Goddess dressing has become a favorite.

Based on a classic created at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in the 1920s, it carries all the lovely flavors of fresh herbs without all the fat of the mayonnaise-based original.   I’ve switched the herbs around to fit what looks best at the market, added good olive oil, and substituted whole milk yogurt for the mayo.  Arugula contributes a peppery undertone and anchovies bring a depth of flavor without any overtly fishy taste.

This is a creamy dressing with a beautiful green color and bright flavors to match.  It works just as well as a dip for a platter of crudites as it does as an elegant accent for a tossed salad.  You can vary the herbs to suit your taste. Just be sure to use plenty of parsley for the color.

Summer’s magnificent produce deserves a divine dressing.

I’m heading north — to Alaska, no less. It’s the ultimate road trip, more than 3,000 miles of asphalt one-way through some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world. We’ve been fantasizing about it for years and making preparations since January.

Before we left,  I baked a batch of these extra nutty peanut butter cookies for the drive.  You never know when you’re going to find yourself starving, miles from the nearest grocery store or restaurant. And I like to rationalize that there’s at least some protein in these big, crunchy cookies to tide us through a long day on the road.

We’ll be camping most of the way in our pint-sized, pop-top camper.  It’s about as basic as you can get without pitching a tent.  There’s  a queen size bed, a stove, a sink and an ice box.

So we’re not going to be doing a lot of elaborate cooking.  That doesn’t mean we don’t plan to eat well:  We intend to get our fill of Alaska’s famous wild salmon and halibut.

I’ll be cooking most of the time since we’re on a budget and Alaska isn’t really known for it’s restaurants.   I’m even bringing along a jar of sourdough starter in tribute to the miners who rushed north in search of gold more than a century ago.

By necessity, the recipes will be simple but I’ve come up with tasty camping dishes that also would work well as summer meals in a hurry. I’ll share them here as well as photos and reports on what we find  on our way.  I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

This cookie recipe marks a breakthrough for me.  I’ve finally figured out how to bake with the natural peanut butter I like best rather than the excessively processed, big name brands that most cookbooks insist are required for successful cookies.

I started with a basic recipe and played around with techniques and proportions of ingredients.  Then I introduced chopped, salted peanuts just before baking to get more intense peanut taste and a better balance between sugar and salt.

The cookies are sturdy, substantial and satisfying — just the thing for a long road trip.  The only problem is they’re so good, they never last long.  Next trip, I would bake at least a double batch.

Time is getting short. Passover begins at sunset Wednesday night. If you still don’t have any idea what to take to the seder, do I have a treat for you.

I’m no expert in matters of Jewish cuisine, it’s true. I’m not even Jewish. But many of my friends are and somehow I was always the one tapped to write a Passover story in recent years at the Mercury News. I also was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a Passover seder, the ceremonial feast celebrating the delivery of the Israelites from Egypt.

This much I do know: For most families, the seder menu is a cherished tradition. Whether it’s brisket or lamb stew, the heart of the menu changes little from year to year. The one place where there’s really any room for innovation is dessert. Still, the strictures against flour or leavening make it a challenge.

Amaretti con pignoli, the Italian classic cookies, are the perfect answer for a dessert that will delight diners and satisfy Passover restrictions at the same time. They’re easy but elegant, with a chewy texture and the buttery richness of pine nuts. Essentially, they’re macaroons made with almond paste, sugar and egg whites, a staple on Passover dessert tables. What sets them apart, though, is the luxurious coat of pine nuts that brings new layers of flavor to the simple cookie.

I first made these cookies during the winter holidays and fell in love. It shouldn’t have been surprising — what’s not to like about macaroons or toasted pine nuts? Still, my first version, made with pine nuts in the dough as well as the coating, was a bit too rich, believe it or not. This stripped down recipe from Lidia Bastianich was just right, however. It comes from “Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen” (Knopf, 2001).

I would have shared the recipe earlier except I was in danger of hitting sugar overload on the blog in December. So I’ve been holding it in reserve till now.

It’s easiest to make these cookies with canned almond paste, but I’m also giving the directions for preparing them with blanched slivered almonds, which makes for a marginally grainier and less sweet cookie. The cans can prove difficult to locate and when I finally tracked down Solo canned almond paste at Cosentino’s, an upscale, independent grocer in San Jose — it was only labeled kosher, not “kosher for Passover.” Products certified as “kosher for Passover” go through an extremely strict inspection from start to finish to certify they don’t contain any chametz — forbidden breads, grains or leavened products.

Solo is available online, too. But all I could find at other local stores were plastic tubes of Odense almond paste, which is not kosher and has a drier texture. It works fine, though I think the canned paste is better.

I’ve also increased the volume of pine nuts. You can use less — the original recipe calls for 1½ cups — but then you have to be very careful or you’ll run out of nuts before you’ve used up all the dough. To keep costs down, I buy my pine nuts at Trader Joe’s or Costco.

Just whirl the almonds with sugar and egg whites in a food processor, form the dough into little balls, coat in pine nuts and bake. The cookies can be made ahead and stored in an airtight container for up to a week.

You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy pignoli cookies. They come from Italy, after all, where millions of Catholics know a good thing, too.