If you want to be a very popular guest—or host, or coworker or friend, make this shortbread. Though it’s as simple to mix together as any cookie, there’s a world of tender, crisp, and crumbly textures inside, and a haunting flavor that doesn’t quite know if it’s sweet or savory.
And, in my experience, it doesn’t matter—you don’t need to justify it as one thing or another. Every time I set it out, I explain nothing—at first. Hungry lurkers inevitably swarm and empty the plate, without stopping to wonder what genre of snack they’re eating.
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The recipe comes from the brilliant mind of Charlotte Druckman, co-founder of our Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks and author of a growing number of books herself, most lately Stir, Sizzle, Bake: Recipes for Your Cast Iron Skillet.
In writing it, she wanted to give cooks new techniques and unexpected recipes they wouldn’t find in other cast iron cookbooks—this enigmatic shortbread is a perfect example, and has become the one she makes most often.
Charlotte was inspired by pastry chef Caitlin Freeman’s shortbread dough-whipping technique (“until the mixture takes on a thick, creamy, almost shiny texture, like mayonnaise”), and Mark Ladner’s fiesty cacio e pepe, and wondered what would happen if she were to graft a pasta recipe onto a shortbread.
She worked in not only the cheeses (cacio) and the black pepper (pepe), but semolina flour—to give the shortbread a hint of warm, wheaty, pasta-like flavor, but also an added softness, and a tight, fine crumb structure.
“It gives you the best crumb,” Charlotte wrote to me. “But then you get this subtle contrast where the cheese’s graininess comes through. So there’s a little grit in it, but it comes from the cheese, the way it would in proper cacio e pepe.” (She also described this texture, delightfully, as “cat’s tongue, slightly scratchy.”)
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She then bakes in one more round of crisp outer texture and toasty flavor by pressing the dough (carefully!) into a hot cast iron skillet, brushing the top with olive oil, and sprinkling over more pepper and cheese—the only clue the swarms will have of the blurred sweet-savory line before they dive in.
How to serve it? As I mentioned above, you need little justification or prior planning. But here are just a few serving ideas from that brain of Charlotte’s:
- With aperitifs, like a proper Bellini or something with Lillet Blanc (or Champagne, rosé, or Riesling)
- With after-dinner drinks, as a cheese course of sorts—with a spiced chutney, onion jam, fruit conserves, or smoky tomato jam
- For breakfast, with a thin sheet of prosciutto and a soft-cooked egg
- With tea and a fruity, sweet jam
Or—nothing. Charlotte says, “I really love it straight, though, most of all.”
Photos by Bobbi Lin
Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what’s so smart about it) at [email protected]
