The tahini chocolate chip cookie and the Napkin of Shame

Provenance isn't always as simple as it seems. And yes, this comes with a recipe.

Happy Friday, righteous cook!

Is it possible that my mom was the funniest person on the planet and tahini-chocolate-chip is the best cookie ever dreamt up?

Here’s what I know – first, about the cookies.

For some time, I’d been desirous of a tahini chocolate chip cookie. I’d only tasted one, or actually half of one, months before, at Shaya in New Orleans. Thierry claimed the other half. It was wonderful. Now I’d been walking around for weeks with the idea, rattling around in my brain, that I needed another.

And then my copy of Kismet arrived in the mail. Published last May, it’s the cookbook from Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson, the chef-owners of Kismet and Kismet Rotisserie, sister restaurants in L.A., where the fare is Mediterranean-ish.

In the last chapter: a recipe for Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I bought chocolate bars to chop up for the chips, and then fretted a few days: The recipe requires a stand mixer, which I object to philosophically. So I started cooking my way through th…