White-Chocolate Walnut Muffins

Let’s just say I was a voracious (if the word “voracious” were about 20 times stronger than it implies) reader as a child, known to be reading several books at the same time at any given moment, and somewhat famous for having “finished” the entire children’s section of the local public library before necessarily moving onto biographies. As an adult, it’s harder to make time for reading, but following my recovery earlier this summer I re-discovered my love of books. Since then, I’ve had a stack of about 10 next to my bed on the radiator that serves as my de facto nightstand.

The point that this long-winded preface wishes to make is that on my trip to Asia (which included several long-haul flights, a 10-hour train ride through the hills of Sri Lanka and numerous days reclining by a turquoise pool with monkeys above me in the trees) I devoured four books, three of which were about food: Anthony Bourdain’s “Medium Raw” (amusing, but I think I’m a little Bourdain-ed out at the moment), Alice Waters’ much-anticipated memoir “Coming to My Senses” (viscerally hated it despite widespread acclaim- send me a note if you wish to argue about this) and Laurie Colwin’s book of essays “Home Cooking,” recommended to me by a friend with great taste, and a read I absolutely tore through. If you have not read it, you must.

Some of the recipes in Colwin’s book, I’ll admit, are a little odd (steamed vegetables with green sauce?) and it’s sometimes obvious that she wrote it in the 80s, when low-fat was all the rage. But her writing is both so relatable – the voice of a regular person who enjoys cooking – and so incredibly funny – I found myself in stitches many times – that I was thoroughly charmed. She dedicates an entire essay to “disgusting meals” she has eaten at other people’s homes, which I think might have been my favorite.

People often ask me if I ever make anything disgusting, a question that always makes me laugh, because of course I do, lots of them! I keep a spreadsheet of recipes I’ve tried with notes, and sometimes like to look back at some of the worst duds for a good chuckle. Take, for example, the brown-butter polenta cake with maple caramel I tried my hand at in 2014, which I simply referred to as the “worst cake ever.” Or the Thai stir-fried beef with spices, scathingly described as “too salty, beef was tough and overall just kind of weird.” Or, worse, the Vietnamese hue pancake with one damning word next to it: “disaster.”

Which brings me to this, one of my favorite parts of Colwin’s book, and one that just about sums up my own kitchen philosophy: “Always try everything even if it turns out to be a dud. We learn by doing. If you never stuff a chicken with pâté, you will never know that it is an unwise thing to do, and if you never buy zucchini flowers you will never know that you are missing one of the glories of life.”

And with that, my friends, I leave you this simple recipe for white chocolate-walnut muffins, one that’s failproof, satisfying, and most definitely not a dud.