Cardamom Cookies

October. Portland's October: rain, color, the maples going crimson, the city wrapped in cloud and candlelight. I love October the way I love miso soup: completely, without qualification, the love arriving every year like a returning friend who does not need to knock because the door is always open.

I made oden — the first of the season, the big pot, the three-day simmer. The apartment became a cave of dashi and warmth and I curled into it the way an animal curls into a burrow: grateful, complete, protected from the weather by the walls and the food and the practice of making food that takes three days to finish, because three-day food is commitment food, and commitment is the thing I am best at, and the commitment to a pot of oden is the same commitment I bring to the blog and the yoga and the parenting and the writing: I will be here. I will show up. I will stir. I will wait.

Halloween approaches and Miya's costume this year is "a Japanese grandmother." She has a cardigan, a floral apron, a pair of reading glasses from the dollar store, and one of Fumiko's recipe cards (a copy, laminated, attached to the apron with a clip). She is seven years old and she is dressing as her dead great-grandmother for Halloween and the gesture is either morbid or the most beautiful tribute a seven-year-old has ever paid to a woman she never met, and I am choosing beautiful, I am always choosing beautiful, because the alternative is grief without beauty and grief without beauty is just pain and pain without beauty is just suffering and suffering without beauty is not the Nakamura way. The Nakamura way is: suffer beautifully. Endure with grace. Dress as your grandmother for Halloween. Carry her recipe card. Walk up to every door and say: trick or treat, I am Obaachan.

The oden takes three days — it doesn’t need me every minute, and that’s the gift of commitment food: it frees you for small acts alongside it. While the dashi deepened on day two, Miya and I made these cardamom cookies, because cardamom is the spice that smells most like October to me, warm and faintly floral, the kind of thing Fumiko would have kept in a small tin near the stove. We rolled them in sugar and watched them through the oven window, and for a little while the apartment smelled of both things at once — ancient broth and new cookies — and that combination felt, without either of us saying so, exactly right.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar, plus 3 tbsp for rolling
1 large egg, room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tbsp plain whole-milk yogurt or sour cream

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cardamom, baking soda, and salt until evenly combined. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat softened butter and 1 cup sugar with a hand mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add egg and vanilla. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until fully incorporated, about 1 minute.
Add yogurt and flour. Mix in the yogurt or sour cream on low speed, then add the flour mixture in two additions, mixing just until a soft, cohesive dough forms. Do not overmix.
Shape and roll. Place the remaining 3 tbsp sugar in a small shallow bowl. Scoop dough by the tablespoon and roll into 1-inch balls, then roll each ball in sugar to coat. Arrange 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets.
Flatten slightly. Use the bottom of a glass or your palm to press each ball gently into a 1/2-inch-thick disc.
Bake. Bake one sheet at a time for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are just set and the tops are barely beginning to color. The centers will look slightly underdone — that’s correct; they firm up as they cool.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cardamom Cookies — Something Sweet to Bake While the Pot Simmers