A Sad-Dad Soundtrack, a Master Class in Writing, and a Can't-Fail Cookie

Three fun things for the week of December 17, 2023.

1. The Soundtrack to “The Bear”

I’m at least a year late to The Bear, but I blame the people who know me best: If they’d been on their toes, they would have let me know that even though this is a show about a Male Chef (thematically, a bit of a bête noire) that includes a genuinely embarrassing Manic Pixie Dream Girl character, it is very much my specific jam. For one thing, the style—aggro, visually chaotic, with arty discursions that remind me of early music videos—is tremendously satisfying. For another, the soundtrack slaps, if I’m allowed to use that word to describe a track list that includes John Mellencamp, Steve Earle, The Replacements, and so, so, so much Wilco.

Music, of course, punctuates emotional moments in the show, not always successfully; I love Wilco’s “Via Chicago,” but using it to score a scene where Carmy is literally coming home… to his sister’s… via Chicago… is a bit of a hat on a hat (with a feather on top). But when it works—as when one of my top-5 Wilco songs, “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” escalates toward its guitar-driven crescendo in the background while tensions in the show rise and culminate in a mid-season crisis—the music is inseparable from the story. Could I do without a full, seven-and-a-half-minute rendition of Bruce Hornsby’s “The Show Goes On”—used to illustrate, in the first scene of the second season, that the show has, in fact, gone on? Of course. We all could. But I can’t think of another recent TV or movie soundtrack that has made me clap my hands (and sing out loud) as often as this one.

2. Robert Caro’s Cliffhangers

As I mentioned last week, inspired by this podcast, I’m reading The Power Broker for the second time. (Not only is it an enduring book about the history of New York City, it’s also one of the only major books I can think of that delve deeply into the minutiae of municipal government, a subject I obviously care about very deeply.) Enough words have been written about The Power Broker to fill a Power Broker-length book, but I’ll add one observation about Caro’s writing, in general: No one writes a chapter-ending cliffhanger the way Robert Caro does. Here’s an example of what I mean: In the first chapter of the book’s second section, “The Majesty of the Law,” Caro painstakingly lays out the details of a legal battle over Moses’ acquisition of a plot of land using state funds he did not, strictly speaking, have in hand yet. Despite significant support from Governor Al Smith and much of the press, the situation seemed hopeless. Here’s how Caro ends the chapter:

It had been more than a year since Robert Moses had announced his revised and broadened park and parkway plan, a plan which had, after all, included parks and parkways not only on Long Island but throughout the rest of New York State, along the Niagara Frontier, in the Genesee Valley, in the farmland of the Taconic region, and among the peaks of the Alleghenies, Catskills and Adirondacks. Now, more than a year later, parks and parkways were still located nowhere but in the map of Moses’ imagination. After all the talking, all the planning, all the fighting, they simply didn’t exist. And at the end of 1925, there seemed little possibility that they would come into existence at any time in the foreseeable future. If one looked ahead a decade, even a generation, it seemed unlikely that any substantial part of the dream would be reality.

Within three years, almost all of it would be reality.

Endings, as any writer knows, are hard to write; getting readers to stick with you through a long story is even harder. Almost 50 years on, The Power Broker remains a model for how it’s done.

3. A simple, can’t-fail cookie recipe

I’m one of those bakers who’s always trying to conquer new methods, even though—let’s be honest—precision and stove-watching are not my strong suits. This week, for instance, I tried to caramelize white chocolate in the oven on a sheet pan (it immediately seized and got crumbly, which I took as a sign to give up) and made “Mexican hot chocolate” cookies in which only about half of the marshmallows survived instead of melting into the dough. (This despite the fact that I followed the insane instruction to “make sure to freeze the marshmallows fully” before assembling the cookies, as if they wouldn’t immediately unfreeze in the warmth of a regular home kitchen).

Fortunately, for all my experimentation, I also have one cookie recipe that is 100 percent guaranteed to get you compliments and people begging for the recipe: This unassuming tahini cookie from Bon Appetit. It’s incredibly simple, requires no exotic ingredients (aljajores with day-glo food coloring powder, I’m looking at you), and is pretty idiot-proof, as long as you can remember to pay attention when you’re toasting the sesame seeds and remember to set out the butter an hour or so before you start. The taste is like an elevated peanut butter cookie, sweet and just a little savory. It’s become my signature cookie, and it could be yours.