Cashew Butter Cookies

Late April. The shiso seedlings on the balcony are now six inches tall, their leaves unfurling with the miniature confidence of plants that know they are wanted. I water them and talk to them and the talking is the gardening and the gardening is the parenting and the parenting is the writing and everything I do is a version of the same thing: tend something small. Watch it grow. Feed it what it needs. Trust the process.

I made Fumiko's gomaae — sesame spinach, the five-minute side dish that is perfection in simplicity. Blanch the spinach. Squeeze out the water. Toss with ground sesame and soy sauce. Five minutes. Three ingredients. One perfect dish. The gomaae has not changed in thirty years — Fumiko's version and my version are indistinguishable, which means the recipe has been perfectly transmitted, which means the teaching was successful, which means the dead can still produce perfect food through the hands of the living, which is the closest thing to immortality that cooking can offer.

The book's advance readers are responding — early copies sent to food writers and reviewers. The responses are coming in and they are warm: "deeply personal," "a love letter to a grandmother," "the most beautiful thing I've read about miso soup." The anxiety reads the reviews and says: they are being kind. The practice reads the reviews and says: the kindness is the truth. I believe the practice. I have been believing the practice for eight years. The practice has not lied.

Miya asked me this week, "Mama, when you die, who gets the chipped bowl?" The question was delivered without warning, at the dinner table, between bites of rice, with the casual brutality of a child who has not yet learned that some questions are missiles. I said, "You get the chipped bowl." She said, "Good. I'll make soup in it." She said it like it was obvious. She said it like the bowl was already hers. She said it like the future was a room she had already walked into and arranged the furniture. I changed the subject because the tears were coming and I did not want to cry at the dinner table and I also wanted to cry at the dinner table and the wanting-both-things is the condition of motherhood: wanting to hold on and let go at the same time, always, forever, the way the bowl holds the soup and the soup evaporates and the bowl holds more soup and the cycle continues.

Miya’s question about the chipped bowl stayed with me for the rest of the week — that unselfconscious certainty that she would inherit the bowl and know exactly what to do with it. That’s what transmission looks like: not instruction, but absorption. The gomaae proved it. And so, a few evenings later, I pulled out another recipe that operates on the same principle — few ingredients, no fuss, nothing to overthink — and I let Miya help me make it, because the best way to give her something is to put it in her hands while I’m still here to watch.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 22 minutes | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup cashew butter (creamy, unsweetened)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Mix the dough. In a medium bowl, stir together the cashew butter, sugar, egg, vanilla extract, baking soda, and salt until a smooth, uniform dough forms. It will be slightly sticky.
Portion. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls (about 1 tablespoon each) and place them 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.
Press. Use a fork to press a crosshatch pattern into the top of each cookie, flattening each ball to about 1/2-inch thickness.
Bake. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are just set and the tops look dry. The cookies will be very soft — do not overbake.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They firm up as they cool.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cashew Butter Cookies — The Recipe That Gets Transmitted