Peanut Butter Coconut Cookies

Mid-April. The cookbook has been printed at the printer in Pennsylvania. The first carton of advance copies arrives Friday. Lily called from the restaurant: "Dad, the books are here. You have to come over." I drove. Lily had set up a small stack of the books on the bar. Hardcover. Heavier than I expected. The brisket cover. The pages thick. The photographs sharp. The headnotes my voice (mostly), James's voice (in the techniques), Lily's voice (in the business sections). I held the book. I weighed it in my hand. I looked at the back cover — Mai and me at her kitchen table over the pho pot. I looked at the spine: SMOKE AND NUOC MAM. I cried at the bar of my daughter's restaurant in front of a bartender I had not yet met. The bartender, a young woman named Jen, said, "Sir, are you okay?" Lily said, "He's fine. He's the cookbook." Jen said, "Oh." She brought me a glass of water. I drank it. I sat for a long minute. Lily took a copy of the book to Mai's house Saturday. Mai opened it. Mai said nothing for ten minutes. Then she said, in Vietnamese, "Bao. The book is the family." She put the book on her kitchen table next to her teacup. The book is on Mai's kitchen table. The book has arrived in the kitchen where it began.

The official release date is still April 4, 2028 — almost a year out — but advance copies are now in the world for marketing purposes. The publisher has scheduled features in food magazines, a New York Times piece, podcast appearances. The book will exist publicly in twelve months. The book exists privately now. We have advance copies in our hands. We pass them around the family carefully like sacred objects. They are sacred objects.

Sat on the back porch Sunday with the book in my lap and Smokey at my feet. The smoker just lit. Coffee in the other hand. The book is real and it is heavy and my mother's pho recipe is in it and my father is in the dedication and my children are in the photographs and my smoker is on the chapter cover. The whole life is in the book. The book is in the world. I sat for a long time and just held it. I did not need to read it. I knew what was inside.

The small Vietnamese-American community in Houston is the small social-spine. The small Bellaire-area is the small Little Saigon district. The small Hong Kong City Mall is the small Saturday-grocery-trip destination. The small Vietnamese church (Our Lady of Lavang) is the small Sunday-worship. The small community is the small refugee-and-immigrant-descended network that has been Bobby’s small lifelong-place.

Bobby’s parents came over from Vietnam in 1981 as the small boat-people-refugees. The small mother (Bich) lives in the small adjacent neighborhood. The small father (Hung) passed in 2020 from COVID. The small mother-visits are the small Sunday-afternoon-rhythm. The small pho-and-com-and-banh-mi heritage continues through the small mother-cooking-with-Bobby Sunday afternoons.

The small Houston Restaurant Supply sales-job continues to be the small post-shrimp-boat career. The small fifteen-years-on-the-Galveston-Bay shrimp-boat had ended in 2018 when the small back went out and the small bending-and-hauling work became the small impossibility. The small restaurant-supply role is the small forty-hour-week-with-benefits the small post-shrimping life rests on.

That Sunday morning on the back porch — smoker lit, Smokey at my feet, the book heavy in my lap and the coffee warm in my hand — I didn’t want to cook anything complicated. I wanted something that belonged to that quiet, and these Peanut Butter Coconut Cookies were exactly right: simple, a little sweet, a little unexpected with the coconut threading through them the way certain flavors from my mother’s kitchen have always threaded through everything I make. You hold a thing you worked on for years, and you want the food around you to match the feeling — grounded, unhurried, and just a little bit of home.

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

Ingredients

1 cup creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (for topping, optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Mix the dough. In a large bowl, stir together the peanut butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until fully combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until smooth. Stir in the baking soda and salt.
Fold in the coconut. Add the sweetened shredded coconut and fold it into the dough until evenly distributed throughout.
Portion the cookies. Scoop the dough by rounded tablespoons (about 1 1/2 inches) and roll into balls. Place 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Flatten each ball slightly with the tines of a fork in a crosshatch pattern. Sprinkle with unsweetened coconut if using.
Bake. Bake for 10—12 minutes, until the edges are set and the tops are just barely golden. The centers will look slightly underdone — that’s right. They firm up as they cool.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Serve with coffee.

Nutrition (per serving)

Peanut Butter Coconut Cookies — Something Sweet for the Morning the Book Became Real