When I was originally doing recipe exploration for this project, one of the recipes that immediately intrigued me was a recipe published on Eater a few years back: Peanut Butter Chili Crisp Cookies developed by Zoë Kanan, a NYC-based pastry chef. Savory was in the headline which made it an obvious recipe for consideration. But what really hooked me was the fact that it combined two of my very favorite things: chili crisp and peanut butter cookies. 

Peanut butter cookies have been a quiet, but consistent preference stemming from a childhood love for Nutter Butter sandwich cookies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It seems that even 10-year old me, a self-proclaimed “sweet-tooth” who attributed my sugar obsession to a literal “sweet tooth” aka my dead front tooth that was the result of climbing/falling out of my sister’s crib at an early age, could appreciate the depth and balance that peanut butter can bring to a dessert. 

Chili crisp, on the other hand, is a more recent obsession. I was late to the chili crisp craze – I first tried it during the throws of the pandemic, starting out with Trader Joe’s Crunchy Chili Onion condiment which they describe as “similar to the jars of chili oil with crunchy garlic you can find on the table of many Chinese restaurants”. I have to admit, I didn’t really get it at first. What did you do with it? Did you add it to salads or sauces? Eat it straight from the jar? It sat untouched and I didn’t buy chili crisp again for quite some time.

I didn’t realize the true magic that is chili crisp until I started frequenting dim sum spots more often (in-person, post-pandemic) and found it on all the tables, ready to mix with black vinegar for your own personalized dumpling dipping sauce. Chili crisp was everything all at once – savory, salty, nutty, oily, spicy. I topped ramen with it. I incorporated it into stir fry. I drizzled it on cucumber salad. I made my own chili crisp from scratch. Chili crisp has become one of the first things I reached for when a meal needs to be punched up. 

Today, if I see a new brand of chili crisp, I can’t help myself. I looked through my pantry and found 4 different jars of chili crisp – all promising their own spin on what I now consider to be an essential condiment. My new desert island food is egg rice: white rice fresh from the rice cooker, drizzled with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a hint of toasted sesame oil. Fry an egg (or two if you are really hungry) and plop it on top. Coat the entire thing in heaping spoonfuls of chili crisp and furikake. If you take nothing else from this, take this: make egg rice for lunch tomorrow. I promise, you won’t regret it. 

So needless to say, when I saw peanut butter and chili crisp in a cookie, I knew it was going to be good. But regardless of my personal preferences, the pairing of toasty, nutty flavors with zesty spice is a common occurrence in many cuisines. Take Dan Dan Noodles: spicy chili oil made with mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorns melds with sweet (sugar), salty (soy sauce), and toasty, nutty (sesame paste) components to coat springy noodles and a flavorful meat (or mushroom) mixture. Or look to Thai food where peanuts play with chilis in everything from the peanut sauce you dip satay into to papaya salad to panang curry. Cashews are a common occurrence in Indian food because they bring a creamy, rich, nuttiness to high spice dishes. 

Nuts and spice make sense together. Nuts, particularly peanuts or sesame, sit heavy on the palate. They are salty, fatty, rich, and indulgent. All good things, but without anything to lighten or brighten, it can be difficult to stomach more than a single bite. Enter: heat. Just the thing to punch up something that would otherwise be cloying on its own, creating a perfectly balanced dish. Don’t be mistaken though: spice benefits from the depth and richness that nuts bring to the table. The fat combats the burn, uncovering subtler, nuanced flavors that would otherwise be overpowered by an abundance of capsaicin. 

The importance of balance when it comes to flavor and texture has been a recurring theme in my exploration. This is not a new discovery. Balance is a fundamental tenet of good food. But in spite of that, every time I find another example of balance in food, I feel like I’m having an epiphany. I think a big part of this is because it feels like a metaphor for so many things in life. 

You hear the word all the time. Balancing priorities, balancing your budget, balanced diet, work-life balance. You see symbols of balance that go back centuries: think Yin and Yang. It’s even baked into our constitution: checks and balances. From day-to-day decisions to philosophy to political theory: balance is something we strive for. 

Why is balance so important? It’s hard to pin down just one reason. In some instances, balance is there to ensure equality, fairness, compromise. It represents stability, a middle path that we walk to avoid extremes. Other times, it is there to enhance. Two things, when combined, create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Balance can create harmony or stave off chaos. It can spur change for the better by inspiring consideration of opposing viewpoints or it can bring things to a standstill to maintain the status quo. Balance is a tool that you can wield to varied effect. 

In the case of peanut butter chili crisp cookies, balance is a creative force. Each bite contains a myriad of flavors, each easily distinguishable: salty, nutty, spicy, funky (if your chili crisp contains onion or garlic, which all the good ones do). They all play well together. It’s the kind of cookie that has you reaching for a second and then a third. It’s a conversation starter. In spite of the flavor combination being quite common, in a cookie, it’s novel. People think they don’t know what to expect, but the second you take a bite, the taste is strangely familiar. 

I don’t know what role balance can play in my life, our society, or the world. It will always be something we aspire to or fight against, because sometimes you need harmony and sometimes you need to push to an extreme in order to move the needle. 

But I do know that balance in food is what makes it taste so good. So we’ll start there.

savory-ness (1-5)	3.5 – spicy, salty, and nutty
weird or works? (complimentary flavors or a little bit weird?)	works!
savory ingredients highlights	peanut butter + chili crisp
best served…	to start a conversation
encore?	part of a balanced diet!