Here are my food highlights from the month of July!
I have been seeing Librae Bakery literally all over social media and food blogs and I could not wait to try it! It’s a cute little coffee shop and bakery near Cooper Square serving delicious Bahrani pastries and sourdough. I ordered the Lumee Babka which was topped with black lime and filled with lemon curd. It was amazing! I also ordered a loaf of sourdough and it was so delicious! My favorite loaf of bread in the city is hands down the french sourdough from Bread’s Bakery but this loaf from Librae was definitely a close second. I was also eyeing the chocolate espresso croissant and the apricot zaatar sourdough. Needless to say I will be going back!
On my way to Long Island, I always stop to stock up on bread from Breads Bakery. When I say my family is seriously dedicated to Breads I am not kidding. I buy three loaves of the small french sourdough to stock my mom’s freezer. By the way, always freeze your bread when it is fresh and take out a few pieces at a time. This way you always have fresh bread! This particular Breads run I decided to try out their chocolate almond croissant. Very tasty! But honestly, you can never go wrong with anything from Breads.
While home on Long Island I did a little leftover repurposing. First of all, my parents had a beautiful selection of farmer’s market strawberries that had begun to go slightly mushy. Although they were too ripe to eat raw, I could not bear to let them be thrown out. I decided to make a quick strawberry jam. I just combined the strawberries, a little sugar, and a whole lemon’s worth of juice in a saucepan. I let that come to a boil and then simmered until thickened. I did not have any pectin on hand so the jam was not quite as thick as a traditional jam, but once you refrigerate it, you can not tell a huge difference.
Then I tackled the two rapidly ripening bananas on the counter. Of course, I had to make banana bread. My favorite banana bread recipe is this one from Serious Eats: However, I sadly only had two bananas and no Greek yogurt so this one was off the table. I instead followed this Serious Eats recipe. I replaced the vegetable oil with coconut oil and added chocolate chips to the batter (measure with your heart). I also like to top my banana bread with crumbled walnuts and some oats both because it’s pretty and because when you mix walnuts into the batter they tend to settle to the bottom so this way you have a more even distribution.
We also had a massive container of Thai chilis still left in the fridge from when I made a Thai salmon curry. For some reason, the market only sold Thai chilis in packs of like a million but with how spicy they are you really only use a few at a time. After using them in three recipes I had barely left a dent in the monstrous container. So I decided to pickle the remaining peppers to preserve them and to cut down the heat a little so they could be used in more dishes. I just made a simple brine of water, salt, sugar, white vinegar, rice wine vinegar, peppercorns, and some garlic cloves. My first usage of the pickled chilis was in some avocado toast. I chopped up 2 chilis and added a little brine to the avocado mash. Highly recommend picking any leftover chilis or peppers!
I just recently discovered Tortilla Española and now it’s one of my new favorite things! It’s ridiculously simple once you get past the feat of flipping the thing. I loosely followed the Serious Eats recipe and added some leftover veggies from the fridge. I added a leek into the onion and potato mixture and stirred some leftover spinach into the bowl with the cooked potatoes, onions, and egg. I just let the residual heat wilt the spinach before returning the mixture to the pan to cook. I also added a generous amount of zaatar to the mixture. I served the tortilla with the aioli that the recipe recommends. Definitely a winning combination! Since you will have a generous amount of olive oil left over from frying your potatoes and onions, I recommend using that oil for the aioli once it cools down a bit. Kenji Lopez also has a great video on his YouTube channel of him making Tortilla Española which makes it easier to visualize the technique of flipping and shaping the tortilla. Once you get the hang of the technique, the vegetable combinations you can use are endless!
I also whipped up a batch of Stella Park’s oatmeal cookies from the Bravetart cookbook. I am not sure if you can find the recipe online but honestly if you bake even a little bit I could not recommend the cookbook more! I replaced the pecans with walnuts and the dried fruit with my favorite Guittard chocolate chips.
Finally, I made some mango sticky rice! We had two beautifully ripe Ataulfo mangos that were calling my name. This was my second time making sticky rice and the first time I was forced to use sushi rice in a pinch because I could not make it to the Asian market for sweet rice. The sushi rice was definitely still delicious and an acceptable substitution if you’re in a pinch. But this time I got my hands on some proper sweet rice and used that. I was also inspired by the mangos with tajin that are sold by street vendors in NYC and decided to incorporate that flavor into my mango sticky rice. I followed the Serious Eats recipe. In the last step where you thicken the remaining coconut milk with cornstarch, I added some tajin to taste. This way, the tajin flavor can be an optional accompaniment. I really enjoyed the fusion of flavors and found it to be a great way to cut through some of the sweetness of the rest of the dish. I highly recommend trying this out!