Three Things

Nutella banana bread, tonight's easy dinner, the year's best food writing

Feb 14, 2023

Greetings eaters and readers and happy Valentine’s Day if that’s your thing. Should you be looking for some last-minute surprises, there’s the MacGyver’d heart-shaped cake trick that never gets old (all you need is a square and a round baking pan); and there’s still time to make some old-school chocolate mousse or to swing by a bookstore and pick up one of these gift-worthy cookbooks. (Bet you could guess which one I’d choose.) However you plan to acknowledge the day or not, do yourself a favor and listen to This American Life’s “Math or Magic,” a hilarious episode on the two opposing how-to-fall-in-love camps, i.e. Do you follow your head or your heart? (The whole thing is good, but Act One in particular, where a woman requests tax returns on first dates, had me on the floor.) Herewith! Your weekly Three Things…

1. Nutella Banana Bread and the Abby Effect

Abby, my 19-year-old for those of you who are new here, was on a short college break last week, and when she’s home, I find we eat approximately 450% better than normal. This is partly because she is very fun to cook for (like her father, she is a world class appreciator of food, oohing and ahhing and closing her eyes and practically applauding while she’s eating something delicious), and also because she’s usually working her way through what I think of as the family’s collective (and constantly updating) Enthusiast Checklist. This is how we found ourselves in search of her new favorite Thai takeout order, pad see ew, near Columbia on the Upper West Side; and at Brooklyn’s L’Appartement 4F hoping to try that croissant people line up around the block for — they were all out, so the world’s best chocolate chip cookie (imo) had to suffice; and seeking out the best version of her boba order (“passion fruit green tea no sugar less ice mango stars and lychee jelly”) whatever neighborhood we were in. In our own kitchen, we made homey chicken pot pie and her favorite burritos, and swirled a bonus layer of Nutella in the middle of our usually boring old banana bread batter, like we saw some genius do on instagram. We ate those slices right out of the oven, fingers all buttery, while watching the Sopranos episode where Bobby Bacala kicks the sh*t out of Tony. It’s an activity I’d recommend highly…rewatching a classic episode while consuming warm baked goods…not the fighting!

Here’s the banana bread, my ole reliable, with the Nutella tweak.

Nutella Banana Bread

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, plus more for greasing
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sour cream
2-3 mashed bananas
1/3 cup (or a few good spoonfuls) Nutella

Preheat oven to 350°F. In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and extract. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to the butter-sugar mixture in heaping spoonfuls, alternating with a tablespoon of sour cream at a time. Once combined, using a rubber spatula, fold in bananas. Scoop half the batter into a lightly greased (with butter) standard loaf pan. Spoon Nutella on top of the batter, distributing it as evenly as possible, then cover the Nutella layer with remaining batter. Bake for 50 minutes until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve warm.

The Nutella went into the don’t-forget-to-take-back-to-school pile.

2. Tonight’s Dinner: Tostadas with a Fried Egg

When we finally drove Abby back to school, we hit our favorite college book store, where I was delighted to see a customer holding a copy of The Weekday Vegetarians and heading towards the register to actually buy it. I am not one to keep cool about these things, so I introduced myself as the author. It turned out, the imminent sale wasn’t as random as I had hoped — she had overheard Abby and me getting all excited about spotting a copy (two actually!) with its own little Staff Pick sign. (But a sale is a sale, right?) After some niceties, the customer got down to business and asked what the best recipe was, and Abby’s brain, of course, quickly hurtled towards the Veggie Burgers of lore*. Mine, though, went right to the tostadas with refried spicy black beans and pickled onions, probably because we had just made them (topped with an egg) and the tastiness ROI on something so simple was top of mind. Might I suggest them for tonight’s dinner?

*I made up that lore part, but they are literally always in my freezer, we love them that much

You rule, Mary M! And your check is in the mail.

3. Best American Food Writing of 2022

I love an anthology, particularly one from the “Best American”series, something I was reminded of recently when I picked up Best American Food Writing 2022, dipping in and out of it all week. No matter what the theme of the collection is (sports, science, travel, etc), so much of the pleasure stems from how wildly different the voices are from story to story — that feeling of you never know what you’re going to get — and the anthologies always help me feel like I’m filling in at least a few of the major voids in my reading life. (Voids that get wider in direct proportion to time wasted on social media.) A few highlights from this collection, edited by Sohla El-Waylly: Jiayang Fan’s essay “Chronicles of a Bubble-Tea Addict,” an essay tracking boba in her life as both a performative cultural prop and a deeply sentimental comfort food connecting her to her mother; Sam Anderson’s “I Recommend Eating Chips” about the Doritos escapism effect during the pandemic, when he feels “locked in a controlled environment, a closed lab of selfhood: the Quarantine Institute of Applied Subjectivity;” Nina Li Coomes on the Covid-precipitated rise of mokushoku, or silent dining, in a well-known Nagoya ramen shop; and my favorite, Bryan Washington’s short story “Other People’s Kitchens,” which first appeared in The Cut, about a private chef who traffics in both catering and keeping lonely, quarantined eaters company. Many of these essays were written in 2021, during the pre-vaccination times of the pandemic, and for the first time, it made me feel like I was reading about Covid as a finite historical event, as opposed to something we are currently living through. That was cool (and maybe wishful thinking). Have you read it? Let me know what you think.