Dear Pantry Diaries,
🥖A great jambon beurre, plus four Brooklyn bakery visits.
🗓️ Week of June 15-21:
Dear Pantry Diaries,
This week I made a great jambon beurre with a great baguette, great butter, and great jambon. I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled to Paris twice in the past 12 months and have had a fair share of really really good jambon beurre. I think I found the trio of ingredients here in Brooklyn to make the sandwich that tastes like Paris. Simple foods make me happy! Read on for details!
The heat wave this week also had me making this pink lemonade on repeat!
🏡 Meals In:
Weekend Pancakes with Cherries: Weekly rotation of buttermilk pancakes with cherries we picked at Rose Hill Farm!
Soba Bowl with Spring Veggies: I’ve been loving making soba noodles with the last of spring veggies - this time with asparagus and pea shoots plus fried tofu, quick carrot pickled in rice wine vinegar and seaweed.
Lunch Salad with Goat Cheese, Bar Nuts, Toast: A little work from home lunch of salad greens from our CSA, goat cheese, and leftover bar nuts we got at a movie theatre.
Jambon Beurre: The perfect Brooklyn Jambon Beurre requires a good baguette. As with anything this simple, the components are worthy of a little splurge as they have to be best quality IMHO. The baguette from L’Appartment 4F is the most similar to a French baguette I’ve found in New York City. I love other baguettes too, but theirs is quite airy, yet crunchy in the way the French ones are. I found some nice jambon blanc from Winner Butcher but I think the Jambon de Paris from Three Little Pigs could also be good for a grocery store option. Now the butter: I’ve tried a good amount of butter from Isigny Ste Mere (lucky for me, the Park Slope Food Coop imports this!). This butter is from the Isigny region of France, known for its butter, and like Irish butter, its color is yellow-gold, soft, and has a slight nutty flavor. At Winner, I bought the Beurre de Baratte, which is their churned butter, which has an even more creamy taste, plus visible salt crystals. It was worth the splurge, I’m telling you!
Sauteed Cabbage: This was breakfast actually! I sauteed the last quarter of a napa cabbage we had lying around the fridge in vegetable oil and topped with a hard boiled egg, crunch cucumbers, and seaweed. Great breakfast!
Pink Lemonade: It was soooo hot last week and sometimes water doesn’t cut it. I made a rhubarb lemonade. My recipe is here!
🚇 Meals/Snacks Out:
Mini Bakery Tour: My friend Vicky and I spent two early, yet leisurely mornings last week biking and walking around to visit a few Brooklyn bakeries. Love being a little tourist in your own town!
Brooklyn Heights: Cardamon Bun and Croissant at Ferrane: This new Swedish bakery was very crowded on a Thursday morning, but that means it’s good, right? We got some much needed iced coffees and a very tasty cardamon bun! I want to go back and try some of their other cakes.
Brooklyn Heights: Baguette at L’Appartment 4F: I was truly impressed by the baguette here and while there was a little line, it was worth it!
Gowanus: Pastries at Brooklyn Granary and Mill: My friends opened their bakery! YAY! We went on opening day and tried everything we could get our hands on. Highly recommend the buckwheat rhubarb cake and the butter morning bun. Check out their feature in Eater!
Carroll Gardens: Cake and Cookies from Food Jars at Dae: I really love the beverages at DAE, they have these great tea lattes that are so refreshing. We popped in for Jamie Rothenberg’s pastry pop-up. I tried her delicious cherry sponge cake and espresso chocolate chip cookie which I shared with my sister later that day.
Weekend Bites:
Drinks, Pizza, Wine, Soft Serve Gelato: The corner of Garfield and 7th is my favorite food corner in Park Slope. Noah and I had a perfect Friday evening with my sister and her boyfriend. First we got some aperitivo at Un Posto Italiano: Champagninos (basically a white wine spritz but Italiano) and olives. Next, pizza slices from the newly opened Impasto and a bottle of chilled white wine from Shawn Wines. We found a good people-watching bench in Prospect Park and devoured the pizza and wine. Then, on our walk back home, we went back to Impasto for vanilla and pistachio soft serve gelato!
Al Pastor Burrito and Tacos from Reyes: I am so happy that Reyes (and Un Posto!) was featured in this fun Grubstreet article about eating in grocery stores (my favorite hobby!). Noah and I have been eating at Reyes for nearly 10 years since we moved to Gowanus/Park Slope together. And truly, their food is the BEST! After a full afternoon of volunteering for the Zohran for Mayor (YAY!), we got some takeout from Reyes. I got three al pastor tacos, and Noah got the al pastor burrito. It’s so good.
thank you for reading!
Until next time,
Gabriella 💌
I am bookmarking Reyes rn and will visit this weekend!! Didn’t realize we had this neighborhood gem <3
I LOVE a jambon beurre