Put Some Nutella in Your Banana Bread

Plus: A Return to Cookshop, Daily Provisions, and Lots of Links.

Hey everyone,

Remember last Thursday how I was like “I did some grilling and now my throat is hurting?” Well what I thought was particulate matter in my lungs turned out to be something much simpler: A COLD.

At first I thought it was allergies — there’s lots of pollen in the air, these days — but then Friday night I had chills and by Saturday morning I was a sneezy, snotty mess.

So most of this weekend was spent marathoning Season 4 of Downton Abbey (that final shot — sorry, this is a spoiler — of Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes going into the water holding hands had me all verkempt) but I did make banana bread.

That’s the delightful thing about buying bananas: if you forget to eat them, you get perfectly aged bananas for banana bread.

Some people are no-fuss banana bread bakers: they just want bananas, melted butter, eggs, flour, sugar, a little salt, and baking soda. Me? I like a little something extra.

Enter Yossy Arefia’s Nutella Banana Bread. (I wrote about it three years ago during the pandemic.)

It’s such a straightforward, simple recipe. The only tricky step is browning the butter and mine was extra tricky because I bought Cabot butter (on Ina’s recommendation) and boy did that butter spit and sputter as it browned! I had to stand across the kitchen as I watched volcanic eruptions leach half the butter on to my stovetop. (I think there’s a lot of water content in there.)

But the main step is swirling Nutella into the very simple banana bread batter. (You probably could do this with any banana bread recipe.)

Pour in half your batter, measure out 1/3rd a cup of Nutella, plop in half of it, swirl it around, pour in the other half of your batter, do the same with the rest of the Nutella, and bake like normal.

Not only does it come out beautiful, but when you cut into it, you get big gobs of Nutella in each slice.

That was my breakfast this morning and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially now that my cold is mostly over and I can actually taste things.

Before my cold fully kicked in, we went to the TriBeCa Film Festival to see a movie that our friend Katherine produced called Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution (it’ll be on Netflix soon). Joel Kim Booster, Judy Gold, and Margaret Cho performed before the movie started, which was rad.

Our pre-movie dinner was at Cookshop, which is becoming an unpretentious, reliable Manhattan fave. Look at this frozen Paloma, a dreamy summer drink.

And their little gem salad does justice to this trendy lettuce leaf.

Their seafood burger is a fun novelty, though mine was a teensy bit dry. Excellent fries, though!

Finally, I returned to Daily Provisions in Cobble Hill after a bad first experience a few months ago.

What did I think this time around?

I wasn’t thrilled. The dining room itself is lovely, if a bit too warm. But the whole operation is so clinical and soulless — the kitchen looks almost identical to what you’d see in an airport. The contrast between the sunny dining space and the sad, fluorescent kitchen is a bad design choice; it makes you feel like you’re eating in a bank.

My tuna salad sandwich was okay — I liked the olive tapenade.

But I’m definitely not rushing back.

Let’s look at some links!

• Anchovy-Spiked Roast Chicken with Moorish Chickpea Salad (The Guardian);

• 36 Hours in Brooklyn (NYT);

• The Best Restaurant in Town (Taste);

• Momofuku is Opening a New Manhattan Restaurant (Eater NY);

• The World’s 50 Best Restaurant List is Broken (Grub Street);

• Are These Really The World’s 50 Best Restaurants? (NYT) (makes me feel validated in my Noma experience!)

That’s all for today, folks….

See you back here on Thursday.

Your pal,
Adam