Momofuku Milk Bar

by Christina Tosi

  Copyright © 2011 by MomoMilk, LLC

  Photographs by Gabriele Stabile copyright © 2011 by Gabriele Stabile

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  www.clarksonpotter.com

  CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tosi, Christina.

  Momofuku Milk Bar/Christina Tosi. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Desserts. 2. Momofuku Milk Bar. 3. Cookbooks. I. Title.

  TX773.T6684 2011

  641.86—dc22 2011007720

  eISBN: 978-0-307-95330-8

  v3.1

  To Peter, Hannah, Oscar,

  and Hazel for putting this book

  in motion, for baking and eating

  and BabyBjörning and

  double dutching and doggy sitting

  contents

  foreword

  introductions

  real talk

  ingredients

  equipment

  techniques

  cereal milk™

  the crunch

  the crumb

  graham crust

  fudge sauce

  liquid cheesecake

  nut brittle

  nut crunch

  the ganache

  mother dough

  bonus track: crack pie™

  acknowledgments

  index

  foreword

  When Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in 2004, we had no intention of ever serving desserts. We thought measuring out ingredients and baking was for wusses. Sometimes for regular customers we’d send out Hershey’s Kisses or ice cream sandwiches that I would buy at the bodega across the street. We fooled around with an ill-advised and short-lived cupcake program for a second. Hiring a pastry chef was the furthest thing from my mind back in the day. I’d rather have hired an extra sous-chef than spend money on someone who spins sugar and bakes cookies. That’s what I thought.

  Then I met Christina Tosi.

  The Department of Health had showed up at the restaurant and dumped bleach all over hundreds of dollars of pork belly we had stored in vacuum-sealed bags. The DOH required anyone cooking with a vacuum sealing system to have a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan, a crazy complex record-keeping system more common at food factories than ramen bars. Wylie Dufresne felt my pain and sent over Christina from wd~50, where she’d just implemented such a plan for him. She quickly and single-handedly saved us from DOH hell.

  She was running these kinds of plans for several top New York City restaurants at the time, which would have been a full-time job in itself for most people. But I realized Tosi was not like most people and that we had a lot in common; she burns the candle at both ends and takes a flamethrower to the middle.

  So I hired Tosi to help us organize our “office”—a desk in a hallway. Instead, she started organizing the company.

  At the same time, she was working as a cashier at Ssäm Bar during the burrito phase, training for marathons at night, and somehow finding time to bake at home. Every day she came in to work she brought in something homemade—and amazing. Nothing tasted like it was made in a tiny Brooklyn apartment kitchen with no special ingredients and very little time. I practically lived on that stuff while we were trying to help Ssäm Bar transition from a failing Mexican-Korean burrito joint into something that would be around for more than a year.

  Her cookies and pies, like many things that made their way onto the menus—the bo ssäms, the fried chicken dinner—started out just for the staff. I would constantly say she should sell them; I was a broken record. I don’t know what or when or how, but I must’ve worn her out. It seems like one day Tosi was writing up an HACCP plan and then she was making me promise never to buy desserts again for the restaurants. She had finally taken my hints about tackling a more culinary role at Momofuku. Even though it was five years ago, it seems like five minutes ago.

  She knew how things worked by then and wasn’t disappointed to bake in the basement … from the sugar, flour, and butter we already had on hand … after doing her “etc.” job by day and running around the city doing HACCP plans for other restaurants …

  Tosi has many talents: she is a dog whisperer; she can consume more sugar than seemingly humanly possible without keeling over; she is the most stubborn person I know. But it’s her insane work ethic and brilliant mind that make her so special in my book.

  I’ve always found that when you get talented people, you coach them up to a certain point and then let them loose. Tosi reset the bar in terms of that theory. Milk Bar wouldn’t be—let alone be what it is—without her. This is the story of how it came to be and where it is now as she guides it into unknown territories.

  One final word of advice before you dive in: Don’t let her nice demeanor and southern charm fool you; underneath she is a ruthless killer … just like her recipes in this book, where deceptively simple flavors and ingredients combine in ways that make grown men whimper. Resistance to her sugar manifesto is futile.

  David Chang

  introductions are awkward, especially in kitchens. Everyone’s sizing each other up and no one wants to take the time to learn your name until you’ve been to the battle of dinner service enough nights in a row to show that you aren’t going anywhere. The best way to get through it is to just throw your hand out there and share.

  My name is Christina Tosi. I am twenty-nine. We opened Momofuku Milk Bar six days after my twenty-seventh birthday. I never thought I’d be where I am today.

  I was born in Ohio and raised in Virginia. Both of my grandmothers are avid bakers, nurturing souls, and ferocious card sharks. The matriarchs of my family bake for every occasion, large or small—birthday, bake sale, and, more often than not, just because.

  We are a kinship of sweet teeth on both sides of the family, some more refined and some more restrained than others. My mother cannot give up ice cream for the life of her, because she just can’t bear the thought of having to go to bed on an “empty” stomach. My father was known to substitute a chocolate ice cream cone for any meal of the day.

  I’m worse than either of them, to be honest. I’ve had a crippling cookie dough problem ever since I can remember.

  My older sister and I were always allowed to help out in the kitchen. Like most kids, we would lick the beater from a batch of cookies. But for me, it was never enough. I would shape one cookie and then eat a handful of dough, or just eat the dough shamelessly until my grandmother caught on and chided me in her strident country-Ohio accent. I was always in big trouble, because I was going to do some combination of (a) spoiling my appetite, (b) making myself sick, and/or (c) getting salmonella poisoning. (She only invoked salmonella when I had managed to eat nearly an entire batch of cookie dough, which happened more often than I think she noticed.)

  The old gals cut me off, and besides, it was high time I learned how to properly fend for myself. That’s when I really started baking. I followed their same baking patterns. Baking was something that could, should, and did happen every day in my kitchen, too. Nothing went to waste and every baked good had character. Leftovers got incorporated into the following day’s creation and each day became a challenge to put a new spin on an old favorite.

  In high school and college, I fell madly in love with math and foreign languages. Baking was a hobby, not a profession. I worked at a restaurant while attending college in Virginia, waiting tables until they let me work as a morning prep cook. I baked at my apartmen
t in my off-hours every day, and I got my coworkers and schoolmates hopped up on my homemade desserts. I was the girl who always brought cookies or a pie or a cake. Always. Especially if it was somebody’s birthday.

  For two consecutive summers, a dear friend managed to convince the powers that be at a conference center on Star Island, New Hampshire, to hire me to help run their bakery. Breads and sweets for seven hundred people, three meals a day. Early mornings, late nights. I didn’t talk to normal people about normal things; I baked and baked and baked, and I called my mom (and sister) every once in a while. I couldn’t get enough of it.

  One day on the way back from Star Island to Lacy Springs, Virginia, where I lived after college with friends who became family, I decided I’d move myself to New York City and go to cooking school. I looked on the internet and found the French Culinary Institute. Sounded good. Their rigorous pastry arts program was six months long—perfect for an antsy, overachieving student like myself.

  I was going to school to study pastry in New York City, I told my family and friends as I began to plan my move north. They weren’t exactly dumbfounded—everybody knew how much I liked to bake—but I had only been to the city once before, a day trip when I was a teenager. And I’d never really talked about trade school; I had a good ol’ college degree. But once I get an idea in my head, I’m hard to dissuade. I’m hardheaded to a fault.

  While attending classes at the FCI by day, I worked as a hostess at Aquagrill by night to pay the rent and get a feel for a city restaurant. (Actually, I answered phones at the beginning, because they thought I was a joke; then they let me hostess once they saw I wouldn’t let people walk all over me; and then I graduated to whatever the lady version of maître d’ is—I actually wore a suit to work!) Soon after, I secured an externship that turned into a job at Bouley, under pastry chef Alex Grunert. The pastry cook who trained me at Bouley told me it would be the hardest job I’d ever have. And it kind of was, though after every hard day, I was ready to push it even further the next.

  I tried dabbling in everything with any minute of free time. The city was all mine. I interned at Saveur magazine, because I thought I might want to be a food writer. I styled food and catered and consulted. I worked as a food runner at per se. But with each side job, I missed being in the kitchen.

  I found myself walking into wd~50 one day and offering to work for free. (As long as I could make the rent with a paying gig, I would work for free anywhere in my free time.) Eventually they offered me a job.

  I respected the chef, Wylie Dufresne, enormously. His approach to food was thoughtful, reasonable, logical, scientific. Every flavor pairing and composed dish had a purpose, an influence, and a level of independent thought that was revolutionary to my view of food. I grew the most as a cook while working there. Wylie, sous-chef Mikey Sheerin, and Sam Mason, the pastry chef to whom I reported, challenged me daily. Everything I cooked for family meal and everything I did to prep our pastry kitchen for service, setup, and breakdown was inspected, double-checked. If they had questions, I had to have answers, and “No, chef,” or “I don’t know, chef,” were not words I ever liked to say.

  I left the city after wd~50. I just had to get out. I had been pushing since I’d arrived four years earlier. I went back to Virginia first, spent time with the wonderful old gals in my life—Mom, Ang, my aunt Fran, my grandmas. I baked and I slept. I went to Thailand. Then I was ready to go back.

  One day, Wylie’s good friend David Chang, chef/owner of Momofuku, called about some issues he was having with the New York City Department of Health. One of the skills I’d acquired on the side was how to write a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan—a food-service safety plan that typically fills up a two-inch-thick binder—so that Wylie could cook sous vide without the city breathing down his neck.

  I was just putzing around at that point, toying with the idea that writing HACCP plans would be the next phase of my “career.” I knew I wanted to be in charge of my own kitchen, but I didn’t think anyone would really hire me to be the head gal. I’m not really sure I believed I had enough vision/creativity/experience to be in charge of a pastry department, either. I was still a little too young and impressionable—and euphoric.

  Dave quickly made an offer for me to be the “etc.” of the small but growing team at Momofuku. I love me a good challenge, getting in on the ground floor and growing alongside everything and everyone else, moving and shaking, fighting an uphill battle—I love to organize, develop, figure it all out as a part of a team of believers. Momofuku Noodle Bar was a success at that point; Ssäm Bar was a burrito bar, not the restaurant it is today.

  There was never a mention of kitchen work. It was more office stuff, or tit shit, as Dave and I called it. (I even worked the cash register!) Looking back, I think he secretly had a plan all along—he just knew I needed some time to grow into it.

  I went to work, gave it my all, and came home to my oven and jars of sugar. I baked every night, and the next day I brought baked goods to the “office”—a glorified closet where Dave and I and two other people worked full time.

  Dave would shovel the sweets into his mouth and joke about how I should start making desserts for the restaurants. We would laugh at how it would even happen. Who would plate desserts if we made them? And, more important, with a restaurant menu that was such a crazy hodgepodge of culinary approaches, what would we even serve? The idea of dessert seemed so far-fetched.

  One day I brought in a toasted-miso crack pie, and Dave started in again. He started laughing and told me to go make a dessert for service that night. I laughed too, said, “OK,” and went back to whatever office work I was doing. But then Dave looked at me and said, “Seriously, go make a dessert for service tonight.”

  I looked at him, slowly realizing he wasn’t joking, and started hedging, “Well … But … I don’t even know what I’d make.…”

  He stared back, now stern and slightly cold. “Make this, or make those cookies. I don’t care what the fuck you make. Just make something. And make sure it’s fucking delicious.”

  I gave a quick head nod and let myself out of the office. I had no idea what I was going to do, but knew what I needed to do. And that’s how our strawberry shortcake—simple, fast, and seasonal, the best thing I could come up with on short notice—was born. I think people who ate at Ssäm that night, people who were used to there being nothing for dessert but frozen mochi right out of the box, were excited that there was a new option. We sold some shortcakes. So the next day I made them again.

  That’s how it started. There were a lot of horrible mistakes that never made it to the menu. Some days I made five things that sucked. Then one day something would taste really good. And climbing up the hill became less painful than the downward spiral of failure.

  I knew I wanted to draw on my influences, from both professional kitchens and home cooking adventures, and find a balance between the two. Mostly it was a challenge. To figure out what my voice was—how, stylistically, my food would translate. Luckily enough, Momofuku was the perfect home for desserts with no name, slightly confusing to some, but always thoughtful and delicious.

  As a small restaurant group, with tight spaces and limited resources, we quickly learned that boundaries and limitations breed creativity. This always rang true for me, the one-person pastry department with no real prep table to call home.

  There was no ice cream machine and no service freezer, just the walk-in freezer downstairs, a healthy jog from the upstairs service kitchen. There was no real heat source for baking anything to order—à la minute—or warming things for service. I prepped Ssäm Bar’s desserts, and the garde-manger cook (the person doing oysters and appetizers) would plate and serve them. Garde-manger had eight to ten other menu items coming off their station on a given night; dessert was not a priority. I had to come up with recipes that were bulletproof. And the desserts had to appear thoughtfully composed, even without any of the elements that you typically get with desse
rt served at a fancy Manhattan restaurant.

  So I came up with ways to make desserts seem larger than the sum of their parts: shortcakes and pies somehow became elevated into something more. Everyone in the kitchen would get their spoons in something before it made it onto the menu. And I would make sure that the recipe was just right before we served it. Once Ssäm had two steady desserts, I moved on to Noodle Bar.

  Noodle Bar had already grown up and moved up the block from its original tiny space—which would later become Ko—into a spacious (by Momofuku standards) new location. I pushed as hard as possible for a soft-serve machine. I had been hell-bent on having dessert at the original tiny Noodle Bar, but it was a turn-and-burn operation. Diners would sometimes be in and out in an hour. So the idea of instituting a dessert program that would keep them in our tiny place for any longer than usual was not a popular one. But soft-serve was the easiest way for me to make dessert in bulk form, serve it quickly and affordably at the larger Noodle Bar location, and maintain a thoughtful perspective on food with interesting flavors—steeping milk was something I learned to love doing at wd~50.

  Once Noodle Bar was running smoothly in its new location, Ko opened. We quickly flipped the space into a tasting-menu-only, online-reservations-only establishment. We had a lot of bad ideas for tasting-menu desserts, and deep down, I think Dave, Serp (Peter Serpico, the chef de cuisine, who runs the restaurant), and I knew I was just going to have to hide out in the Ssäm Bar basement and, come hell or high water, figure something out. The only productive thing that came from the original group meetings was a collaborative love affair with the idea of a deep-fried apple pie and the fact that I was going to need a little help in the form of an FCI extern. Enter Marian Mar.

  Dave and a few other Momo guys went to the FCI career fair one day, mostly in search of savory cooks for their kitchens, and Dave promised he’d find me someone. Most people didn’t even know the Momofukus served dessert, let alone thought of dropping off a pastry résumé. Except Marian.