Milk Bar Life + Huevos Tibios (“Egg Soup”)

I’ll admit–this is definitely not the type of cookbook I’d usually go for, if only because I was fairly certain that none of it would be healthy. But sometimes, you just gotta live a little!

As with Hamburger Helper, I figured it’d be a fun challenge to healthify recipes that hadn’t already been healthified, so read on for my review of Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar Life!

It so happened that on my first day of my surgery rotation, I saw Christina Tosi (the chef and co-owner of Momofuku Milk Bar, which is a bakery based in New York) on TV talking about her new book, so I thought…why the hecks not? Oh, advertising. I guess you do have an effect on me after all…

Although I’ve never personally tasted either, I’ve heard about the deliciously addicting awesomeness that is Momofuku’s crack pie and compost cookies. Milk Bar Life doesn’t include the recipes for those two (they’re in her first book, which I haven’t read), but it does contain both sweet and savory recipes! (Score! <3 )

Milk Bar Life

By Christina Tosi

Genre: Cookbook
Pages: 256

Where to start with Milk Bar Life?

If you’re a food snob and/or one of them hoity-toity “I-grace-the-earth-with-my-magnificent-presence” individuals who walks around with your nose in the air, you most likely will not appreciate this book. This is for us peons who know how to have fun and let loose in life. <3

Christina Tosi starts off by talking about how she dreamed of opening a fun + simple place where people can stop by, say hi, and eat cookies, and she’s done exactly that–but it’s expanded into 6 different shops in New York that now send cookies all around the world. Talk about dreams comin’ true!

Her conversational tone throughout the book really gives you a chance to get a glimpse of her life and what she’s like as a person. I like to think we’d get along. :] (I have a ukulele I’d like to learn to play too!) The recipes are broken down into 9 different sections:

Hand-Me-Downs

For at least the first twenty years of life, my ‘culinary upbringin’ was very honest and very delicious–and very not fancy.”

She talks about how in her family, they have a tendency to collect honorary family members and recipes, and their culinary repertoire expands when they attend get-togethers and meet new people. (Definitely true in my case as well!) As the title suggests, these are all recipes that were handed down to her!

Other examples include…Acorn Squash with Cinnamon Butter & Breakfast Sausage, Apple Dumplings, Buckeyes.

A Cookie A Day…

This contains her collection of go-to cookie recipes! There are 2 pages devoted to making the perfect cookie, and it includes tips about the best time to do mix-ins, how long to cream butter + sugar together for the best results, what to do if you can’t bake the cookies right away, how to best store them, the best way to cool them…etc.

(I have a weakness for all things passionfruit-related <3).

I’m definitely going to have to try making the Thai Tea Cookies and the Citrus Cookies! *-*

Supermarket

Taking inspiration from the supermarket! Examples here include…Cake-Mix Coffee Cake, Beef Roast with Gravy, and a Mango Drink that sounds delicious!

We Are Family

Back when they first opened their store, the workers would take turns making “family meal” and everyone would gather ’round to enjoy each other’s company and awesome food. (I like this concept a lot. <3 Great food is definitely better when it’s shared with wonderful company!) This chapter contains the “greatest hits” that came out of those family meals.

Haute Dogs, Tex-Mex Curried Chili with Avocado Raita, Kimchi Quesadillas, XXXL Lady Salad…

Weak Nights

This chapter is for really late nights when you’re just desperate for food! :P They are nowhere close to healthy, and are pretty much made of whatever you can scrounge up in your kitchen. I’m sharing the “Egg Soup,” but my other favorite is “Desperation Nachos.” (It’s such a wonderful name. :P )

Freakin’ Weekend

I use weekends to make a whole ton of food too, and that’s the basis of this chapter! Other examples include Kitchen-Sink Quiche, Chicken Pot Pie, Poached Eggs, and Miso Butterscotch Sundae!

Cookout/Bonfire

Yay for cookouts! (I miss having those. :[ ) This includes a section on how to man or woman a grill (heh), how to build a bonfire, and includes tips on how to season raw meat.

I can’t have chorizo, but I like the idea of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Chorizo Burgers! There are also recipes for dips, shish kebabs, marinades and drinks in this section!

Craft Night/Sleepover

I miss these. :[ This section’s divided into “Night Owls” (that’d be me!) and “Early Birds”–Night Owl is to get you through movie nights + craft parties, and Early Bird is for the morning after!

Late-Night Jam-and-Jelly Sesh has recipes for 9 different types of jams/jellies, and the “Early Bird” section contains recipes like Tex-Mex Breakfast Casserole and Popovers!

Going Out

These are her favorite copycat recipes from places she loves! A couple recipes in this chapter include…Banana Hammock Pizza, Arepes de Pabellon (a classic Venezuelan flatbread), and Brisket & Broccoli.

“Telling It Like It Is: Milk Bar Terminology” is a fun section that translates words/phrases that they use a lot in their everyday life. For the recipes, there are little notes scattered throughout in circles for tips, substitutions, and alterations that you can experiment with!

I would not, I repeat, would not recommend this for anyone who chooses to follow a super-clean + healthy diet 99.99% of the time, or anyone with severe food allergies and/or dietary restrictions. If you fall into either of those categories, there are a good number of recipes in here that just really won’t work for you unless you want to look for substitutes for almost anything.

This was a really fun cookbook, the food photographs are really pretty + colorful, and I really liked that she found ways to throw random leftover ingredients together to make edible substances, as that’s pretty much the story of my life right now! :P

That being said, there are a lot of recipes in here that I will likely never make, because they call for ingredients that I rarely have stocked in my pantry (too unhealthy!). I knew that going in though, and I have a tendency to adapt/alter everything anyway, so I’m a-okay with it!

Here’s the recipe I adapted from the book! It’s nowhere near as pretty as the one she made, but it was delicious!

Huevos Tibios (“Egg Soup”)

Ingredients:

• 1 large egg
• freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• garlic powder, to taste
• chili powder, to taste
• 1 slice bread, toasted

Instructions:

1. Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil and add the egg. Boil for exactly 5 minutes! (Do not guesstimate.)
2. Remove the egg from the boiling water and transfer to a bowl of ice water. Let it sit until cool enough to handle (~5 minutes).
3. Crack, then peel open the egg. (The yolk should be runny.) Use a spoon to scoop the white + yolk into a bowl.
4. Cut up the egg white with the spoon, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and use the toast to soak up that eggy goodness!

I promise the bread was actually [lightly] toasted, even though it doesn’t look like it was. D:

• Have you ever been to Milk Bar? My friend made a vegan version of their birthday cake!