Christina Tosi - Momofuku Milk Bar

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
641.86dc22 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 BabyBjrning and
double dutching and doggy sitting

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 wed send out Hersheys 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. Id rather have hired an extra sous-chef than spend money on someone who spins sugar and bakes cookies. Thats 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 shed 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 officea desk in a hallway. Instead, she started organizing the company.

At the same time, she was working as a cashier at Ssm 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 homemadeand 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 Ssm 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 menusthe bo ssms, the fried chicken dinnerstarted out just for the staff. I would constantly say she should sell them; I was a broken record. I dont know what or when or how, but I mustve 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 wasnt 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 its her insane work ethic and brilliant mind that make her so special in my book.

Ive 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 wouldnt belet alone be what it iswithout 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: Dont 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. Everyones sizing each other up and no one wants to take the time to learn your name until youve been to the battle of dinner service enough nights in a row to show that you arent 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 Id 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 smallbirthday, 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 cant 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.

Im worse than either of them, to be honest. Ive 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. Thats 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 days creation and each day became a challenge to put a new spin on an old favorite.