Lahman DeDe - Clinton St. Baking Company cookbook : breakfast, brunch & beyond from New Yorks favorite neighborhood restaurant

Copyright 2010 by DeDe Lahman and Neil Kleinberg

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

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First eBook Edition: November 2010

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ISBN: 978-0-316-12315-0

Jacket Design by Laura Palese

New Yorks number one breakfast spot.

LONELY PLANET

In a city where the search for the best brunch inspires near religious devotion, the Clinton St. Baking Company and Restaurant is arguably the holy graila dining experience so fulfilling that people wait hours on weekend mornings for a chance to savor freshly baked goods, hearty omelets, sugar-cured bacon, and house-made buttermilk biscuits served with tomato jam. Pillow-soft pancakes topped with rich maple butter, red flannel hash, and the perfect eggs Benedict are just a few of the soul-pleasing dishes that have made the Clinton St. Baking Company a frequent presence on local and national best-of lists.

Clinton St. feels like home, not only because of the menu, but because of its ownersthe husband-and-wife team of chef Neil Kleinberg and DeDe Lahman, who opened the restaurant after they met at a local fish-and-chips joint and married shortly thereafter. In the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook, readers will learn the secrets to Neils signature comfort food. Recipes for all his most popular brunch staples are here, plus irresistibly decadent dessert offerings. From the award-winning buttermilk fried chicken to a wide selection of muffins and scones, this is food to indulge in and to share with people you love. Helpful techniques, like Neils patented omelet flip and tuck, as well as instructional photos, will guide you toward making meals every bit as beautiful and delicious as those at the restaurant. Featuring gorgeous color photography by Michael Harlan Turkell, the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook brings New Yorks best brunch straight to your home.

FOR OUR LOVING PARENTS, NANCY AND JERRY LAHMAN AND THE LATE MILLIE AND JOE KLEINBERG

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You might think that a random meeting at a restaurant called A Salt and Battery would be inauspicious for romance, but somehow the fateful night that Neil and I collided at this English fish and chips shop on Greenwich Avenue launched a great affair of love (and butter).

Five minutes of banter, a few laughs, and we were both on our way, separately, out into the cold, wet December night, clutching greasy newspaper-bundled wraps of fried cod, fat chips, and tiny containers of malt vinegar.

Turn your calendar pages ahead just ten months, and there we are, a bit plumper, a lot happier, getting married in a low-ceilinged Greek taverna on Barrow Street in the same West Village. With our relatives, we dance the hora to a Greek-Israeli band in between eating buttery saganaki with lemon, sublime taramasalata, tender cubes of lamb, and horiatiki salad with ripe red tomatoes and rich feta.

Who knew that a few years later wed own a tiny thirty-two-seat caf world famous for its brunch? I was a former magazine editor turned freelance writer turned marketing consultant turned clothing entrepreneur. He was a twenty-five-year veteran of the New York cooking scene on a five-year break, teaching at-risk youth how to run a nonprofit caf.

Our restaurant odyssey began, funnily enough, with bad white bread: three squares of store-bought Wonder grilled on the griddle at the Jovial Grill, a French-Chinese restaurant on Clinton Street. It was bamboo-paneled and festooned with the kind of 3-D model ships youd be more likely to see adorning the walls of an old Howard Johnsons restaurant on Cape Cod than a tiny storefront on the gritty Lower East Side.

You take this restaurant from me, pleaded Tommy Kong, the owner (now a lawyer), who had once cooked on the line under Neil at the Plaza Hotels Gauguin restaurant. You can make this work. Youre the only one.

I quietly pretended to nibble on the breadan appetizer apparently meant to sweeten Tommys propositionand considered the prospects. Chinese cook turned personal injury lawyer. Drug-infested street. Undesirable zip code. Ugly decor.

Recipe for disaster, I thought.

Recipe for success! Neil said.

We debated. He won (for the last time). And suddenly Neil was baking all night long in his whites, just like a culinary student, high on creamed sugar, French-roast coffee, and blind optimism.

This might not sound like a big deal, but first you need to know that Neil was still working by day at the nonprofit caf, teaching culinary arts to those teens. Second, he had no pastry background! His training, at the New York City College of Technology (Hospitality Management) in Brooklyn, was in the French classics: savory food, delicate fish, reduced stocks, rich sauces. That he was able to bake the most delectable muffins from scratch is still astounding to me.

Our mission was simple: to offer the best baked goods in the city, using the freshest ingredients, hand mixed in small batches. And Neil was doing just that. We bought the finest dark French-roast coffee beans, ground them in-house, and hired a college student to serve cappuccino with the warm muffins and scones, mostly to go. Much to our delight, it didnt take long for neighborhood rockers, designers, and business owners to stumble in. We were a true mom-andpop shop, splitting the labor between us: Neil ran the back of house, and I ran him. (Thats what he likes to say.)

Within a few months, the bakeshops production doubled and wholesale accounts were opened citywide. Even Zabars and Saks Fifth Avenues caf were selling Neils baked goods.

Delighted and feeling somewhat legit, we listened closely to what the neighborhood seemed to want. It turned out that they craved soup, and Neil started making as many as five fresh varieties a dayand served them with our signature buttermilk biscuits. Theyre now a staple of our menu.

That was our gateway to lunch and weekend brunch. Neil went back to his savory roots. Scrambled eggs and cheddar were piled on the buttermilk biscuits, spread with fresh tomato jam. French-style farmers market omelets and wild Maine blueberry pancakes topped with warm maple butter were added to the menu. And just like that, the craze began. We stood back, wide-eyed, as our tiny weekend crowd grew from 13 a day, to 35, to 60, and now to 340!