Recipe: Mana's java brownies

And notes from the week!

Hello and happy weekend!

I’ve been running around like mad since we got home from vacation, so it feels particularly good this week to sit down and write to you. As I figure out my freelance routine, slowly but surely, I hope to set aside one whole day of the week to write. I’ve been trying to make progress on articles and newsletters in the spare moments between recipe testing and cooking for clients, and it’s nearly impossible! I can’t write coherent prose when I’m thinking about where to find the best chicories for that client’s salad and how on earth I’ll manage to drag my full grocery cart up three flights of stairs in the subway station. In historian David McCullough’s words, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.” And so today, with a big breath and a sip of coffee, I’ll try to get some words on the page!

The highlight of this week’s Dish is my grandmother Mana’s recipe for espresso-spiked “java brownies,” which I baked yesterday and my roommates and I are rapidly consuming.

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This week in food

• Speaking of chicories, Eataly remains my most reliable, accessible source of lovely bitter leaves in NYC. Campo Rosso, a Pennsylvania farm that pops up at the Union Square Greenmarket on most Fridays, sells the best chicories around, but the timing doesn’t always work out for me. Anyway, I’m always on the hunt. A simple salad becomes infinitely more exciting with pink and magenta thrown in the mix. 

  

  Gems and chicories for a dinner party I catered this week

• These Punjabi-style black lentils were dinner one night with homemade three-ingredient flatbreads (flour, baking powder, and Greek yogurt).