Like kids with lemonade stands, two restaurants are holding Saturday bake sales. In Manhattan, Eleven Madison Park’s executive pastry chef, Laura Cronin, has let loose with flaky vegan croissants: rich chocolate-sesame ($6), jammy strawberry rhubarb ($7) and classic ($5), plus coffee to go, all from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., first come, first-served, available until May 20. The restaurant As You Are, in Brooklyn, is selling the pastry chef Danny Alvarez’s pillowy focaccias ($10 to $14), including one strewn with ramps, along with sourdough English muffins ($12 for three), giant glazed cinnamon buns ($24 for six) and croissants, plain and filled ($4.50 to $6.50); they can be booked in advance for Saturday pickup, starting at 8 a.m.
Bake it Nice, Saturday, May 6; Sunday, May 14; and Saturday, May 20; 11 a.m. until sold out, 11 Madison Park, 11 Madison Avenue (24th Street), elevenmadisonpark.com; As You Are, order by Friday for pickup every Saturday, Ace Hotel, 252 Schermerhorn Street (Bond Street), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, asyouarebk.com.
Get Your Master’s in the Culinary Arts
For some time the Culinary Institute of America has offered master’s degrees in food business and management. Now, in collaboration with the Dom Pérignon Scholarship Fund, it is introducing a two-year master’s program in the culinary arts. An essential feature will be internships in top restaurants. Studies at the school’s Hyde Park campus and residencies at Maison Dom Pérignon in the Champagne region, near the Abbaye de Saint-Pierre d’Hautvilliers where Champagne is said to have been created, will be included. Through its fund, the company will provide full scholarships for 20 students, and provide a grant to help underwrite the development of the program. Vincent Chaperon, the cellar master for the Champagne, said, in a statement, that “fine wine and the culinary arts have always existed in harmony,” and that Dom Pérignon can help “shape the future of fine wine and gastronomy.”
Masters in Culinary Arts, Culinary Institute of America, 845-462-9600, masters.culinary.edu.
When Katherine Lewin opened her dinner party supply store, Big Night, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, about two years ago she found a successful niche. She has gone on to offer tableware, candles, packaged snacks, cocktail gear and the like online to a wider audience. On Friday she is expanding the party to the West Village, in a much larger setting. The new store will have a deeper inventory that will include specially commissioned serving pieces, candles and cookware, from Material and Great Jones. There will also be a freezer stocked with ice creams, pastas and other items made in New York.
236 West 10th Street, 646-370-6839, shopbignight.com.
An Almanac for Everything Maison Premiere
Is it the cocktails, oysters or the period fixtures that draw you to Maison Premiere in Williamsburg, Brooklyn? All are addressed in detail in “The Maison Premiere Almanac,” a book that’s as engaging as the restaurant’s lush garden. It starts with the history of the place, then explains tools, techniques and ingredients. The colorful pages are filled with minutiae of presentation, cocktail recipes as classic as the Sazerac and as inventive as the refreshingly citric Shining Path, an ode to absinthe and a dense primer on oysters. Note well the trenchant essay titled “The Meaninglessness of the Blue Point Oyster.” The singular food recipe is for mignonette.
“The Maison Premiere Almanac: For the Sensualist, Aesthete, and Flaneur” by Joshua Boissy, Krystof Zizka and Jordan Mackay with William Elliott (Clarkson Potter, $40).
Dried Beans From Recent Harvests
Reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s book “We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast” a few years ago inspired Katherine Yaphe, who was making sustainable textiles, and her business partner, Maggie Bentley, first to change what they ate. Then they got into the business of finding and selling dried beans. For their company, Beanstory, they get alluringly beautiful beans like fat white runner, golden peruano, violet Rio Zape, snow-white cannellini and other mostly heirloom varieties from small, organic farms in California, Idaho, Montana and New York. Some of the beans are dry-farmed, without irrigation, and they’re fresh from recent harvests, so they take less time to soften to the rich tenderness you want for that summer salad, hearty casserole or soup.
Organic dried beans, $9 to $15 a pound, beanstory.co.
150 Years of the 92nd Street Y
The 92nd Street Y was founded in 1874. To mark its upcoming 150th anniversary, the organization, an anchor for culture, education and activities on the Upper East Side, has scheduled a series of virtual talks that look back on the days of its origin. Among them is a lecture by the food historian Francine Segan on dining customs, food inventions and restaurants of that era.
92NY Gilded Age New York in 1874: Food and Dining in the Gilded Age — Upstairs, Downstairs and Out with Francine Segan, online May 9, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., $35, roundtable.org.
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