Cake Zine Co-founder Aliza Abarbanel’s Grub Street Diet

For Aliza Abarbanel, co-founder of indie food publication Cake Zine and co-host of Taste’s podcast, there’s nothing quite as tantalizing as fresh produce. She has hauled duffel bags full of citrus from her parents’ house in L.A. — she gave the TSA agent a clementine to help clear up any confusion — and on a trip to Taiwan this winter, Abarbanel became obsessed with wax apples and wondered if she could bring them back Stateside. Rather than risking trouble at customs, she packed six or seven of them in her carry-on, so that she and her girlfriend could devour them on the 15-hour flight. “I should have packed twice as many,” she says. Last week, though, she was home in Brooklyn, hitting her local Greenmarket, networking at Stars, and watching the Knicks with everyone else in the city.

Wednesday, June 10
Coffee, black. My girlfriend, Shirley, is normally on coffee duty, but she’s not home, so I make a French press and sip while checking in on some edits and emails. Then I make breakfast.

I just flew back from visiting my sister in Portland, where we picked a truly ludicrous amount of strawberries at Topaz Farm on Sauvie Island, and I managed to bring some back unbruised in a deli container in my carry-on. These strawberries are an Oregon varietal called Sweet Sunrise, and they might be the best I’ve ever had. They’re not like the hydroponic beauty queens sold in plastic clamshells at luxe grocery stores; they’re knobby and so small they don’t even need to be sliced. But when you bite in, they’re pure, concentrated strawberry, red the whole way through and dripping with juice. I mix them with an equal amount of Greek yogurt, almost like a ratio of cereal to milk, and top the bowl with chia seeds, pistachios, and a drizzle of honey.

For lunch, I look through the fridge and decide to make a kale-radicchio salad, since the greens need to be used soon. I toss a can of chickpeas with olive oil, salt, and baharat, then roast them in the toaster oven with some cherry tomatoes that aren’t delicious enough to eat raw. While the tomatoes burst and the chickpeas get crunchy, I slice up an avocado, flake apart some tinned sardines, and make a quick Caesar-inspired dressing by whisking together grated garlic, anchovy, Dijon mustard, Kewpie mayo, and a bit of Greek yogurt in the bottom of the salad bowl. I’ve lived in New York for nine years, during which time I’ve never had a dishwasher, so if there’s a smart way to avoid dirtying an extra bowl, I’ll do it.

After wrapping up work, I take the subway down to Gowanus, where my friend Ava is having an end-of-year art show with their students’ work. I read children’s zines about the concept of fairness and feel deeply moved. Afterward, a group of us head to Nenes Taqueria nearby. I’ve been going to the original Bushwick spot for years. I get a birria quesadilla and a nopales taco and steal bites of flan, which is one of my favorites in the city. It’s so thick and creamy, almost like cheesecake.

Like everyone else, we want to watch the Knicks. (I’m no lifelong Knicks fan, but I’ve been following this team closely, and I love watching alongside the whole city.) We try a couple bars and land at Forever Brewing. I get a Graft cider (bone dry and funky) and become increasingly anxious about the game, so I head out at halftime to reunite with Shirley, watching the beginnings of the improbable 29-point comeback through the screens lining the streets on my walk back. We split a kombucha and finish the fourth quarter at home. We learn our TV is on a delay when our neighbors begin to scream with joy. Then we scream too.

Thursday, June 11
Shirley makes us a big Chemex of coffee. I make avocado toast with furikake and pour some coffee over a tall glass full of “good ice” — our term for the ice we buy from the bodega and store in reusable containers in the freezer, versus the homemade ice that always seems to taste like a musty, stale freezer no matter which fancy tray we use.

Edits, emails, etc. I want to make a quick lunch before I head into midtown to record for the Taste podcast, so I get the rice cooker going and make a tofu scramble, a go-to last-minute meal. Since I don’t have time to press the tofu and don’t need perfect cubes, I squeeze out handfuls over the sink and crumble it into a hot, dry skillet to toast off the excess water. I mix tomato paste, miso, grated garlic, salt, turmeric, and smoked paprika, then add it to the skillet with olive oil and combine until the tofu is slightly crispy and deep red. Off the heat, I add in a little maple syrup and Kewpie mayo, then pair the scramble with some leftover sautéed kale, Lao Gan Ma, and the rice. This meal always hits.

It’s so hot and humid outside, it feels like being in a mouth. When I get off the train at Columbus Circle, I’m tempted to grab a Vermont Maple Lemonade from the seasonal Smorgasburg market that mushroomed up overnight, but I hold off until I get to the studio, where I find a Yuzuco Yuzu-ade in the mini-fridge. It’s slightly fizzy and sweet, with a slight tart pithiness. The sugar revives me. I record some B segments with my co-host, Matt Rodbard, and an interview with Kim Vallejo, who heads operations for the Greenmarket-darling sourdough bakery She Wolf.

At the end of the day, I take the train down to Stars. My publicist friend Phoebe Ng has arranged a meet-cute with myself, my Cake Zine co-founder, Tanya Bush, and the founders of Toothsome, a newish food magazine based in London who are in town. Stars only has 12 seats, so we’re at the lone table on the sidewalk, where it’s too hot to do more than nibble and my only criteria for wine is “cold.” Phoebe orders cava-pickled apples, carrot ribbon purses stuffed with pepitas, herbs, raisins, and more carrots, marcona almonds, and a bottle of Grape Republic Rosato Yamagata, a Japanese rosé. We talk about our upcoming issues and slip ice cubes into the wine.

At home, I take a cold shower and my appetite kicks back in, so I make a package of soy-truffle noodles from Moon Moon Food, a popular Taiwanese restaurant chain. If I could guess any Taiwanese chain that’s poised for Din Tai Fung–levels of global fame, it would be Moon Moon. I’m usually a truffle skeptic, but Shirley and I became obsessed with these noodles (and everything at Moon Moon) when we were visiting her family in Taiwan two years ago — the soy paired with black truffle creates layers of umami that are so much more aromatic and nuanced than truffle oil alone. Now we stuff our suitcases with them on our annual trips back and ration throughout the year.

Friday, June 12
I wake up to an empty apartment and no coffee. I’m not hungry yet, but I have a physical in an hour, so I swirl some peanut butter with raspberry jam and dip a banana into the bowl while I work.

At the doctor’s, the nurse tries to distract me while getting my blood drawn by chatting about our respective Knicks-watching plans for Saturday. I start to feel a little faint, so she gives me a packet of fruit-juice gummy bears from her purse. The pineapple one is the best. On my walk home, I stop into Hungry Ghost for what feels like a well-deserved cold brew. I buy a ham-and-Swiss sandwich on a baguette the size of my forearm and take it home, where I add Dijonnaise, gochugaru, and some quick-pickled onions. I steadily demolish it while working, then snack on some roasted cashews.

Thunder starts to rumble ominously as I head to Strange Delight to meet Tanya and our friend Bre for dinner. Bre and I narrowly dodge the torrential downpour, but Tanya arrives fully drenched, and our server kindly hands her some bar towels to dry off. We order warm house-made rolls with butter, Chinese broccoli salad dusted with nutritional yeast, crab dirty rice, and a seafood tower piled high with steamed shrimp, various bivalves, and fish dip. My favorite part of the seafood tower here is always the shrimp remoulade and fried saltines, which are aggressively buttery and crunchy. Strange Delight doesn’t have a dessert menu; they just hand every table a free plate of bread pudding with a pool of Sazerac custard. It’s gently spiced and deeply comforting, a perfect touch of hospitality.

Saturday, June 13
I spend every Saturday morning I can at the Fort Greene farmers’ market. The problem is that I don’t usually wake up early enough to beat the stroller or dog crowd — much less the stroller and dog crowd. But Shirley has an early shoot, which wakes me at a competitive hour. I fling myself out the door with dreams of strawberries, hoping they’ll have caught up to the West Coast.

Sadly, the heat wave has destroyed the strawberries at Toigo Orchards; they’ve dried up in the fields and are being sold as “jam berries” on a flash sale. I consider buying a pint, but my weekend is too busy for making jam, and they look like they need to be used immediately. I grab a pint of cherry tomatoes, some mixed lettuce from Lucky Dog Organic, and a huge amount of sugar-snap peas from Wilklow Orchards. Then I walk down the artisan side of the market to Zeena Bakery, a Palestinian American bakery stall. I’m obsessed with its ma’amoul and focaccia, especially the tomato jam version, which is Zeena’s take on her grandmother’s galayet banadoura. It’s deeply savory and squishy with a slightly crunchy top, almost like a Philly tomato pie in focaccia form.

It’s too hot to cook, so I make myself a big grazing plate: snap peas, Persian cucumbers, aged Gouda, salted lemony Greek yogurt, and the big slab of tomato focaccia. I decide to take the A train to the Rockaways with my friends Jeffrey and Manh. For a beach snack, I throw sliced cucumbers, snap peas, and a Korean melon into a big deli container with a lot of lime juice and a little salt. Jeffrey is a great cook who does the pop-up Mr. Jong. He brings some supremely fudgy roasted Japanese sweet potatoes and surprisingly good conservas from Trader Joe’s, plus a big bottle of home-brewed burdock tea sweetened with goji berries and jujube. In between dunks in the ocean, we pile the tinned smoked oysters and calamari onto big chunks of sweet potato.

I head home to quickly get ready to go watch the Knicks. Habana Outpost has been projecting the game on the huge wall overlooking its patio in Fort Greene. The entire intersection has become a bigger and bigger watch party over the course of the Finals. A few friends have already been holding down the sidewalk across the street for a while. Shirley and I grab our camping chairs to join. Right before we head out, I make a quick cocktail with tequila and a bottle of Chelate Lemon — a powerfully tangy, sparkling lemon “wellness drink” that’s a cult convenience-store item in Japan due to its incredibly high amounts of vitamin C and citric acid. It’s the only mixerlike thing in my fridge, but it works.

The crowd is already huge, and it’s an hour and a half before tip-off. We settle in on the sidewalk with Modelos and cheese pizza from Not Ray’s Pizza as the crowd grows, and grows, and grows.

Halfway through the second quarter, I check my phone and see a bunch of missed calls and texts. It’s also the night of the James Beard Awards, and a Cake Zine story has won an award for the first time! It’s a piece from our seventh issue, “Forbidden Fruit,” by Sithara Ranasinghe, about the daily life of the undocumented clerk at her local fruiteria in Barcelona.

At halftime, the cops show up and shut down the projection to try to make the now truly massive crowd disperse. Luckily, the game is everywhere: on TVs outside bodegas, laptops on stoops, projected onto buildings. We join a big crowd on the sidewalks across from Saraghina Caffè, where some upstanding citizen in the apartments upstairs is projecting a massive livestream onto the wall above the restaurant.

The vibe shifts from optimism to euphoria as victory becomes obvious. Someone starts shooting off fireworks in the street, my friend Diane and I get sprayed with Champagne, and the crowd begins to sing “New York, New York” as a fire truck drives down the street and flips their lights and siren in celebration. A couple carrying a handle of liquor asks me if I want a shot, and I immediately say “yes,” instinctually feeling this is the right response when one is experiencing history. They clarify that it’s coconut-flavored vodka. It frankly sounds disgusting, but I am experiencing history, so I open wide.

It is at this point that I continue to make the decisions one might expect from a historic celebration — namely, tequila shots. We walk around the neighborhood for hours, bumping into friends and strangers taking it all in: Fulton Street shuts down with crowds as people climb atop the stranded MTA buses for endless “Empire State of Mind” sing-alongs.

Sunday, June 14
There is nothing more I’d like than to sleep in, but I have already committed to help set up a big food-packing and community day for One Love Community Fridge. I peel myself out of bed at 8 a.m. and walk over to Peckish to get a large black cold brew and a maple biscuit.

Upon arriving at the Brooklyn Museum, I’m tasked with helping wrap several hundred hard-boiled eggs in paper napkins for the food program. This is a harrowing hangover task — I dislike eggs even in the best of situations, a personal quirk that I’m reluctant to mention but can no longer avoid. Diane is also volunteering and brings me a green smoothie from her corner deli for sustenance. My hands have a faint whiff of egg, but I queasily gulp it down.

Once the produce piles are set up for packing and participants arrive, I man the dessert station, where I mostly help folks understand the beautiful and very editorial dessert created by s-u-m studio. It’s a table laden with big circles of strawberry and palm-sugar-flavored crystallized jelly. They look like kombucha scoby or algae blooms (complimentary). I nibble on a strawberry slab — it’s crunchy on the top, with a satisfyingly squishy interior.

On my way out the door, I eat half of an everything bagel and grab a Sweetgreen “picnic bowl” with blackened chicken and quinoa from the volunteer lunch table. Unfortunately, it’s not my favorite: The roast veggies are too squishy, the crispy onions are no longer crispy, and the charred jalapẽno ranch is somehow not spicy at all. I begrudgingly pick through it, and then Shirley and I bike over to Herbert Von King Park to celebrate Ava’s birthday at Public Service, the free outdoor dance-party series. I grab a big yellow Gatorade from the bodega and head into the crowd, which is in a Knicks–Brooklyn Pride–Puerto Rican Day Parade–World Cup fervor. We break for big chunks of cold watermelon and a chocolate-vanilla Carvel ice-cream cake, which has “Happy Birthday Let’s Go Knicks” piped on top in blue and orange frosting.

After all the chaos of the weekend, it feels so good to cook a simple dinner at home. Shirley makes a green salad with sugar-snap peas and mustardy vinaigrette, and I make a burst-cherry-tomato pasta. I sautée a big shallot and lots of garlic, add in the tomatoes with butter and cook until they’re starting to burst, then fortify the sauce with a bit of tomato paste, miso, and Calabrian chiles. I deglaze with Shaoxing wine for a bit of sweetness since the tomatoes are still early in the season, then finish with a little pasta water, butter, and grated Parmesan. I top each bowl with more Parm and toasted panko bread crumbs. We eat on the couch, going back for seconds.

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