This week I found Ben & Jerry’s Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road ice cream at Grocery Outlet. This “limited edition” ice cream once again reminds us of the fact that without Ben and Jerry, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is completely lost. Indeed, how long has it been since they’ve come up with any ice cream flavors that have been successful? By now, all they seem to do is either randomly assemble flavors or play it safe and boringly. This ice cream, as most of its predecessors, is a complete failure. It mostly tastes of mediocre chocolate ice cream, sometimes of caramel, and never of anything special. No wonder it ended up at GO, for $1.50 a pint.
I haven’t had Sarah Lee Frozen Cheesecake (original or New York) for years, but if you’ve been craving some, GO has the little ones on sale for $2. Seems like a pretty good deal.
Of greater interest to those of us planning holiday dinners and parties, GO is selling Pepperidge Farm Frozen Puff Pastry Sheets for $2 a package! These usually sell for about $6 a package. Expiration is 12/23/09 – but I’m sure they’ll be fine for Xmas dinner.
Finally, GO has Cantare Mini Baked Brie en Croute on the refrigerated cabinets, by the diary products. A package of 12 brie/cranberry pastries is $2 and one of 12 brie/cranberry and 12 brie/jalapeno is $4. They expire in 1/10. The kids and I liked the cranberry kind quite a bit – they cook in 6 minutes, so they’re a great choice for your holiday parties.
Author: admin (Page 29 of 51)
Yesterday, a guy came to my door with some story about delivering meat somewhere and being left with a lot of stock on his truck (all sorts of things) that he was selling for cheap. He, of course, offered to sell me some – I, of course, declined.
Why, I can only wonder, would anyone buy meat from some stranger from a truck? Can the bargains be /that/ great, that someone would be willing to risk the possibility that the meat be contaminated, had been kept badly, be ready to go bad, come from sick cows, or just be less than tender? And who the hell are these people and where did they get that meat?
If anyone has any clue as to the last question, please let me know. I’m intrigued 🙂
I made this epicurious.com recipe for Linguine with Pears and Gorgonzola Cheese using spaghetti but otherwise faithfully following the instructions. We found the sauce pretty good and appreciated the texture element that the pears brought to it – but all in all we found it an unnecessary element. Next time I’ll just skip them. I’m typing up the recipe because 1) epicurious.com has this habit of changing the urls of their recipes and 2) after the closure of Gourmet I’m concerned about how long epicurious.com may be around.
Pasta with Gorgonzola sauce
- 12 oz pasta
- 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, chopped
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 5 oz Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
- 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup whipping cream
- salt & pepper
- 1/3 cup chopped roasted pecans
Boil water and cook the pasta. Drain.
Meanwhile, melt butter over medium heat in a large, deep skillet. Add the rosemary and cook for 1 minute, stirring.
Add the chicken broth, Gorgonzola cheese, Parmesan cheese and cream. Mix well. Simmer until the sauce is somewhat thick, about 6 minutes, whisking occasionally. Taste and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the pasta and the pecans. Mix well and cook for about 3 more minutes.
This is not a recipe as much as a method for cooking spare ribs in the oven. It results in delicious, fall-of-the-bone ribs. The best part is that you don’t need either to boil or grill the ribs. Use any sauce you like with these ribs – go Asian with a soy sauce/vinegar/honey sauce (Mike specially liked this one) or use a very-American BBQ sauce. If the latter, you may want to start brushing the sauce in the last 15 minutes. The cooking method comes from someone who commented on this recipe
Oven-roasted spareribs
- 1 rack of spareribs
- salt & pepper
- your choice of seasonings or rubs (optional)
- your choice of sauce
Preheat oven to 250F. Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil.
Cut the spareribs into individual serving pieces. Season with salt and pepper and any other seasonings or rubs that you might like.
Place ribs on the pan, cover tightly with aluminum foil and roast in the oven for 2 hours. Remove and turn oven temperature to 375F.
Remove the ribs from the pan and drain off all the liquid. Return ribs to the pan and brush with sauce. Return them to the oven and roast uncovered for 30 more minutes, basting two times and making sure that the sauce doesn’t burn. Serve.
I probably shouldn’t make fun of this but today the Vatican beatified father Carlo Gnocchi, a military chaplain during WWII who went on to dedicate his life to the disabled. It’s not clear what miracle father Gnocchi is said to be responsible for (you need to have performed one miracle to be beatified – the first step on being cannonized) – but I want to believe that it was something to do with food. Perhaps a bad cook somewhere prayed to him to make a good Bolognese sauce? Yeah, I doubt it too – but with a name like that I think it’ll be hard to not associate saint Gnocchi with food and perhaps today, as I attempt a boeuf bourguignon recipe based on Julia Child’s, I’ll pray to him 😉
I’ve never been a big fan of Scharffen Berger because I’m not a fan of dark chocolate. Give me milk any time. Well, apparently Scharffen Berger has, unbeknown to me, been making milk chocolate for a while. Today I found their 3oz bars at Grocery Outlet here in San Leandro. The bars are $2 – they sell for $5 at Scharffen Berger’s website. Of course, these bars are close to expiration (January 2010), they were made at the Berkeley factory
which closed in January 2009.
Well, my verdict is that Scharffen Berger milk chocolate is (or was) by far the best milk chocolate I’ve ever tasted. The chocolate taste is very intense, it has layers of complexity and it’s just delicious. I imagine that Scharffen Berger will not/has not been able to keep its standards at the new factory – so I’ll probably hurry and buy a bunch of these bars at Grocery Outlet.
I admit it, I’m prejudiced. Not prejudiced about everyone and everything, but definitely about some categories of people and things. For example, I’m prejudiced against cuisine from the American heartland, cuisine that includes processed ingredients (cream of mushroom soup, ketchup) as well as canned or frozen produce. While this recipe comes from Bon Appetit (courtesy of epicurious.com), I think it might best belong to the pages of Parade magazine (there again is my prejudice).
Still, it was a different recipe for short ribs (one that did not include celery, carrots or wine) and one that got amazing reviews on epicurious. With nice looking short ribs at $1.99lb at Lucky’s I had to try it. And, my non-existent God, I’m soooo glad I did. This may very well be the best recipe for short ribs I’ve made so far. I loved it because the flavors penetrated into the meat, making the sauce a nice addition but ultimately unnecessary. I also like sweet meats, this is definitely not for those adverse to fruity flavors on their beef.
I followed the recipe closely, but I did make some changes based on the reviews and convenience. I’d definitely would make it as I did – though I’d try to braise the meat the day before so I had time to cool and de-fat the sauce before serving it (for the life of me, I don’t understand how to use a fat separator). I served it with mashed potatoes, but I don’t think it was a good marriage. Next time I’d try couscous.
This recipe introduced me to Chili sauce, which, as far as I can tell, is a kind of ketchup, it definitely tastes like it. I doubt it has any chilis and it’s not in the least spicy.
Pineapple Short Ribs
- 4-5 lbs beef short ribs
- salt & pepper to taste
- flour for coating
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- 2 onions, quartered
- 1 8 1/4 oz can pineapple chunks with juice
- 2 cups beef broth
- 1/2 cup Heinz or similar chili sauce
- 1/4 cup honey
- 3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
- 4 garlic cloves, minced.
Preheat oven to 275F. Cut excessive fat from short ribs. Season to taste and lightly coat with flour. Heat oil in a dutch oven or another lidded oven-safe wide pot. Add the ribs and brown well on all sides. Add the onions, pineapple with juice, broth, chili sauce, honey, Worcestershire sauce and cloves. Mix well.
Cover the pot and place in the oven. Cook covered for 3 hours, then remove the lid and cook for another hour. Take out of the oven and carefully remove the short ribs, keep warm by covering them with a towel. Place the cooking pot on the stove and boil the remaining sauce until it reduces to about 1 1/2 cups. Strain and discard the vegetables. Serve short ribs accompanied by the sauce.
An article in today’s still extant San Francisco Chronicle reveals the Bay Area restaurants that have received Michelin stars this year. The French Laundry was, once again, the only restaurant to get three stars. Two stars went to Coi, Cyrus, Manresa and the Restaurant at Meadowood, and 34 restaurants got one star. Unfortunately only two restaurants in the East Bay got that coveted star – Soizic in Oakland, which had it one time, no longer does.
I’d love to try the 1 and 2 star restaurants, but given the economic climate I doubt that will happen. Indeed, two of the restaurants who received one Michelin star have already closed, which tells you we are not the only ones that have to be very careful with money.
My kids, like all other American kids, love mac & cheese. They are usually not very discriminating, they’ll eat the Kraft stuff, the Safeway stuff, the Annie stuff, whatever we put in front of them. What they haven’t been willing to eat – until now – was homemade mac & cheese. Well, this is no longer the case. Mika, my 7-yo, has been begging me to make it again. Camila, my 4-yo, wasn’t as enthusiastic, but she really liked it as well. Alas, I’m not sure that nutritionally this recipe is any better than the regular mac & cheese (which now comes with whole-grain pasta). It’s definitely much less friendly to my pocket book. But I’m sure I’ll make it again.
The original recipe called for sharp cheddar but I used a mixture of pre-shredded Mexican mixture and home-shredded muenster, as that’s what I had at home.
Mac & Cheese
- 12 oz small elbow macaroni
- 4 tbsp. butter
- 2 slices bread, crumbled
- 4 tbsp. flour
- 1 1/2 cups milk
- 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
- 4 green onions, thinly sliced
- 3 cups (packed) grated cheese
- salt & pepper to taste
Cook the pasta on salted boiling water until tender but firm. Drain and put in a 9″ x 13″ baking pan.
Meanwhile, pre-heat broiler.
Also meanwhile melt the butter in a medium-size saucepan. Put the breadcrumbs in a small bowl and mix in 1 Tbsp. butter. Set aside.
Add the flour to the butter in the saucepan and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Gradually add the milk and broth, continuing whisking. Bring to a boil and add the green onions. Continue cooking and whisking for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix in the grated cheese. Stir until it’s completely incorporated.
Pour the cheese sauce onto the macaroni and mix well. Season with salt and pepper if necessary. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top of it. Broil until the crumbs brown, about 2 minutes. Serve.
Marga’s Best Recipes
Last night I made Sumac Skirt Steak with Pomegranate Reduction from an epicurious.com recipe. It was a fairly quick recipe to make, but I wasn’t thrilled with it. I did overcook the pomegranate juice somewhat, but my biggest problem is that the flavors of the spice rub and sauce hid those of the meat.
Mike really liked the dish, though. I’m mentioning it here, but I won’t cook it again.
Recent Comments