Category Archives: Markets

Costco Asian chicken wraps

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Costco’s new Asian chicken wraps

I try to maintain an awareness of new products at Costco, particularly their “take home and eat” items, partly because I like to see how creative they can be with their own leftovers.

In this case we have two huge spinach tortilla shells stuffed with the suspects one finds in a Chinese chicken salad.  Each is rolled, burrito-style, and cut in half to offer four portions.  A dipping sauce is provided in a cup on the side.

Inside the wrap you’ll find chunks of breast meat from their house-made rotisserie chickens, dry chow mein noodles and shredded fresh veggies, including cabbage and carrot.

The wrap itself is good – ample and fresh-tasting due to quality ingredients and a generous hand – but the dressing is too viscous for me.  I don’t know if there are gums present, or if they simply make a thick, vinaigrette-style, Chinese chicken salad dressing and use a stabilizer to keep it from separating.  There is something “off” in that dressing, too, but I may be getting unpleasant notes as a by-product of the texture, which I associate with  bad commercial salad dressing.

At $8.99, I don’t know that I’ll be buying them again, but if you don’t want to deal with the prep involved in making your own, I’d give ’em a try – but with a better dressing on standby.

Tried a couple cheeses

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Bavarian Blue and Delice D’Argental

Although I buy most of my cheese at Costco (my Costco has an amazing selection of cheeses) and Trader Joe’s, where the prices are low and you can buy small amounts, which you cannot do at Costco, I’ll pick up cheese that calls out to me from places like The Cheese Board or Berkeley Bowl, and just grin and bear the cost in the name of doing right by local non-chain merchants.

Berkeley Bowl West has a nice cheese counter, so I purchased a piece of Bavarian Blue (marked “Bavarian Blue Brie” on the store label) for my mother, and a small cut of Brebirousse D’Argental, because it looked creamy and runny and had a nice funky smell through the plastic.  It also had an orange rind.

Bavarian Blue is mild and creamy, being made with cow’s milk with added cream.  It’s not nearly as rich as triple-creams like Castello or Cambozola, nor strong like Stilton, so it’s good for people who want a hit of blue cheese flavor in a soft texture.

I have not had Brebirousse D’Argental before.  This is a washed rind sheep’s milk cheese from the Lyon region of France that ripens soft and runny.  Even though it’s made from pasteurized milk, which can render cheese somewhat limp in the character department, it retains flavor that is on the musty side of funky, though  it is not what I would call “sheepy” at all.  It has a little tang, and eats like a cheese with more fat content.  Brebirousse D’Argental has a 50% fat content, while a triple cream, like Saint Andre, is 75% butterfat.

There is nothing like having a little good cheese with bread, fruit and wine for dinner.  I still see too many Americans buying crappy cheese.  Just eat less of it but buy a higher-quality product and it won’t cost you mush more.

Note that if you want to purchase cheese in large quantity from Costco – which is something on the order of two pounds, depending upon the cheese – it’s not a problem to keep it fresh for some time, particularly hard cheeses, provided you follow these rules:

1)  Cut what you need from a larger piece and put the remainder in the fridge ASAP
2)  Use fresh plastic wrap EACH TIME you rewrap the cheese
3)  When you wrap/rewrap the cheese, CATER wrap it, meaning use several layers by just winding it around the product a few times; this will keep it from drying out and will prevent your cheese from smelling like the meatballs you have on the next shelf

Some may think this use of wrap is wasteful, but it makes a big difference.  It is a must for soft, runny cheeses, which have a shorter shelf-life than hard cheese, and it keeps things sanitary and pleasing.  Although most resources say that soft cheeses, like brie, will last about two weeks, I’ve been able to do much better than that by caring for them as outlined above, and by using the vegetable bin.

Hard cheese can last for months.

The new Berkeley Bowl

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Pasture butter and Acme rye bread from the new Berkeley Bowl

Matthew and I are not yet at 100% from our recent illness, but after two weeks we needed to get out of the house.  Since we had not yet checked out the new Berkeley Bowl (or, I should say, its newly-opened second location, Berkeley Bowl West) at 920 Heinz Avenue, we thought we’d head over there since we needed to pick up a few things for the weekend anyway.

This location is wonderful.  Although we were approached by political advocates for signatures, we were not overcome by numerous groups at the same time, nor by panhandlers.  This is Berkeley, so you have to be able to deal with this kind of thing, but I prefer to shop without being approached, so I was very pleased about not having to make a mad dash from my car to the store like I do at the Shattuck location.

It’s a very nice, modern market with wide aisles but very much like the Shattuck location, so Berkeley Bowl shoppers will feel at home here right off the bat.  There is a separate building that serves as a cafe with a Peet’s Coffee, and it is connected to the main store by a covered walkway.  There’s an inside garage (can you believe THAT?), so rain will not touch you whether you shop or have coffee at Peet’s.  Nice.

I got the suspects that Berkeley Bowl excels in:  fresh fruit and vegetables, good bread, pasture butter, sushi (the store-made sushi is really, really good) a couple of pecan sticky buns with so many pecans I don’t know how they make money on them at $1.50 apiece, and a large piece of frozen sashimi-grade albacore at $7.99 per pound.

I’m embarrassed to say how much I spent but I am typing from a home with a full larder.

Matt and I had a thick slice of Acme rye spread with salty pasture butter when we came home.  There is nothing better than a cup of tea with good bread and butter.

The high cost of almond paste

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When I go to Alaska next month I’ll have time to post the 50 or so back-logged entries I’m holding. While the economy has not been good, it has been great for my line of consulting – which is always feast or famine, but has been more feast since the stimulus plan went into effect. Don’t think of me as taking advantage of the misery of others, think of me as doing my part toward alternative energy sources. ‘Nuff said. I’m glad I’m bringing in money, because Steven picked up a tube of almond paste for me at Lucky and it was NINE dollars! I’m surprised he even bought it because he’s on the frugal side. I told him that I normally buy it elsewhere, and to call me if he is confronted by this kind of price for 7 ounces of ANYTHING. Plus, who the hell needs 7 ounces of something? I am so sick of this downsizing, which makes it difficult to bake, especially, since you need to be precise with ingredients. Even a “quart” of mayo is down to 30 ounces. Anyway, I made pignoli cookies using my friend Tonina’s recipe, which requires a half-pound of almond paste. I love these Italian cookies, which are a bit crisp on the outside but dense, soft and chewy inside. I used to buy them at Franks Bakery on 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens, when I lived there and they were a real treat, given the price. Tonina still lives in Astoria, and she’s Italian, so she knew exactly what I was talking about when I described the cookie I missed. I am now down to needing one cookie recipe. When I was a grade-schooler, I used to have these flat, leaf-shaped, butter cookies that were coated withchocolate, with the chocolate being thicker in the middle and then thinning as the leaf fanned out. These were to die for, and I have never had them since those days visiting Stork’s Pastry Shop in Whitestone.

Pulled pork sandwiches

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pulled pork sandwich piled high

A recent hankering by one of the residents here for pulled pork sammies created the need for a large hunk of slow-roasted pork.  One trip to Smart & Final later, I was well on the road.  I make my pulled pork somewhat differently than the rest of the universe, wanting all the elements of slow and low cooking but no smoke.  I rub the a boneless pork shoulder down with a mix of coarse salt, coarse pepper and paprika and then roast at 215 F. for about 9 hours – covered.  I then uncover the thing and roast for an hour at 375 F. or so – convection, to get some crispness on the sides.  I generally use a whole shoulder, which weighs in at over 10 pounds, but if you cannot find a whole boneless shoulder you can use boneless versions of what is called the “butt” or the “picnic” (these are the two cuts that make up a pork shoulder) or even “cushion meat,” which consists of boneless odds and ends of shoulder (it should be, anyway).  Once it’s out of the oven let it rest for upwards of an hour and then pull apart with two forks.  I serve this on nice rolls covered with hot pepper sauce and/or coleslaw with little sweet pickles on the side.