Category Archives: Markets

Cuisinart Griddler at Costco

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Cuisinart Griddler in the act of making grilled cheese

The best $89 + tax I ever spent at Costco was for a Cuisinart Griddler last month.  I have been waiting for Costco to get this guy in for a few years now, holding off buying it on sale at Macy’s.  I always knew this would not be like some of the other gadgets we had to have, like that Buttoneer or Kitchen Magician, which were used once and then tossed in the back of some cabinet.  For grilled cheese alone the Griddler is worth the price of admission.  I have to admit that the controls are cheap and feel spongy, and I wondered if this was true only of the Costco version, but I saw the same problem on Griddlers elsewhere.  Since I will use this exclusively for panini, I will be turning only one knob on a regular basis, so I figure this should be OK.  This thing easy to use, and the grill and griddle plates snap on and off in a flash, and are dishwasher-safe.  The only problem I have is that all my counter space is below cabinets, and you need quite a bit of head room to open and close a Griddler, and to adjust the jaws to the thickness of your food while in mid-grill.  This is a small price to pay, however, for the excellent grilled sammies you can make.  This has been a huge help in turning bad bread into something edible.  My mother, being a senior, manages to bring home all kinds of bread and rolls that are donated by local bakeries to the senior centers she goes to.  Needless to say, these are items that were not purchased, so they’re usually odd, day-old or both.  The rolls that entered the house yesterday were some sort of round honey-wheat belly bombs with terrible texture, being that they had been suffocated by a plastic bag.  I split them, loaded them up with some Safeway-brand aged sharp New York cheddar, rubbed a little oil on the grill plates, and let ’em rip until they were oozing.  So good!  I mention the cheese here because I never saw this at Safeway before.  It was on sale, looked like a black-wax knock-off, so I gave it a go.  Very good!

Little honey wheat grilled cheese sammies

Food from QVC and HSN

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Mrs. Prindable's candy apples

Mrs. Prindable's candy apples

Like other cooking-obsessed people, I’m easily lured by certain kinds of marketing.  When I’m home by myself and have a bite of lunch I sometimes sit in the living room and watch a little TV.  If the shopping channels happen to be hawking food-related stuff I’ll tune in.  Over the past couple of years I have been tempted to order a few things that looked good to me, namely David’s crumb cakes, Kim & Scott’s pretzels and Mrs. Prindable’s apples.  The crumb cakes have to do with my love of New York-style crumb cake, with its 3 to 1 topping-to-cake ratio, and my 1980’s obsession with David’s ice cream, which Steven and I would have at the David’s shop on Broadway near Astor Place.  The early to mid-80’s were the glory days of high-end retail cookies as well as my relationship with Steven.  He lived in the East Village and I in Astoria, and we spent our evenings after dinner walking around lower Manhattan, often stopping for a snack we could carry with us.  I don’t know why the stuffed pretzels appealed to me – maybe it’s another New York City thing.  Mrs. Prindable’s apples, however, always inspired lust in my heart when they were sliced by the host.  I told myself I would order some of them for the hell of it one day.  Fully aware that many things on TV look better than they are, that I would have to order in volume, and that the shipping and handling costs would be an outrage, I took the plunge.  First off, I purchased a 3 pound David’s crumb cake assortment from HSN for just under $30, including shipping, which included three squares each of regular, apple and triple chocolate in a festive box with tissue paper.  The shipment was prompt and everything arrived in one piece.  To make a long story short, the regular version was by far the best, the apple and chocolate being too sweet for me.  That’s not to say they were not also good, but it’s been three weeks now and we still have a couple cuts of apple and chocolate hanging around.  Next, I visited the QVC site and placed an order for 16 individual-size Mrs. Prindable’s “candy bar assortment” apples for $47, inclusive of shipping.  Granny Smith apples are dipped in an excellent soft caramel and then rolled in candy bar material.  They come individually wrapped and are shipped in a big box lined with foam.  All apples arrived in pristine condition, and I received 4 each of candy-coated milk chocolate (think M&Ms), dark chocolate coconut, white chocolate peanut butter cup and milk chocolate crunch (think Nestlé’s Crunch).  Unfortunately, all but the dark chocolate coconut are barely edible unless you are a 5 year-old, in my opinion, the candy coatings being sickeningly sweet.  Too bad, because the apples are great — nice and tart — and the soft caramel is good.  Maybe the knock-off candy bar coating is made from poor quality chocolate, who knows, but whatever it is, you have been warned.  The dark chocolate coconut is very good, though, and does not suffer from the above-mentioned issues.  Next time I may order the nut variety.  I mean, what can you do to a plain nut?  Also from QVC came a 16-piece set of mozzarella-stuffed pretzels from Kim & Scott’s for $47 , including shipping.  Oh, man, these are good.  You are dealing with a high-quality hand-rolled pretzel with nothing but good, solid, ingredients involved.  Then they add stuffing, which, in this case, is like a cross between mozzarella and cream cheese.  This would be my only gripe – that the mozzarella is processed.  However, this is minor, as these pretzels are fab.  They are packed individually in an attractive wrapper that shows the product to full potential.  The other bonus here is that they are heated directly in the wrapper, which makes them super-convenient.  Take my advice and avoid the microwave, though, for the best result.  These were so popular at my house that I was not able to find one in the freezer to photograph for the website a week after they came in.

A piece of David's apple coffee cake

A piece of David's apple coffee cake

Fromager des Clarines

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a hunk of fromage des clarines

Wedges of Fromage des Clarines

We all took it easy today, laying around in one form or another.  Matthew went into San Francisco for his Dignity service and we ate leftover pulled pork on rolls with roasted red pepper strips and sweet pickles for dinner. 

This might be a good time to report on a new, quite decent cheese that Costco is now carrying:  Fromager des Clarines.  Like brie on mild steroids – and a steal at about $15 for 10 ounces – this is a soft cow’s milk cheese from the French region of Franche-Comté.  It’s made by Jean Perrin of Vacherin Mont D’or fame, the raw milk taste explosion that is illegal here because of the dumb-asses who make these kinds of decision.  Think about it.  There is so much absolute crap sold in the US that passes for food — products that are science experiments, like Cool Whip, and cake frostings with no butter, for example — yet they are worried about raw milk cheeses from European companies whose practices most US outfits can only dream of.  Give me a break.  Anyway, Fromager des Clarines, which is milder than Vacherin Mont D’or, needs to be eaten very ripe, with the center like custard. 

I saw a whole array of ripeness represented in the Costco stock, from white and firm to yellow and collapsed – with and without mold on the rind, I might add.  I chose one that was off-white but starting to sink down; normally I get one that’s more far-gone, but I was dealing with guests who might not appreciate it that way.  You should choose one that is more questionable looking – more yellow and concave – and smells strong.  Don’t be afraid to open up 20 wooden boxes to get the perfect specimen!  Eat at room temperature.  Let me say this again:  Eat at room temperature.  If you serve this cold you might as well go buy cheap brie.  When warm and ripe, the texture is very smooth and creamy, and the buttery flavor a little acidic with musty tones and other funkiness that is the hallmark of a good cheese.  While the impact of this cheese on the palate is more limited than real Vacherin Mont D’or (meaning the original made with raw milk and not the versions produced for the American market, which are made with pasteurized milk), it is full-flavored with a great mouthfeel.  Serve with crusty bread – and spoons, if really ripe.  I kid you not.  You can even heat this in the oven; just follow the instructions on the box.

A box of fromage des clarines french cheese

Fancy butter

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Speciality butter made from milk used for the production of parmigiano reggiano

The subject today is specialty butter.  If you go into a gourmet or specialty food shop and check out the butter section you’ll notice smaller, colored packages of pricey fancy butters, usually European or European-style, containing more butterfat and less water than standard American butter, lending them a richer taste.  Many are pasture-based and traditionally churned.  These butters generally have no preservatives or coloring, allowing natural factors to control the color, such as where and when the cows have been grazing.  You’ll see butter made from the milk of particular cows, or cows grazing in specific regions.  Some of this specialty butter is also cultured, meaning made from cream that has been allowed to ferment.  Now and again I’ll select one of these dear butters to eat on baguettes plain, only because they are so damned good and we’re worth it.  Today I brought home a cultured Italian produced by Delitia from the milk collected during the production of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.  It has a deep and nutty flavor with a little acidity and all the denseness associated with more butterfat and less water.  My advice is to choose a good day-to-day Euro-style that won’t totally blow your budget, like Challenge or Strauss, and then work your way through the top-shelf butters when you are looking for something really special.  Count on never being able to going back to cheap butter once you’ve had something better.

Usinger’s Wurst

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Our Usinger’s Wurst order arrived today, so we had German pork products for dinner.  This is a place we always wanted to order from for Christmas, but thought better to first do a trial run to make sure things are up to cut.  Fred Usinger, Inc.  is located in Milwaukee – a pretty good meat city – though I have to say I was a bit disappointed.  As many of you know, I always make my base order from Karl Ehmer, and then add a few things from another butcher.  Ehmer’s offers free shipping, which saves you money even though the products are pricier.  Note that I paid an amount for shipping and handling equal to what I shelled out for actual products from Usinger’s, which is standard everywhere but Ehmer’s.  The reason I keep sniffing at the door of other companies is to find the perfect Leberwurst.  Karl Ehmer’s is good, but, like many brands, is too heavy on the cure and/or smoke for me.  After awhile I find this sickening.  I want to taste the liver, I want it to be moist, and I don’t want to taste TCM.  I also like it chunky, or grob.  Next, I am looking for the Grobe Mettwurst of my childhood – an almost spreadable, tangy, coarse, cured pork sausage product that might be lightly smoked, if at all.  Something like this may be had in the form of Grobe Teewurst, which is really a spread, from places like Schaller & Weber and Ehmer’s, but it’s not really the same thing.  Some meat packers even call Teewurst Mettwurst, which is an outrage.  Speaking of outrage, Karl Ehmer sells Canadian Bacon as Nuss Schinken! Madness.  Back to the illusive Mettwurst.  You have to know your stuff to find this, and you will only be able to come close, since it cannot be legally sold in the US in its original form, according to some of my German butcher friends.  In many cases, sausage close to Mettwurst is sold in the US as summer sausage, but there are so many varieties of the latter that trial and error is not a good way to go.  Call the meat packer and ask for one of the butchers from Germany and he’ll be able to steer you.  For example, the Schaller & Weber people told me that the closest they come to my fantasy is cervelat, which is pretty damned good.  Anyway, we ordered a small quality of each of six liverwursts, a smoked Mettwurst, and a few other things from Usinger’s.  Everything arrived well packed and frozen solid.  I was a little concerned about the frozen part.  Allow me to give you a rundown and review:

Tongue and blood:  Good.  Plenty of tongue.  The downside is the heavy smoke flavor.  They made a mistake and sliced it when we ordered a chunk.  Some in our party were not amused by this, since slicing destroys the texture.
Braunschweiger liverwurst:  Unremarkable.  Springy, perhaps from being frozen or not having enough fat.  It tore.  Not bad on the cure/smoke end of things, but not much flavor.
Milwaukee-style liverwurst:  Ditto.  Could not really tell the difference from the non-Milwaukee version.
Hessische liverwurst:  The only liverwurst  that was truly distinctive.  Pretty good, and heavily smoked, but it worked here.  More creamy than dry.
Old-fashioned liverwurst:  Not really chunky, though they said it would be.  Same review as the Braunschweigers.
Ring liverwurst:  My mother’s favorite, and a bit more flavorful and creamy.
Bavarian leberkaese:  This is a loaf made of pork puree that’s baked and then sliced thickly.  Good, but dense.  If you want it lighter get it from Ehmer’s or another butcher.
Topfsuelze:  No idea, as they sent head cheese by mistake, which is much sharper (more vinegar) and comes in a tube, as opposed to a square.  I was seriously pissed off about this.  When I called they said they’d send the right one out to me or provide a credit.  Nice people, but my nose was out of joint because this is my favorite thing in the whole world, and I didn’t get any.  Not all chopped pork jowl-area scrap meat in aspic is the same, after all.  The head cheese was tasty,  though, as it had plenty of tongue and other good bits, so it wasn’t a total loss.  Steven really liked it, partly because it cut through the heaviness of some of the other items.
Mettwurst, coarse, smoked:  Almost like kielbasa, so it did not work for me.  It’s hard to find the real deal because of the FDA regulations involving the sale of cured meat.
Beef, Farmer & Thueringer summer:  All fine.  The beef has some tang to it.  Texture is firm.  These are like salamis.

Bottom line is that Usinger’s products are good, but tailored to the American palate, in my opinion.  The liverwursts come across as less rich in taste and texture — more like top supermarket versions.  They are also less unique as individuals, whereas there is no question with Ehmer’s, Schaller & Weber, Koenemann’s and Stiglemeier that you know which one you are dealing from first bite, if not sight.  I like that the smoke and cure flavors are less pronounced in all cases but the Hessische – which is by nature heavily smoked – but not enough to pay for that kind of shipping, given other issues.  Berry liked all of it – even the head cheese, which he grabbed after I dropped a piece on the floor and it bounced away from me.  Even I have to admit this is kind of scary.