Category Archives: Products

Good pupusas at Costco

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Casa Sanchez papusas

When I was in Costco last week I noticed a new product in the prepared food section:  Casa Sanchez pupusas.  A pupusa is a thick, closed tortilla made of masa that’s stuffed with various things, like beans, meat and/or cheese.  There are 10 griddle-ready cheese papusas shrink-wrapped in the package available at Costco.

According to most sources, Pupusas originated in El Savador, but are popular across Latin America, with numerous variants.  If you want to claim that pupusas originated in another country, I won’t be suckered into a fight.  The memory of something I wrote about the history of the chile pepper and its resulting warfare is still fresh in my memory.

I like some of the Casa Sanchez salsas, so I thought I’d give these a try, particularly because decent non-homemade pupusas are not easy to come by.

They’re good, but don’t microwave them.  Wipe a cast iron pan or griddle with a little canola oil and dry-fry the pupusas on each side until the cheese melts and they have some texture.  I also made them successfully on my baking stone in a hot convection oven.  Don’t overcook or the cheese will bake out.

I like the fact that they are plain, and work well as a quick side to something like chili or a salad; we even had them for breakfast one day. Casa Sanchez is generous with the mild, white melting cheese (Cotilla), and the masa is slightly salty.

If you don’t have access to homemade cheese pupusas, these will suit your needs at a cost of $9.99.

Costco’s pasta salad with salmon

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Costco started selling a bow-tie pasta and salmon salad recently, and I gave it a try a couple of weeks ago.  I applaud them for finding a way to utilize what I assume to be unsold farmed salmon, but the recipe leaves much to be desired.

I can’t prove it, but it tastes (and looks) as if chunks of cooked salmon are combined with bow-tie pasta and containers of one of the bruschetta spreads or tapenades they sell.  The flavor is very harsh, in my opinion, due to the lack of any creamy element.  They either have to cut that heavy, olive-laden “dressing” with something gentle, or start from scratch.  Perhaps a modified Caesar might work.  If they don’t want creamy then they need to use some kind of vinaigrette.  Something.  Anything.

I also taste preservatives in there, but it’s hard to figure out what is going on because it hits you like gangbusters.  My taste memory brings me to the subtle rancidity of some canned antipasto I tried once as a child.

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.

Stonewall Kitchen scone mix

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Cheddar scones

Friends of mine gave me an assortment of food gifts from Stonewall Kitchen.  They’re from Maine and so is Stonewall Kitchen, so it was a nice, local-type thing, like when I send Acme bread out to other parts.

The scone mix has been tempting me for awhile now, so one day this past weekend I thought I’d greet the morning and residents with hot scones.  Now, mixes can be good when they are from a company that uses quality ingredients, as well as convenient, but they are never cost-effective.  I look on these as a luxury and an exception.

Scones are a bit of a mess to make, since they result in a sticky, buttery dough that needs to be rolled and cut.  In this case, the mix saves you from having to add anything but butter, but it does not save you from the messy bits.  No way around that.

I had some aged cheddar hanging ar0und, so I crumbled that into the dough.

The scones came out perfect.  They were airy with just the right amount of density, and had great flavor.  That said, the mix is listed at $6.95 on the Stonewall Kitchen website – which is too much to spend for flour, sugar, baking powder, sea salt and baking soda on an ongoing basis.