Category Archives: Products

Smoked whitefish at Costco

Whitefish in shrink wrap sold at Costco in December 2007

Joy of joys, they started selling smoked whitefish at my Costco.  This is a cleaned whitefish that has been fully deboned, though the skin remains.  They put the two halves of the cleaned fish together in the package so it looks more or less like a whole fish.  My mother made some whitefish salad out of this, meaning she flaked the fish and mixed it with Hellman’s and a bit of sour cream.  Not bad, but this is one salty whitefish.  In fact, this is the saltiest smoked whitefish I ever bought.  If you can deal with that, and I can, since it is this or nothing, then give it a go.  I don’t know about your place, but working with smoked fish products here has the dog skidding into the kitchen.

Mom and the dog making whitefish salad in December 2007

Spritz cookie woes

recipe that came with villaware coolie press that has problems

Recipe that came with Villaware Power Cookie Press - read carefully!

I don’t know about spritz cookies.  I bought a cheap cookie press that had the Hershey’s Kiss logo and it sucked right from the start; I threw it in the trash after tangling with it for an hour.  I next bought a rechargeable model – the Villaware Power Cookie Press.  This looked a little sturdier and had larger, metal, cookie plates.  We thought we’d start with the basic spritz recipe that came with the thing, but this did not work out well.  Check out the recipe.  Do these people edit their manuals?  We wound up making a pretty soft dough but the press still had to work hard to extrude it – making a huge amount of noise in the process.  Furthermore, the cookies did not adhere well to the ungreased baking sheet and would sometimes come off in pieces.  The outcome was an assortment of ugly cookies with a few nice ones, as well as some thumbprint cookies my mom made when she was ready to give the press the old heave-ho.  I have been told this takes practice, but I don’t know if I have it in me to go through this kind of aggravation.  Please email me if you have any advice.

Downsizing mayo

I’m really mad right now.  For some reason I did not know that Best Foods/Hellmann’s had downsized its mayonnaise.   Usually I’m on top of this kind of thing, especially when it comes to something good.  As I’ve said many times, if you use mayo, buy Hellmann’s or Safeway Select.  Period.  Do not buy Costco’s premium mayo unless you like it really, really heavy.  It is very close to homemade, which I am not a fan of, oddly enough, but maybe you are, so there you go.  Anyway, I was sitting idle, which certainly can invite the devil in, and noticed that mayo was on sale at Lucky; the flyer was in front of me on the coffee table.  The add said something about the “15 oz or 30 oz size.”  I’m like, WTF?  Mayo comes in half-pints, pints, quarts, gallons and so on.  Those sneaky &*$#@’s really inflame me.  If they want to make more money (and we all know Unilever is hurting, right?) then they should raise the price, but don’t try to put one over on us.  This also messes up cooks, who need n cups of mayo for a recipe.  I wonder if I am so behind the curve here that other manufacturers have followed this lead – or if Unilever was following another’s lead.  Note to self:  go to Safeway tomorrow and look at all the mayo.  I’m wondering if those fools had the nerve to downsize the 8 oz jar to 7 3/4 oz.

Pickles from NYC

5 gallons of real pickles from Guss in NYC

5 gallons of real pickles from NYC

Today I made like Peter Riegert in Crossing Delancey:  my 5 gallon bucket of Guss’ Pickles arrived from New York.  These are the real thing – fermented in brine with NO VINEGAR.  Decent pickles here cost an arm and a leg, are hard to come by and, since I didn’t make any myself this summer, I had to have them express mailed to me.  Why 5 gallons, you ask?  The shipping is so pricey that it is not cost effective to purchase individual gallon containers – plus, they keep for months and we were only interested in the full sours anyway.  That’s why.  I’m writing this entry three days later and I think we are down a couple quarts, at least, so this will not be a problem.  I divided up the large pail into smaller containers, so we should be set for quite some time.  Guss’ Pickles is a New York City institution, having operated on the Lower East Side for years.  If you want to order them, here’s the site:  www.gusspickle.com.  Note that Guss’ pickles is a bit like Ray’s pizza in that you will find many operations using the name in one form or another or making this or that claim, but the guys in New Jersey who’ll mail you pickles can be traced back to the founder, Izzy Guss.  If you want the whole spiel, just Google “Guss’ pickles” or check out the Wiki entry.

Guss Pickles from NYC

Guss' Pickles from NYC

A little Manchego

I found shards of Manchego on Berry’s futon today.  Who the hell is feeding the dog Manchego? Is it really necessary to give him sheep’s milk cheese?  I know full well he is the main consumer of all the mozzarella sticks I buy, so let’s get real here.  While we are on the subject, I know many people are pooh-poohing Manchego in favor of other Spanish cheeses these days, but I still enjoy and purchase it now and again, usually from Costco.  It is a semi-hard cheese that lasts a long time if you treat it right, so it is perfectly fine to buy it in those Costco-sized hunks.  I love the strongish, zesty, salty flavor and eat it with some type of marmalade rather than quince paste, which is the traditional accompaniment.  If you have Manchego on hand, a baguette or two, a good marmalade, perhaps some sweet butter and most certainly a strong Spanish or Italian red, you are set for dinner.  If you have young children you can serve them grape juice.