Category Archives: Products

An Open Letter to Costco

A whole smoked whitefish from acme smoked fish corp in brooklyn

5 December 2010

Costco Wholesale Corporation
Attn: Customer Service
P. O. Box 34331
Seattle, WA 98124

Re: Lack of Acme Fish Corporation’s smoked whitefish products at your Richmond, California, store

Dear Costco:

It’s me, your biggest fan.

I’m wondering why you pulled the rug out from under my supply of smoked whitefish. Clearly you don’t understand what kind of hardship this presents.

I’ve lost hope in terms of the smoked whitefish salad, which you had for some eighteen glorious months several years ago. Those two-pound tubs for $7.99 made me scoff at local bagel stores hawking the exact same stuff for upwards of $15 a pound. The laugh was on me, though, Costco, when I had to go crawling back to them.

Oh, sure, you sometimes have the whole smoked whitefish, but, like a parochial schoolgirl in a short plaid skirt, you’re a tease.

Costco, you know I love you. I always talk you up to my friends, even when you hurt me. I love you even though I understand you conduct random drug tests on your employees, which I believe to be a violation of Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights—but I’m willing to look past that and dip a toe into the waters of hypocrisy because you carry such excellent cheeses. Your inexpensive Prosciutto di Parma, #10 cans of Rokeach gefilte fish, environmentally-friendly cleaning products and Very Berry Sundae have me all wrapped up.

Why can’t you justify my love with a consistent supply of whole smoked whitefish, at least, if you can’t manage to carry the salad?

Some of us on this side of the bay don’t or can’t drive on freeways or bridges and cannot easily get to the San Francisco Costco. Our friends are tired of being asked to schlep these products to us.

Give an ex-New Yorker with a Jewish husband and German mother a break. Exes from South Florida, La La Land, Northern Europe and other appetizing-rich locations now living in the Oakland-to-Richmond corridor of the East Bay would appreciate it, too.

Costco, I believe you have spies people in cyberspace keeping track of what is said about you and your products. I think they might even comment now and again to diffuse negative criticism. I can’t prove it, but the analytics for my website, as well as a few suspicious comments, point in that direction.

I know you didn’t like it when I said the dressings provided with some of your in-store prepared wraps are too viscous because you use gums. I don’t think you liked that at all.

I’m hoping the gentle criticism I offer now and then won’t have a negative effect on my smoked whitefish request.

To remind you, these products are marketed under the Blue Hill Bay label and come from Acme Smoked Fish Corporation in Brooklyn. I also provided a photo of a whole smoked whitefish at the top of this post for your convenience.

I won’t be sending this letter through the mail because you’ll be aware of it in very little time anyway.

With best wishes for a wonderful holiday,

The Akitachow household

PS: I’m assuming you’ll be handing out free cookbooks and samples of your caramel apples and peppermint bark throughout December, but could you possibly have someone there cutting up a whole prosciutto on the afternoon of 9 December?

Old Old Bay

Vik’s Chaat Corner and Market in Berkeley

4 Replies

Sign outside of vik's chaat corner in berkeley

My husband, Steve, took a day off work recently, so we made an afternoon trip to Vik’s Chaat Corner in Berkeley. I’ve written about this place in the past, but not since they moved to their new, deluxe accommodations further down 4th street. 2390 4th street, to be exact.

Interior of Vik’s Chaat Corner in Berkeley

It’s still industrial-like, but larger, more open, light and modern. Long stainless steel tables and sturdy grade school chairs offer plenty of eating real estate for the crowds that show up to munch out on superior Indian snacks.

Cooking stations at Vik’s Chaat Corner in Berkeley

Chaat (think of it as Indian tapas) has become quite popular in the US over the past decade, and a number of chaat houses have cropped up in the Bay Area, but Vik’s was an early one and is still the best, in my opinion.

Steve at Vik’s Chaat Corner in Berkeley

This is my go-to place when I want something spicy. Or something without meat. Or when I’m alone, because it’s a great place to eat and read. It’s controlled mayhem at noon, so a meal comes complete with entertainment if you decide not to read.

Vik’s menu says that “chaat” means “to lick.” I believe it. I’ve been licking my chops here for years.

The weekend is the best time to visit, food-wise, because they offer their full menu – but I can’t deal with all the people. I forgo the chaat with animal protein for more comfort. The weekday chaat is completely vegetarian, unless they offer a weekend special. Often they have the keema samosa listed as such – but don’t count on it. I can tell, you, though, that the vegetarian chaat is wonderful, and if you must have fish, chicken or lamb, you can get one of three daily lunch plates that contain beast.

Chaat at Vik’s in Berkeley

If you’ve never been, go with a couple other people and order an assortment to share so you wind up with several breads to dip into various sauces and condiments. For example, most of the masala dosa potato stuffing is in the middle of this long crepe affair, so you can tear off plain pieces of the dosa on the ends and apply them to whatever looks good to you on other plates.

The average cost of an item at Vik’s is in the neighborhood of $6, so it’s a great place for a cheap meal, but one thing to be aware of is that almost everything has some heat. This would not be a good place to take people who cannot tolerate a slow, steady, pleasant burn. If in doubt, ask.

On this visit, Steve and I ordered:

Keema samosa. These pastry-wrapped “pies” are stuffed with minced lamb and peas and served with mint chutney. The samosa at Vik’s are always stand-out. No kidding. This includes the vegetarian (potato) version. You get two per order and they’re nice and fat – juicy and never greasy. Vik’s achieves real complexity in their dishes, and the deeply-flavored samosa fillings are a perfect example.

Keema samosa at Vik’s in Berkeley

Masala dosa. The dosa is a crepe made of ground rice and dal (lentils) and it’s stuffed with spiced potatoes. On the side there’s coconut chutney and sambar, a subtly-spicy warm lentil sauce. This dosa is large and hangs over the plate it’s served on. The potato stuffing in the masala dosa is different than the one in the samosa, so don’t have any qualms about ordering both items. I love the coconut chutney, which is cold and has a slightly sweet edge. It’s also nice to add an item that does not include the ubiquitous cholle (chick pea curry) on the side. The lentil sauce gives a little variety.

Masala dosa at Vik’s in Berkeley

Potatoes inside the masala dosa at Vik’s in Berkeley

Bhatura cholle. This is a huge puri (puffed, fried bread made of fermented wheat) served with chick pea curry and Indian pickles, which are pungent and hot. The puri is the “bhatura” and the chick pea curry is the “cholle.” This is a dramatic and savory chaat item that is a must when I’m involved in a trip to Vik’s.

Lunch special B, which was chicken korma. Lunch specials come with a small serving of the main dish, roti (flat whole wheat bread), papadam (thin, brittle, chick pea flour bread), some kind of dal (lentil sauce), rice, raita (cold yogurt sauce) and pickle. Lunch specials work well when you share because one provides three dipping options for crepes or bread. Steve is a big fan of these plates, while I’m more interested in chaat, figuring I can get a chicken curry elsewhere.

Lunch plate at Vik’s in Berkeley

If you go on the weekend, I suggest trying:

Kathi kabob. This is an egg-covered paratha wrap with boneless chicken chunks, onions and cilantro and comes with mint chutney. Paratha is a relatively thick, flaky, buttery whole wheat flat bread.

Lamb baida roti – a wrap made using roti and spiced ground lamb filling. The filling, which is also used in the keema samosa, is über-savory and addictive.

They have a couple of new items on the menu, but what I really liked seeing was salty lassi! I’m not a mango lassi kind of girl. Their version of salty lassi has herbs. Interesting. Never had lassi? How come? It’s a yogurt drink and serves as a foil for the hot food.

Salty lassi at Vik’s in Berkeley

It’s worth mentioning that Vik’s has a full sweets counter. If you like milky sweets, try a couple of the squares that look like solidified milk. They’ll be really sweet – like sweetened condensed milk – and may have pistachio or rosewater in there.

They carry my fave: rasmalai. These paneer (milk curd) dumplings in sweetened milk should be tried by all. The thing you might find odd is the texture. Unfamiliar textures seem to be a nonstarter for many people. Come on!

Steve and the parental unit love gulab jamun. The best way for me to describe these is to call them large donut holes saturated with, and swimming in, syrup.

They don’t have kheer (rice pudding), as far as I know, and if you order it in any restaurant I’ll come after you. It’s so easy and inexpensive to make at home there’s no reason to buy it. I’ll post my recipe soon. Milk, sugar, rice and a couple drops of rosewater. That’s all you need.

Now that I’ve covered the Chaat Corner, let me tell you about Vik’s Market, which you must walk through to get to the restaurant.

Items purchased at Vik's market laid out on a table

I spent about $25 on all the stuff in the photo.

What I bought:

-4 imported spice mixes that will season several meals each. Tandoori chicken, butter chicken, chicken masala, and dhanshak masala. 100 grams – AKA 3.5 ounces – apiece for about $1.50 per. None of those pretty, little, expensive, American-made packets for me. Check out my posts about this here and here.
-400 grams of cashews.
-Small bottle of rose water.
-Fenugreek leaves and seeds (methi).
-One jar of avakai mango pickle (little, pickled, raw mangos with chili and spices)
-One jar of lime pickle.
-Half-kilo of dried chick peas.

For Indian home cooking, a well-stocked Indian market is a must. Not only are the prices great, but they have everything you need and then some.

The next time you eat at Vik’s, check out all the aisles of the market just for fun. The imported pickle products alone are worth the price of admission. Even when you can find these at the supermarket, the prices are insane compared to Vik’s.

Northern German Herring Salad

94 Replies

Renate’s Herring Salad in Northern German Style

My Mom just came back from a long trip to Germany, where she’s from, and has been raving about one of her favorite dishes: herring salad.

I miss herring salad. To make it properly in the US borders on impossible, though.

Herring, a fairly strong, oily (and Omega-3-rich!) fish from the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans and the Baltic Sea, is a way of life in Northern Europe. Not so much here. Much of the herring consumed in the US is of the appetizing variety that’s part of (Ashkenazi) Jewish cuisine. You know what I mean: herring in cream sauce, herring in wine sauce, chopped herring. If you’re not connected to a hard-core herring eating community, chances are you don’t know Matjes from Buckling.

For the record, Matjes herring are young, mild herring that run once per year in early summer. A Buckling is a hot-smoked herring. The head and insides are removed, but not the roe. My Oma (Grandma) loved these, and used to talk about them all the time, describing their savoriness in full glory. Loosely like a kipper.

If you hear Germans talking about “green” herring (grüne Heringe), they mean herring straight out of the water – nothing done to them yet. These are often fried whole in butter. Fried herring are called Bratheringe. The German language is famous for producing compound words from multiple nouns, verbs and adjectives. Here, a form of the verb “to fry,” or “braten,” is simply now part of the noun. You may not care, but I figure I’d mention it, along with Straßenreinigungsgebühr, or “street cleaning fee.”

Among the ways Europeans deal with herring, a popular one is simply curing and preserving with salt in a barrel. The fish are then soaked in water to rid them of excess salt and used in various recipes, like herring salad. They are not cooked – just cured. It may rock your world to know that the jarred Vita Herring you’ve been buying at the supermarket all your life are not cooked….by heat, anyway. If you eat this stuff, go ahead and have ceviche. Hell, go ahead and take the next little leap to sashimi. Many things, both good and bad, are arrived at incrementally.

It is very difficult to find the aforementioned salt herring in the US. The only place I know of in the SF Bay Area that carries the real deal is Nordic House, in Berkeley. They actually dig the herring fillets out of a barrel in front of you. Another option is an on-line outfit, like GermanDeli.com, but the shipping and handling charges are outrageous.

Most of the Euro and Euro-style herring sold in the US is pickled and in jars or canned and in some kind of mustard or tomato sauce. You don’t want any of that stuff for this herring salad. Try to come as close as possible to the right thing. Keep reading.

To further complicate matters, I like my herring salad made with young, tender, Matjes herring – which are impossible to come by here in a salted state. When you see them at all they are in a marinade. When looking for neutral-tasting Matjes herring for this salad, be especially careful with that sold in a marinade — such as the 1 kg containers of Swedish Matjes herring available at Nordic House — because there is often lots of dill present. Although you may be told you can “soak” the dill flavor out, you can’t. Plus, there is sugar that will remain after soaking.

After trial and error I found a great product that is available in many US cities and via mail order – much easier to come by than barrel-cured herring: Richter Matjes herring fillets in canola oil. There is no marinade. This is just salted Matjes herring packed in oil. All you need to do is rinse and dry, which will cut down on the salt. It may still be too salty for you, but you’ll never know if you don’t try it. If you live in the SF Bay Area, you can get this at Berkeley Bowl West, across from the meat counter. UPDATE on 1/29/13: I have not seen the Richter Matjes at Berkeley Bowl West for a few months now.

The salad I make from these herring passes muster with my Mom, so you know it’s good. Not only has she eaten a sea of herring in her lifetime, she’s also brutally honest about what she likes and doesn’t like. Feelings don’t always seem to factor in.

richter Matjes herring in canola oil
In Germany, your basic herring salad includes only a few ingredients, and you can even make the “salad” with whole fillets, which are then served, sauce and all, with little steamed or boiled yellow-fleshed potatoes. Sometimes the sauce will be made a bit runny when prepared this way.

If you make the salad with chunks, you can serve it on little crusty rolls or with said potatoes.

richter matjes herring in canola oil
In Southern Germany, beets are added. We hail from North Germany, so we don’t include them.

chopped apple and onion for herring salad on white cutting board
Forget the Sauerbraten, which I never saw any of my relatives eat and I’ve only had once or twice, and try this. This is what Germans really eat at home all the time. Believe you me, this will be interesting to you if you never had anything but Vita.

If you hate it, send me a recipe from your homeland that you think an American won’t eat and I’ll try it. I eat everything but kidneys and custard.

Renate’s Herring Salad (Renate’s Heringssalat)

500 grams Matjes herring (a little over a pound/2 Richter 250 gram packs)*
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup good mayonnaise
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and cut into small dice
1 small red onion, chopped (not too fine)
Black pepper
Perhaps a little heavy cream or half and half

1). Open containers of herring in sink and transfer fillets to colander. Rinse under cold water well and dry very well before transferring to cutting board.
2). Cut herring fillets into chunks (something like 4 – 6 pieces per fillet, depending upon size).
3). Whisk sour cream and mayo together in a glass or earthenware bowl with a couple grinds of black pepper.
4). Fold in apple and onion.
5). Fold in herring.
6). Cover and place in fridge for an hour.
7). Check sauce situation. If too thick, you can fold in a little heavy cream or half and half, but don’t thin too much.
8). Serve or set back in fridge until you do.

Allow to sit to marinade a bit.

*If you use salt-cured, barrel herring, you’ll need to soak it at least a day in a goodly quantity of water, changing the water often. Dry it well. Action here will depend upon what you buy. If you are lucky enough to find salted Matjes herring in bulk, it most likely won’t be as salty as mature barrel herring, but your mileage may vary.

Indian-style Sloppy Joes

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“Butter” ground meat over rice – AKA Indian sloppy joes

Here’s an odd recipe I concocted one afternoon when I had ground beef and pork on hand and not a whole lot else.

I thought about sloppy joes. My Mom, who’s German, would not often make something so “American,” but she would surprise us now and then with sloppy joes, made from scratch, which I took too.

I wanted something less tomatoey and more spicy, though.

My kitchen is generally well-stocked with spices and spice mixes, so I looked around to see what could be had for the ground beast. Enter butter chicken masala spice mix from MDH. I like their products. They’re imported from India and much more reasonably priced than versions produced in the US for American cooks. Buy them in Indian markets, such as Vik’s in Berkeley. They’re perfect when you don’t have time to mix your own blends and can’t deal with a grinder, though you’ll want to check the ingredient list to see if any doctoring is called for. In the case of this mix, you must add a little fenugreek. I haven’t a clue why MDH does not include fenugreek in its butter chicken spices, since it’s integral to the dish, but there you go.

Note that butter chicken and chicken tikka masala are not the same, though my guess is that the chicken tikka masala spices would be fine in this dish, too. Take a look at whatever you have on hand and make sure it’s balanced. For example, don’t use something really heavy on the star anise, unless you want it that way. You want a little heat, too, so if the mix has no dried red chili powder, add a bit. Cayenne works fine. Sniff the spice mix for balance.

The best ground meat for this is lamb, but you can use a combo of beef and pork, which works very well. Ground chicken and turkey are too lean and will result in a dry dish.

You can serve this over rice or on buns with a dollop of really good, plain yogurt.

If you can make this a day in advance, that would be excellent, because it’ll taste better and you can easily remove remaining fat that will have solidified in the fridge.

Make enough for two meals.

Indian-style Sloppy Joes
Serves 8, or two meals for 4

3 pounds ground meat (lamb is great, pork and beef (90% lean) mix is good, poultry – no)
1 large onion, chopped so finely that it’s almost pureed (in food processor)
1/4 cup cashews, ground into a fine paste with 1/4 cup water (food processor)
2 – 3 tablespoons butter chicken spice mix (if spice mix is missing fenugreek add a pinch; ditto ground red chili pepper)
1 extra large tomato, coarsely pureed
1/2 – 1 cup chicken stock or water
Rice or buns
Really good, plain yogurt

1). In heavy-gauge Dutch oven or other vessel, fry meat until it’s a bit browned. Usually will not need oil for this because your ground meat should have sufficient fat.
2). Remove meat with a slotted spoon to a bowl; cover with foil and set aside.
3). Remove all but a couple tablespoons of the rendered fat from the cooking pot and place pot over low flame.
4). Add the onion and brown slowly, stirring often. This will take a good 15 minutes. Keep the flame low. You want to caramelize the onion a bit, but first the liquids have to cook off. Be patient and don’t burn the onion!!!
5). Add the cashew paste and fry the whole mass for a moment or two, turning the flame up to medium.
6). Add the spices and fry this mass for a moment or two.
7). Add the tomatoes and fry the mixture for a couple of minutes.
8). Add the ground meat and combine well.
9). Add stock or water so that there is barely a quarter-inch of liquid above the meat.
10). Stir and bring to a simmer.
11). Cover and simmer over very low flame for about 20 minutes, adding a bit of stock or water now and then, but only if needed.
12). Remove cover, stir, and allow to simmer for another few minutes until most of the liquids have cooked off.
13). Skim visible fat (it’ll no doubt be bright red from the spices…)
14). Serve over rice or on a bun with a little yogurt on top.

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