Marga's Food Blog

I eat!

Year: 2011 (Page 1 of 10)

Contessa frozen “On the Stove” meals – Product Review

December 28, 2011 / / 1 Comment

For the last month or so, Grocery Outlet has been carrying three of Contessa’s frozen “On the Stove” meals ($4), out of the 20 or so that Contessa makes: Orange Beef, Crispy Pork with Tangerine Sauce and Crispy Chicken with General Tsao Sauce.  I’ve finally tried them all and while I really like the Orange Beef, the other two are not nearly as good.

These meals consist of a package with four different components: a bag of  white rice, a small bag of meat, another bag of sauce, and frozen vegetables .   To prepare, you stir fry the meat  for 5 minutes or so, add the veggies for another 3-4 minutes and then the sauce for 30 seconds.  You microwave the rice for 3 minutes, put it all altogether and you are done.  Note that there is too much rice for the amount of meat/vegetables/sauce included – I ended up discarding about 1/3 of it.

One package is supposed to have two and a half 1-cup servings.  Now, if you are a child or on your deathbed maybe 1 cup of food (mostly rice) may satisfy your hunger.  Personally, I’d say it serves one adult – maybe you could share it with a younger child, but not more.

Now, as for the food itself.  The meats were generally good, tasty and tender, and they brown nicely.  The rice is as what you could expect from something that comes from a bag.  The sauces were generally good; I particularly liked the orange sauce that came with the beef, it was dark and intense and not overly sweet.  The General Tsao sauce was a bit too spicy for me, but it was still pretty good.

Where the problems come are with the vegetables.  The orange beef came with onions, leeks and red peppers and these were all very nice, they kept their flavor and went well with the sauce.  The tangerine pork, OTOH, came with onions, water chestnuts, carrots and scallions and these were less than tasty.  I actually disliked the bell peppers, carrots and water chestnuts that came with the chicken, they had such an “off” taste that I couldn’t make myself eat them.

In all, I’d say that the orange beef is restaurant quality (well, Chinese restaurant quality) and I would definitely buy it again (and have).  I wouldn’t say the same about the other two meals.  If GO offered other flavors, I would probably try them as well.

I hadn’t been able to figure out how much these meals sell in regular supermarkets – perhaps they don’t have much distribution yet -, but I definitely wouldn’t pay more than $4.

 

Wine Braised Short Ribs

December 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I decided to make short ribs for my 2011 Christmas Eve dinner because I’ve run out of new cuts of meats to try.  I’ve done a standing rib roast, a boneless prime rib roast, roast beef, beef Wellington (twice!), rack of lamb, lamb leg, filet mignon roast and goose.  I’m sure I made a turkey once upon a time as well.  I wanted something different!  Short ribs came to mind because, well, they are delicious.  I thought my dad would be coming and I knew he would very much like them.  Alas, he couldn’t make it but the dish still proved a winner – very tasty and something you can make in advance.

I basically made the epicurious.com recipe for Short Ribs Provencale skipping the baby carrots and the olives.  I increased the quantities a bit, using a little over 8lbs to serve 5 adults and 3 children.  I served them over mashed potatoes, a great combination.

The key to these melt-in-your mouth short ribs is nicely browning them before braising them, and then braising them *slowly*.

Wine Braised Short Ribs

  • 8 lbs short ribs
  • sea salt
  • ground black pepper
  • 2 Tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 yellow onions, finely chopped
  • 2 carrots, finely chopped
  • 2 celery ribs, finely chopped
  • 1 head of garlic, each clove individually peeled
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp. herbes de Provence
  • 3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
  • 3 cups red wine
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 2 cups canned diced tomatoes in juice, drained
  • 2 bay leaves

Preheat oven to 275F

Trim short ribs of excessive fat.  Dry them and generously season them with salt and pepper.

Heat olive oil in a large oven-safe pot over medium-high heat.  Add several short ribs, making sure to not overcrowd the pan.  Brown on all sides, remove, set aside and repeat with the rest of the short ribs.

Reduce the heat to medium low.  Add the onions, carrots and celery.  Cover and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Stir in the garlic, herbes de Provence and flour and cook for about a minute.  Add the red wine, bring to a boil and scrape off the pieces of meat stuck to the pan.  Add the broth, tomatoes and bay leaves and mix well.  Return the short ribs to the pot, and pour in any juices left on the plate.  Bring to a boil, remove from heat, cover and put in the oven.  Cook for about four hours, stirring from time to time.

Remove the pot from the oven and let cool for about an hour.  Place in the fridge and refrigerate overnight or up to three days.  Remove, uncover and spoon off the layer of fat that has accumulated on the top.  Discard.  Recover the pot and place in a 300F oven until warm.

Remove short ribs from the pot and place in a serving dish.  Keep warm.  Remove bay leaves and discard.  Put pot on the stove, uncovered, and boil over medium-high heat until it reduces somewhat.  Using an immersion blender, puree the sauce until smooth.  Season with salt and pepper and serve with the short ribs.

Marga’s 2011 Christmas Eve Menu

Marga’s Favorite Recipes

Marie’s Sesame Ginger Salad Dressing – Product Review

December 27, 2011 / / 1 Comment

This year I didn’t want to bother making a complicated salad for my Christmas Eve dinner.  Instead I got an organic salad mix from Grocery Outlet and a bottle of Marie’s Sesame Ginger Salad Dressing from Safeway.  This proved to be a great decision.  The dressing was simply delicious.  I probably should go buy more salad so I can eat more of it 🙂

Anyway, so far this is my favorite salad dressing hands down.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup – Recipe

December 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Once again, my daughter Mika asked me to make butternut squash soup as part of my Christmas Eve menu.  I had made a version of it for my 2008 Christmas Eve dinner, but I hadn’t been that thrilled with it.  I found a number of well-rated recipes online, but many reviewers suggested that they were quite bland without some doctoring.  So I decided to start with Claire Robinson‘s recipe as a base and add extra seasonings to make it tastier.  The results were quite good, even my husband liked the taste.  I didn’t blend it as much as I should have, however, so parts of it were a bit chunky 🙁  The soup, as I made it, was unfortunately a bit too spicy for Mika, though perfect for the rest of us.  To make it child friendly substitute regular curry powder for the Madras curry powder I used.  I made this soup the day before I served it, it heated up very well.  This recipe should serve 12 adults easily, half it if there are fewer of you.  Serve with sour cream.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

  • 2 butternut squashes
  • 1/4 cup olive oil + more for brushing
  • salt and pepper
  • 4 shallots, chopped
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh ginger
  • 2 Tbsp. fresh sage, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp. curry powder
  • 2 tsp. Madras curry powder
  • 1 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp. allspice
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 2 quarts chicken stock

Directions

Preheat oven to 375F

Cut off tops and bottoms of the squashes.  Cut them in two, lengthwise.  Scoop out and discard the seeds.  Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put facing down on a baking sheet.  Bake in the oven for 1 hour.  Remove from the oven and carefully turn the squash around, so the flesh faces up.  Let cool and then scoop out the pulp into a bowl, discarding the peels.

Heat 3 Tbsp. of olive oil over medium-high heat in a stock pot.  Add the chopped shallots and the ginger and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.  Add the sage and spices and cook, stirring, for a minute or two.  Add the reserved squash and the stock and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and simmer for at least 10 minutes.  Let cool and then blend with an immersion blender until smooth.  Alternatively, blend in a blender in batches.  Return to the pot and cook for at least five more minutes to let flavors blend.  Season with salt and pepper.

Marga’s Best Recipes

Marga’s 2011 Christmas Eve Menu

 

Christmas Eve 2011 – Menu & Recipes

December 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

One more Christmas, one more Christmas Eve celebration with my sister Kathy, my niece Nikki and my best friends Lola and Iggy.  I usually make elaborate multi-course meals but this year I was tired and not very inspired or enthusiastic.  I wouldn’t have minded just getting Chinese takeout (our Christmas day staple), but the family wanted more so I complied.  Still, this year my menu was completely streamed down.  I loved it!

I mostly made dishes that I could get ready in advance (at least one day before), and that were not “time sensitive”.  That’s important because often times I make stuff that needs to be baked/roasted and that means that it has to go into and out of the oven at a set time (specially if I’m juggling multiple oven dishes).  As my guests are not always punctual (or predictably unpunctual) I have to guess both at what time I’ll start serving dinner and how long it will take to go through each course – I’m often wrong and then the pacing of the meal doesn’t work well.  This menu consisted mostly of dishes that I started warming up half an hour before my guests were supposed to arrive, and then I could leave over very warm heat on the stove until I was ready to serve them.  This was great! It meant I was able to spend more time at the dining table than in the kitchen, which is very rare for me during Holiday dinners.  From now on I’m determined to give up on roasts (I’ve cooked all the ones I wanted to anyway) and instead serve great braises as my main dishes.

My menu this year consisted of:

– Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Now, if it was up to me I would have made my adored mushroom soup.  But Mika wanted butternut squash soup and, again, I complied.  Alas, the recipe I made, while good, was a bit too spicy so she didn’t really eat much.  Now I have a whole tureen-worth ready to eat by myself.  I’m not too excited, but the soup was good.

– Caramelized Onion and Blue or Goat Cheese and Mushroom Pastries.

I made the former last year and they were delicious.  This year they were a favorite as well.  I also tried them with goat cheese instead of blue cheese, and while good the blue cheese ones are better.  I made another sheet with sauteed mushrooms, good but not as much either.

– Mixed Greens Salad with Sesame Ginger Dressing

Store bought, but delicious.

– Wine Braised Short Ribs with Mashed Potatoes

This recipe was quite good, though I probably should have salted the ribs more.  Still, we all enjoyed them and they were perfect with the mashed potatoes.

– Tres Leches Cake

This was Mika’s idea and it was a great one.  The cake wasn’t as delicious as other ones I’ve had (the problem may have been I didn’t sit overnight), but it was quite good anyway.  I’ll definitely try other versions in the future.

Marga’s Party Menus & Recipes

 

Easy Bake Oven Redux – and where to get cheap mixes.

December 14, 2011 / / 4 Comments

It’s been four years since I got Mika (now 9 1/2 yo) an Easy Bake Oven (a model which has been recalled since).  When I first got it, and for years afterwards, the kids had little interest on it.  The mixes were boring, the portions too small and it took too long to make them.  We did go through all the mixes that came with the oven, but after that we put the oven away.  Indeed, if I wasn’t so lazy I would have sent it back when they had the recall.

But I’ve come to learn that a toy that doesn’t interest a child when you get it, can really interest them years later.  A couple of days ago we went to the 99-cents only store and found a bunch of Easy Bake Oven mixes for, well, 99-cents each.  These are the full size packages, each containing about 4 mixes (each of which makes enough for one cookie-size recipe).  While 99-cents for the equivalent of 4 cookies may seem expensive, these packages usually retail for $6 to $10!  Mika saw them, wanted them so I bought a couple of packages.  She knew exactly where the Easy Bake Oven was (in the garage, I think) and somehow we managed to find the necessary tools that went with it, so she went ahead and made the brownies.  She needed a little help putting the pan inside the oven – it’s a bit tricky – but she got the hang of it and it went well.  Well, not great, because she did not put the timer so the brownie came out too dry, but well enough.  Cookies are next in the menu.

If she (or Camila) show more interest I may go back to the 99-cents store and get more mixes, at that price they can’t be beat.  But I daresay they’ll get bored with it again pretty soon.

City Center Grill – Oakland – Review

December 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We went to the City Center Grill for lunch a couple of weeks ago when we took place in an Occupy Oakland protest (as you can see, these protests do bring business to nearby eateries, we saw several cops eating around as well).  As it was in the weekend, our choices for lunch were limited.  Unfortunately, City Center Grill wasn’t a good one.

City Center Grill offers breakfast, burgers, sandwiches and salads.  We went for the cheeseburgers, $7.50 with French Fries and a small drink.  The fries were OK, but the burgers left much to be desired.  I don’t think we even finished them, even though they were pretty small for the price.  The fries were good, however.

Service (this is a place where you order at the counter) was very friendly.  Still, I wouldn’t go back.

City Center Grill

1221 Broadway, #105
Oakland, CA
510-452-3100
M – F 6:30 AM – 3:30 PM

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews

 

Master Chef comes to San Francisco – Auditions Tomorrow! (12/10)

December 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments




I’ve never watched Master Chef on Fox as, honestly, I had never heard about the show, but I got an e-mail promoting auditions for the show in San Francisco tomorrow, Saturday Dec. 10th (which, btw, is International Human Rights day).  The show matches passionate home cooks against each other, and provides a showcase for those cooks among us who really think we cook better than any Michelin star chef out there 🙂

Now, personally, I can’t cook without a recipe, so this show is definitely not for me – but it seems like a great opportunity for any of my creative readers.

The auditions in San Francisco are

Dec. 10, 2011
10 AM to 6 PM
Le Cordon Bleu
350 Rhode Island St.
San Francisco

Visit http://www.masterchefcasting.com/MasterChef-Season-3-Open-Calls for info on what to bring with you.

Tim’s Backyard BBQ – Medford, OR – Restaurant Review

December 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments

We went to Tim’s Backyard BBQ for dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  We had seen the restaurant as we drove to our hotel, and Mike is pretty much always in the mood for BBQ.   While we liked the down home vibe of Tim’s – it’s larger and not as divish as our favorite BBQ places back home, but still very modest -, the food was somewhat disappointing.

We ordered a lot of food, and we got a lot of food.  The food was somewhat expensive, but you did get quite a lot of it.  Unfortunately, it all tasted absolutely the same.  That’s because all items came drenched in BBQ sauce, and you could taste little of the meat itself.  The BBQ sauce (no choice as to spiciness) was nice enough, but I prefer to taste my meat as well.

Of the stuff we had, the ribs were by far the best.  They were fall of the bone tender, though we would have preferred a more smokey flavor.  The pulled pork and the brisket were almost identical, both were shredded and dry (perhaps that’s why they were drenched).   The links were perhaps the most disappointing.   Links are generally Mike’s favorite, but at Tim’s they tasted/felt like store bought sausages with sauce on them.

On the plus side, the onion rings were good.  Then again, I’m pretty sure most restaurants buy the onion rings pre-made and just dump them into the deep frier.

In all, if we were in the mood for BBQ in Medford, we’d probably head somewhere else.

Tim’s Backyard BBQ
1605 West Main Street
Medford, OR
(541) 499-0707
http://timsbackyardbbq.com/

Marga’s Restaurant Reviews – Outside the Bay Area

Bellafoglia and California Pizza Kitchen Frozen Pizzas – yuuum

December 8, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Tuesdays are a hard dinner day for me.  The kids have classes until late, so we don’t get home until 5:30, and then Mike has to go and rush to make it to his School Board meetings.  While I love cooking, I don’t like cooking when I’m rushed and I don’t particularly want to cook just for the kids and I (if I make what they want, I won’t be happy, if I make what I want, they won’t be).  So often times, if we have no leftovers, we rely on take out or frozen food.  Last night was one of those nights, so I headed to Grocery Outlet for some frozen pizza.

Generally, Grocery Outlet has tons of choices, but this time they were more limited.  The kids only like cheese pizza, so I went for this California Pizza Kitchen version.  I’d had the CPK frozen pizzas before, and I’d liked them.  Well, so did the kids.  While they still prefer take out pizza, they were perfectly happy to eat this one.  We got the version that comes with the flat bread appetizer, and the kids pronounced the bread the “best bread ever”.  It’s pretty good, and it tasted garlicky to me, but I didn’t tell them that :-).  I didn’t try the spinach artichoke dip as that’s not my thing.  This pizza was available at GO for $4. It’s think crust, so it pretty much only fed my two hungry kids.

For me, I got a Bellafoglia pizza with a bunch of toppings ($4).  I’d never heard of the brand, but I’m glad I gave it a try.  This was by far the best frozen pizza I’ve ever had.  The cornmeal crust had a lot to do with it, it was just crunchy enough, just salty enough and just very good.  The cheese and toppings were good quality and were well balanced.  I did some research when I came home, and found out that Bellafoglia is a product of Hayward’s Pacific Cheese Co. a cheese supplier.  Sizewise, this pizza may be enough for two adults, but probably if they eat a salad or something else as well.  I ate half of one, and was hungry later in the evening.

In all, I think I’ll keep a few of these pizzas in my freezer for nights just like last’s.

 

« Older posts

© 2025 Marga's Food Blog

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Pinterest
fb-share-icon
Telegram
WeChat
WhatsApp
Reddit
FbMessenger
Copy link
URL has been copied successfully!