I had heard about Trader Joe’s pizza dough for a while, so during my last TJ trip I bought some of the herbs & garlic one. It’s in the refrigerated section, right next to the pizza sauce (which I also bought). Add some pre-shredded quatro formaggio, some pepperoni and fresh pineapple and alas, we have pizza.
Of course, I first needed a pizza stone and I secured one at the new “dd’s discount” store that opened in San Leandro. This is basically a Ross store selling cheaper crap – kind of like a McFrugals that concentrates on clothing. But they do have the same type of stuff that Ross has, including some cooking items. I got a Farberware pizza stone for $10. It was not a bargain.
I had washed and let dry the stone as the instructions said, but I found myself without the necessary cornmeal to put under the pizza. The instructions said to not use flour as it would burn, so I decided to just put the pizza on the stone. It wasn’t a good idea. As the pizza cooked it merged with the stone and it became impossible to separate it. We basically had to cut through the crust to eat it. It was really good, though now I think I have a useless stone. I don’t know if it’ll be possible to clean it though I’ll try. If I get it clean, I’ll certainly will make pizza again and next time I won’t skip the cornmeal 🙂
Author: marga (Page 114 of 120)
I got one of the gold pinapples at Safeway. I don’t know if they had other kinds, I just picked up what I saw. It’s a special variety (genetically modified, no doubt) twice as sweet as regular pineapple. It’s delicious, without a doubt, but perhaps too sweet. Even Mike, who doesn’t always like pineapple because he finds it too sour, thought it wasn’t sour enough. After all, the combination of sweet and sour is what makes pineapple so great.
Still, this was really, really good. We’ll see how it works out on the pizza tonight.
Ropa Vieja (literally, “old clothing”) is an old Cuban recipe used to spruce up leftover meat. I got the recipe from the Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant Ancestors many years ago, and it has always been one of our favorites. The recipe itself is pretty simple, requiring the cooked meat to simmer with chopped onions, garlic and green peppers in tomato sauce and wine. The only spices are salt and bay leaves. But it’s unbelievably delicious.
The dish is quite laborious, however, as you first have cook the meat (unless you have tons of leftover roast around) and then shred it. It shreds easily but it takes quite a long time to do it. Stopping yourself from eating the meat while you shred it is also quite a task.
I usually serve Ropa Vieja with rice, but this time I served it with quinoa. I wanted to try it. We weren’t too impressed. The package instructions – cook it in a rice cooker with twice as much water as quinoa – made for a soupy mess. next time I wouldn’t use more than 1 1/2 xs water. I don’t think we liked the slightly nutty/bitter taste of the quinoa, though it did grow on us. Perhaps it will be better with other types of sauces. I still have some more, so I’ll probably make it again.
I love milanesas. They’re not very healthy and they’re a bit of a pain to make (or rather, to clean up after), but they are soooo good.
Last night I made them with some very thin meat from Safeway I didn’t even need to beat up. The empanadas were extremely tender and wonderful in thin slices of sourdough bread with lemon juice, tomato slices and baby spinach. Yummmm.
Recipe
We just made another trip to Trader Joe’s so I figure I’ll write a few words about new products we’d bought. I’ll keep adding more items to this posting as we try them.
–Corinthians Chocolate Cream Wafers. These are very long cylinders filled with dark chocolate cream. They are very brittle and most of them seemed to have broken at least in two even before we open the can. They are good and addictive but not as good as others I’ve had. I probably shouldn’t buy them again.
–Think Thin Sugar Free Sour Citrus Slices. These are little soft candies in sour flavors. Mike bought then and didn’t like them as they weren’t very sweet, though he says they are growing on him.
–Piccolo Limone Italiano. This pre-squeezed lemon juice comes in a little plastic bottle in the shape of a lemon. Unlike other commercial lemon juice, it’s neither lemon juice from concentrate, or pure-lemon juice. Instead it’s a mixture of water, lemon juice, citric acid and lemon oil. It does need to be refrigerated after opening it. It was quite good, it had a distinctive lemon-oil flavor that I actually found quite pleasant on top of last nights milanesas. Of course, fresh lemon is better – but if you don’t have your own lemon tree it can be quite expensive.
–Kettle Corn. Though obviously not as freshly made as the kettle corn from the farmers market, it tasted quite fresh. It was very good, but much sweeter than the farmer’s market stuff. That’s not bad in itself, though a concern if you’re watching your sugar intake.
–Orange Chicken. This is a frozen product that has to be heated by baking or sauteeing (in 1/2 cup vegetable oil!). I was VERY dissapointed. The chicken was pretty tasteless without the sauce, and the sauce was too runny and not very good. It didn’t really taste much like orange and not at all like the sauces you get at Chinese restaurants. Given how much time it takes to make this dish, and how it’s not microwabable, it’s certainly not worth it. It probably wouldn’t be worth it either if it was microwabable.
–Chicken Curry. This is a frozen entree under TJ’s label. It was very disappointing, much worse than the other frozen Indian entrees that TJ sells under a different label. The “basmati rice” was long-grain and may have been basmati, but it was completely tasteless. The curry had very few pieces of chicken and the spicy sauce tasted mostly of cinnamon. It was edible but not enjoyable.
I’m ashamed to say it but I love Stouffers lasagna. The small ones are OK, but they can’t compete with the large party-tray size. For some reason, maybe the long, slow baking, it tastes much better.
I don’t even want to look at the list of ingredients as I’m sure I’d be apalled. But it tastes sooo good, it’s such the perfect comfort food. Plus, if you bake a tray you’ll have dinner/lunch for at least a couple of days.
Pastel de Carne, or Meat Pie, has been one of my favorite dishes since I was a little girl. It’s rich and hearty, perfect for a cold winter day – and to satisfy those pregnancy cravings.
A pastel de carne is very simple and quite reminiscent of an Irish Sheperd’s pie. It’s consists of a layer of mashed potatoes, a layer of cooked ground beef and another layer of mashed potatoes baked in an oven-safe pan. I use the same filling I use for the empanadas (a modify version of which I also use for spaghetti sauce). It contains many more spices than my mom’s simple Argentinian basis, but I like it more.
To make it you need
-6 cups mashed potatoes (I often use boxed ones, but if you want to make them yourself this recipe is great
-1 tbsp. olive oil
-1 onion, chopped
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1 lb ground beef
-salt & pepper to taste
-2 tsp. garlic powder
-2 tsp. oregano
-2 tsp. paprika
-1/2 tsp. curry powder
-1/2 tsp. coriander
-1/2 tsp. cumin
-1/2 tsp. chili powder
-1/4 tsp. allspice
-1/2 cup pasta sauce (optional)
-1/8 cup red wine
-1/2 cup raisins
-Shredded and/or parmessan cheese to taste
Sautee the chopped onion in the olive oil over medium-high heat in a deep skillet. When soft, add the garlic and sautee for a couple of minutes. Add the ground meat and brown. Add the spices and stir. Add the pasta sauce and the red wine, stir and cook until the meat is well cooked. Remove from heat and stir in the raisins.
In a oven-safe deep pot, layer half the mashed potatoes, cover with the ground beef and top with another layer of mashed potatoes. Sprinkle cheese on top. Bake until the cheese on top melts or browns.
I just posted some more restaurant reviews. In addition to reviews for Pasta Pelican, Stacey’s and the Montclair Egg Shop that I’d mentioned earlier, I put reviews for The Ice Creamery in Castro Valley and Ploughman’s in San Leandro.
Michaela and I have fallen in love with Trader Joe’s frozen gnocchi. Both their Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, with a tomato sauce and mozarella cheese and their Gnocchi al Gorgonzola are great. We specially like the gorgonzola one, though it’s terribly caloric. One 1lb. package has almost 1,000 calories and while it’s supposed to be four servings, that would only be if you served them as a side dish. Mika and I had no problem devouring one whole package for dinner last night, and she was even hungry enough to have some more gnocchi from my mom’s plate.
The gnocci alla sorrentina is much healthier, with 510 calories for the 1lb package. Of course it’s not as yummy, but it’s quite good nonetheless.
You can make them with less sauce for less calories and less mess.
They are made in Italy, without any artificial ingredients, though the gorgonzola gnocchi has margarine in addition to butter. You can heat them on the microwave or in a frying pan (7 minutes). In all, it’s a delicious and quick meal.
I just tried the flan from costco. AFAIK it’s a new item and was in the cakes section (next to a fruit cake and a cheesecake). It’s delicious. It tastes just like great flan, but it’s incredibly smooth and creamy. I actually missed the rough texture I get when I make flan, but my mom loved the smoothness. It’s also very, very rich. Yummm.
Of course it has some ingredients I don’t like (like corn syrup), and at $13 for the 3 lbs flan it’s not exactly cheap. Plus it’s very flat so I wouldn’t serve it to guests. But lord, is it good!
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