Last night I made chicken simmered in Trader Joe’s Green Curry sauce. It was yummy. The sauce is a little bit too spicy for my taste, but it had a very light and yet full flavor, with a strong hint of cilantro. Its high fat content made the chicken feel wonderfully buttery and in all it was very enjoyable. I added some orange bell pepper to the chicken and served it with rice. In all, a thumbs up.
Category: Food Items (Page 25 of 27)
We got Patak’s Korma sauce along with its tika masala sauce a couple of months ago at Cost Plus ($3.50). We didn’t like the tika masala, but the korma was much better. It wasn’t as sweet or delicious as a restaurant korma, but it was creamy and tasty enough for a quick, weekday dinner. I browned and simmered some cubed beef on it for about an hour (with some extra water), and served it over cuscus. Next time I’m at Cost Plus, I’ll probably pick up a couple of more jars.
Our friends Charlotte & Daniel got us a bottle of Stonehouse “Olio Nuovo” for Xmas. This is a very fresh olive oil (pressed two weeks before we got it) and it’s delicious. It’s taste is actually much fresher than that of regular olive oil and I like it more. Mike doesn’t seem to like it as much, which is great as it means there is more for me! I’m using it just for dipping, though I imagine it could also be used on salads.
http://www.stonehouseoliveoil.com/
I really like the Asiago Cheese from Safeway. Actually, most of their premium (and non-premium) breads are pretty good, but the Asiago one is delicious. It’s not cheap (about $3.50 I think), so I don’t see it as an every day sort of bread, but once in a while I really crave it.
A couple of nights ago I served chicken with Patak’s Tikka Masala simmering sauce which I bought at Cost Plus ($3.50 for a 15 oz jar, enough for 1 lb chicken and 2 1/2 people). It was OK but it didn’t taste at all like tikka masala. Mostly it tasted like other generic jarred or frozen Indian curries. Its main ingredient was oil, so it’s very fatty (but it gave a wonderfully tender consistency to the chicken), followed by lemon juice, so it’s also very sour. I don’t feel any compelling reason to buy it again.
I’m getting tired of take-out and I’m often too tired to cook (not to mention that my kitchen is too much of a mess to cook in), so the other night I decided to try one of those ready-made entrees available in the refrigerated meats section of the supermarket. I’d had a craving for Beef Stronganoff before and while I didn’t have high expectation of this version, I figured it was as good a choice as any.
It was OK. The meat was tender and not very fatty; the sauce tasted like a sour gravy, and not at all like Stroganoff, but it was perfectly edible. I served it over spaghetti and it was OK with the pasta. I don’t think I’ll buy this again, but I may try one of the other entrees.
Last night we had fondue for dinner, from a box. It was Le Superbe Fondue, imported from Switzerland, which we got at Trader Joe’s. It was quite good, a little bit less alcoholic tasting than the ones from the red boxes we usually get at tthe supermarket, which is good. Of course, home-made fondue is often better, and it is really easy to make, but last night I wanted something that took no time at all. And that would save us having to wash the food processor (after grating all those cheeses). Anyway, we liked it.
Yesterday we went shopping to Trader Joe’s. As usual, most of what we bought were impulse buys including a pint of Sharon’s Sorbet, coconut flavor that I got a craving for. That’s the problem with being pregnant, you see something and you want it.
I’ve never had coconut sorbet before but I liked it. Unlike other sorbets, it’s quite creamy, which makes sense given that its main ingredients are coconut milk and coconut cream. Still, it’s lighter than regular ice cream which I liked. It had a nice coconut flavor, though I would have preferred more coconut and less sweetness. It wasn’t as refreshing as I wish it was. But it was good.
Growing up, I was never too fond of orange marmalade. As the cheapest of all the fruit preserves, it was ubiquitously served by all the old aunts and their friends with whom I had the misfortune of having tea at some point or another. I am sure they were great ladies on limited budgets trying to save a few pennies, but as a child I wasn’t that understanding. At home, I insisted on strawberry jam, or if we were lucky and found it available at the store, on rapsberry jam. Even as a kid, I felt sophisticated eating toast with butter and those exotic berries.
I still prefer berry jams, which in the US are as obiquitous as orange marmalade was in Argentina. All jams & jellies here seem to be priced identically, regardless of flavor, so there isn’t an incentive to buy any but the one you like.
I hadn’t given a second thought to orange marmalade for at least twenty years, until I ran into this product at the 99-cents store. I could recognize the brands, they were imported from Argentina. I was intrigued, it had been sooo long since I had tasted it and it could indeed bring memories back of home and childhood. And yet, I hadn’t liked it as a child so why should I like it now? So I didn’t get any.
I kept thinking about it, though, so when we visited the 99-cents store again last weekend I decided to get a jar of orange marmalade along with one of apple jam, also a product of Argentina. Today I tried it and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Perhaps its sweet and sour taste is more pleasing to adults, or perhaps it’s just nostalgia speaking, but I thought it was great on a slice of toast, and even better in a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. At 99 cents it cannot be beat.
The apple jam is quite good also, it tastes like a sweeter, denser apple sauce. This is something I might have had once as a kid, so it didn’t any evoque any particular feelings, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I hadn’t been to the farmer’s market in quite a while. Generally, Mike and Mika go there on Saturday mornings letting me sleep late. But I was awake today so I tagged along. I discovered that there was a new stand I hadn’t seen before, staffed by two African-American older ladies and selling seafood gumbo, cobblers, cheesecake, pecan pie and the like. I wanted to try something, of course, and I settled on the bread pudding. I LOVE bread pudding but as Mike doesn’t, I seldom feel inclined to make it.
Unfortunately, this bread pudding wasn’t very good. It was too dry and while it came with a sauce, there wasn’t enough of it and it hadn’t permeated the pudding enough. As a result, the pudding didn’t have much flavor. It was a large portion and it satisfied my hunger but not my desire for good bread pudding. I guess I’ll have to make my own after all – maybe a savory one. Anyone has a great recipe?
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