Before the invention of the air fryer, I would not have even bothered buying a frozen snack like this. I don’t like turning the oven if I don’t have to – toaster ovens annoy so much that I put mine away -, and I hate having to pan-fry anything that is store bought. If I can’t microwave it effectively – and microwaving something with pastry like this, will turn the pastry soggy -, I rather not eat it. The air-fryer has changed all that.
These snacks are small, and therefore perfect for an even small air fryer like mine – cook them for 10 minutes at 375F. They come out with a nice, think and crispy shell and a flavorful but not too spicy filling. There is a good ratio of filling to shell. The are pretty tasty by themselves but you can dip them on anything you want. I used honey mustard dressing, as I was going through a honey-mustard-on-everything phase.
Brazilian style cheese bread had a moment in the US, probably around the time Brazilian steak houses became popular in the country. Due to a very old prejudice, I missed that moment and visited my first Brazilian steak house only last year, when my daughter’s boyfriend mentioned he wanted steak for his birthday. While I didn’t write a review at the time, we very much enjoyed the experience, though my memories of the cheese bread are too vague to refer to it.
Meanwhile, chipá, Guaraní cheese bread, had been having its own moment in Argentina. I tried it at my lodge in the Iberá wetlands and was so unimpressed as not try it again. Judged by the Trader Joe’s version, I should have.
Chipá or Brazilian cheese bread (the Guaraní people live in a vast territory that includes all of Paraguay as well as parts of Bolivia, northeastern Argentina and southern Brazil) is made with tapioca flour, milk, egg and grated cheese and usually shaped as little rolls. Trader Joe’s sells its version frozen with instructions of baking them in the oven. I air fried them (for 7 minutes from frozen at 360F, without preheating) and they were perfect. They had a nice, crispy shell with bright, not-too-salty Parmesan, and a wonderful chewy, elastic interior with a subtle cheese flavor. They are naturally gluten free for those who care about that. I really think you need to eat them warm to enjoy, as the elasticity of the dough is the best part.
Not only did I enjoy these buns very much, but I learned something knew. I already knew that cassava, yuca and manioc were all different names for the same root. What I didn’t know was that tapioca was the name of the starch of said root – thus tapioca flour refers to cassava starch while cassava flour refers to the flour made from the whole root. If you make your own chipá, make sure you use tapioca flour. But given how good Trader Joe’s frozen Brazilian cheese bread is, you really don’t need to go through the trouble.
I’m not a huge appetizer eater, but when I saw that Costco was carrying these butter chicken nan bites I was curious. I love nan bread, I love butter chicken, and combining the two in a bite seems to make a lot of sense.
The 25 oz package comes with 2 bags of nan bites, each with 18 pieces. They can be baked in the oven or cooked in the air fryer. I did the later, preheating it at 350F for 5 minutes, then cooking the bites for 4 minutes, tossing them and then cooking them for an additional 3 minutes. Even though I let them rest for another 3 minutes they were extremely hot when I bit into one. I’d advise to let them sit for at least 5 or 6 minutes before attempting to bite into them.
They were pretty good. They look little samosas but the shells are a little puzzling. They were crispy on the outside and rather thin, but pleasantly chewy.
The filling was tasty, though it was closer to a generic chicken curry than to butter chicken in particular. It had none of the complexity and yuminess of the latter. There was also not enough chicken. Moreover, the sauce spurts all over when you bite into them, particularly when hot. They were a bit on the oily side, however.
All in all, I don’t think I’ll buy them again but I will likely finish the package.
Update: I ate some more dipped in honey mustard dressing and they were absolutely delicious. Of course, most everything with honey mustard dressing rocks, but these went particularly well. They are still too greasy for me to buy again, but I am enjoying those I have left.
Cuisine Adventures is a brand of frozen products made by Plats du Chef, a once Canadian company now owned by a private American company.
Last year, when we went to New York City, our first gastronomic stop was at Junior’s – the famed coffeeshop that was credited with serving the best cheesecake in town. We liked it, so when I heard that Costco might be carrying their cheesecakes I directed Mike, my husband, to get one. It turned out that what they are actually carrying is a package of mini-cheesecakes, and that what he finally got for us a few days ago.
The package comes with 24 frozen cheesecakes and costs around $21. I say around because Costco actually forgot to charge us for it – and charged us for an extra of another item instead. Unlike the regular cheesecake, these ones don’t come with a cake or cookie base, they are all cheese. Indeed, the ingredient list is very simple: cream cheese, sugar, heavy cream, eggs and milk. You are supposed to keep them frozen and let thaw at room temperature for an hour before serving, but I thawed them in the fridge to no ill effect (so far).
The box comes with three flavors of cheesecakes: “original” (plain), strawberry and chocolate. The original cheesecake was pretty good, but not as good as the cheesecake we remembered from Junior’s. That one had a rustic flavor which made us think of a farmer’s cheese. This one just tasted like regular cheesecake, albeit a less sweet version. Indeed, while it was still a tad too sweet for my taste, I did appreciate that it wasn’t as sweet as most cheesecakes are. And I didn’t miss the cake base layer at all.
The strawberry cheesecakes have a swirl of strawberry sweep on top and what seems like a thin layer of strawberry syrup in the middle. The syrup tasted “real,” like what you get when you cook strawberries with sugar and then puree. It was pretty good, and gave bright, fresh hints to what is otherwise a very uniform experience, but I wish there had been more of it.
I had a similar thought with the chocolate cheesecakes. These ones had a swirl of chocolate cheesecake – rather than chocolate syrup – a bit deeper than the strawberry one. The flavor of the chocolate cheesecake was very good, but there just wasn’t enough of it to reach every bite.
In all, these are a good dessert both to serve to others and to practice portion control – particularly if you thaw one at the time.
My daughter loves Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken, which she eats on rice, so I thought she might enjoy this Mandarin Style Orange Chicken Bowl as well, and save herself the trouble of having to heat up the chicken and the rice separately. Alas, she didn’t. She didn’t explain why she didn’t like it – but I’m noting it here so I know not to buy it for her again.
I first tried almond croissants at the Berkeley store of the now defunct La Petit Boulangerie chain when I was in college. As a starving student, these were a special treat which I’d allow myself once in a great while, but I absolutely loved them. Since then, almond croissants have had a special place in my heart, though I seldom get them.
I came across these Almond Croissants at Trader Joe’s during a recentish trip and picked them up without much thought. When I finally went to make them, I realized that it wasn’t a simple endeavor. I had to let them defrost overnight and only then I could bake them. I was frustrated, so I took them out from the freezer and put them in the fridge and waited a couple of days before touching them. As I looked at the instructions more carefully, I realized that I had to actually let them rise at room temperature, on a pan, separated from each other, for nine hours before this baking process – which I did swearing I’d never buy these again. Alas, after making them, I changed my mind.
These croissants tastes exactly like the real thing. Maybe not as good as my memories of the ones from La Petit Boulangerie, but similar to other almond croissants I’ve had since. The dough was very light with a bit of a bready taste, but one that grew on me. The almond filling was very tasty. I’ll definitely get them again next time I go to Trader Joe’s.
Every time I go to Trader Joe’s, I pick up one desert to try, and in one of my trips it was the frozen Chocolate Lava cakes. It must be one of Trader Joe’s worst desserts. The cakes were dry, with very little chocolate flavor. On the plus side, I did save calories by not eating more than couple of bites. I made one first according to the instructions, and then a second one with less time, but both were failures.
A few weeks ago, I decided to give Amazon Fresh a try and order groceries to be delivered at home. I was particularly interested in trying their house brands, to see how they measured against others. In general, I was disappointed – and this was particularly true with the Aplenty Gnocchi with Tomato & Mozzarella frozen entree.
Much has been written about how Amazon is trying to compete with Trader Joe’s by copying its most successful products – something which it does with products that third-party vendors sell through its site. This particular item, seems to be a knockoff of Trader Joe’s Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, which has been a favorite of mine for almost twenty years. Alas, it does not succeed.
Unlike Trader Joe’s gnocchi, this one comes with tomatoes instead of tomato sauce. This means that there isn’t enough moisture in the dish to help the gnocchi plump up and lighten. Instead, they are heavy and dense. Moreover, the tomatoes don’t do much to flavor the gnocchi, and neither does the cheese, which remains in clumps. The result is a heavy, not very tasty dish. I would not get it again.
It sells for $3.80, so it’s even about 20% more expensive than the gnocchi at Trader Joe’s.
I love Chicago deep dish pizza, so when I saw Gino’s East of Chicago Deep Dish Pizzas for sale at Safeway a few months ago, I got very excited and got two of them. I absolutely hated the plain cheese pizza. I thought it tasted only of a bad pasta sauce and couldn’t stand eating it. Thus I was very wary to cook and eat the supreme pizza. It sat at the bottom of my freezer for months. But it was occupying valuable freezer space and, having waited so long to do something with it, I didn’t feel good about giving it to someone else. So I baked it.
Imagine my surprise at finding that this pizza wasn’t bad. I won’t say that it was particularly good either. It didn’t have the overwhelming cheesiness of great Chicago style pizzas. But it was perfectly edible. The sauce, so offensive in the cheese pizza, could not compete with the flavors of the sausage, onions and green peppers, and thus could be ignored.
I still didn’t love it, so I don’t think I’d order it again, but I’m glad the pizza didn’t go to waste.
Trader Joe’s Rustic Apple Tarte is a smallish galette that tastes like apple pie. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The tarte crust was lighter, and more flavorful than your regular pie crust, and the apple filling was on point: the apples had some firmness, they weren’t overly sweet and the sliced nuts provided a good crunch. It also had sugar crystals which I love. In all, it was quite enjoyable though a little on the small side. I’d get it again.
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