Thursday, July 02, 2009
Recall of Giant Brand Nonfat Dried Milk
Giant Food has announced a recall of Giant Nonfat Dried Milk, 9.6 ounce size, UPC number 6-8826707833, code FEB 0511S.
Giant Food operates 182 supermarkets in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, and employs approximately 22,000 associates. For more information, see www.giantfood.com.
The items were removed from store shelves because they were produced with nonfat dried milk that is part of a national recall by Plainview Milk and may have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.If you need more information, you can call Giant's corporate brands at 1-877-846-9949, M-F, 9 a.m. -1 p.m., or Giant's customer service line at 1-888-469-4426, M-F, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Customers who have purchased the product should discard any unused portions and bring their purchase receipt to any Giant Food for a full refund. To date, Giant Food has received no reports of illnesses associated with consumption of this product.
Giant Food operates 182 supermarkets in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, and employs approximately 22,000 associates. For more information, see www.giantfood.com.
Labels: dairy, food safety, recall
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Recipe: Bicuits and Chorizo Gravy
Biscuits and gravy is an old, and great, southern breakfast. This version adds a bit of bite through the chorizo sausage.
Ingredients
- 1 pound chorizo sausage
- 4 1/2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 3 cups milk, heated until warm but not scalded
- 8 biscuits (I have a buttermilk biscuit recipe here)
Directions
- Prepare four plates. For each, split two biscuits and place the halves, split-side up, on the plate.
- Cut the chorizo into 1/4-inch slices. Don't worry if the sausage begins to crumble or the slices start to come apart.
- Over high heat, place to sausage into a 10-inch fry pan. Cook for two minutes.
- Sprinkle flour over sausage slices and cook another three minutes.
- Add milk all at once and stir mixture until flour dissolves. Continue stiring until the mixture comes to a boil and the gravy is thickened.
- Pour gravy over each set of biscuits.
Recipe: Improved Buttermilk Biscuits
I've been fiddling with my biscuit recipe for years. Here's the latest, and best, version.
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose power
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 Tbsp. sugar
- 4 Tbsp. Sacco buttermilk powder (note, you can omit this, substituting buttermilk for the water when added in the recipe)
- 5 Tbsp. butter, cold
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- Cut butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal.
- Add water slowly, mixing until all dry ingredients are damp and dough loosely holds together. Dough should be wet.
- Turn dough out onto well-floured board and knead for about 30 seconds. Instead of traditional bread kneading motion, fold dough in half, press flat, and repeat.
- Roll dough out approximately 3/8-inch in thickness, then use biscuit cutter or cup. Take scraps, form into new ball, roll out to 3/8-inch thickness, and cut additional rounds. Place biscuit rounds on ungreased cookie sheet with at least 1-inch separation.
- Bake biscuits for approximately 18 minutes or until golden brown.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Review: Cuisinart Supreme Ice Cream Maker (ICE-50BC)
Even with the seemingly perpetual presence of grey skies in the Northeast, making me think that our home has been surreptitiously swapped for a small community near Portland, Ore., it's time for ice cream. Well, here in Massachusetts, people queue up even in January, so who am I kidding? It's always time for ice cream. You could go find a local shop selling something other than what you might get in the grocery store, but instead consider an initial hefty investment to start churning it out at home -- or switch off to sorbet or frozen yogurt, if you like. The Cuisinart Supreme Commercial Quality Ice Cream Maker is a compressor-driven model (that's the reasoning behind "commercial," because it's clearly designed for consumers) rather than one of the more common types that use a container that you freeze overnight. With a few caveats about a product claim and operation, this is a good machine for those who are serious about ice cream.
Operation is simple. You set the unit on a counter and plug it in. A small bucket slips into the machine. Pour in the ice cream mix, place the paddle into the bucket, place the drive arm on top, and set the timer. (Soft ice cream/sorbet/yogurt takes 30 to 45 minutes; hard requires 45 minutes to an hour.) The unit will turn off when the timer ends or will also shut itself down if it's done freezing the contents. You will have to slip a plastic cover for the pail into place on the mixing arm. It's easy to set it slightly off, but if you do, the arm raises up and stops working. Once you see how it fits into place, it will become clear.
Chief among benefits is the ability to make a treat any time you want. There is still preparation, as you must put together the stuff to be churned and then chill it for a good four to six hours. But you can do that in the morning and not depend on having remembered to clear out enough room in a freezer to fit in a bulky container. Or you can make enough of a basic sweetened cream mix to last a few days in the fridge and make something as whim takes you, adding in fruit puree, a bit of melted chocolate, vanilla, or other flavoring to get some variety.
I mentioned caveats. One is that there is a warning not to tip the base on its side or turn it upside down. If you do, you are suppose to put it back upright and then leave it alone for 24 hours before using it again. I'm not sure why you'd turn it upside down, and the sucker is pretty heavy and it would seem to be harder to store sideways. Anyway, give it time to get over the shock of the rude handling, or perhaps the world will meet some unspecified doom.
More annoying is the claim of 1.5 quart volume. That actually is the room you have, but when I did a test run of mango ginger sorbet (recipe here), we got a thick outside shell of sorbet frozen hard with a core of cold slush. I had to take a spoon and get the hardened sorbet out and then finish freezing the slush. When the unit was only partly filled, though, everything came to a good consistency. So if you have a full 1.5 quarts, I'd try freezing it in two batches. But otherwise, it's marvelously convenient and one of those single-use appliances worth getting.
There's one other caveat. A few years ago, a number of consumers were complaining about the plastic paddle being flimsy in an earlier version. It's still plastic, but I haven't gotten the impression that it is overly flimsy. I'm guessing that there's been enough time for Cuisinart to correct any problems. If after a few batches I find otherwise, I'll report back.
Street price seems to run around $250 to $300. Given the cost of high quality ice cream, et. al., figure that buying 1.5 quarts of really good quality ice cream, not the normal store-bought, would run at least $9. (Think three pints of Ben & Jerry's.) You can make it for half of that, so that would be a savings of $4.50 a batch. That would be about 66 batches to recoup the machine cost, or maybe a few summers' worth. No, this isn't a big money saver, but the quality of what you can create will easily exceed most of what you can buy.
Operation is simple. You set the unit on a counter and plug it in. A small bucket slips into the machine. Pour in the ice cream mix, place the paddle into the bucket, place the drive arm on top, and set the timer. (Soft ice cream/sorbet/yogurt takes 30 to 45 minutes; hard requires 45 minutes to an hour.) The unit will turn off when the timer ends or will also shut itself down if it's done freezing the contents. You will have to slip a plastic cover for the pail into place on the mixing arm. It's easy to set it slightly off, but if you do, the arm raises up and stops working. Once you see how it fits into place, it will become clear.
Chief among benefits is the ability to make a treat any time you want. There is still preparation, as you must put together the stuff to be churned and then chill it for a good four to six hours. But you can do that in the morning and not depend on having remembered to clear out enough room in a freezer to fit in a bulky container. Or you can make enough of a basic sweetened cream mix to last a few days in the fridge and make something as whim takes you, adding in fruit puree, a bit of melted chocolate, vanilla, or other flavoring to get some variety.
I mentioned caveats. One is that there is a warning not to tip the base on its side or turn it upside down. If you do, you are suppose to put it back upright and then leave it alone for 24 hours before using it again. I'm not sure why you'd turn it upside down, and the sucker is pretty heavy and it would seem to be harder to store sideways. Anyway, give it time to get over the shock of the rude handling, or perhaps the world will meet some unspecified doom.
More annoying is the claim of 1.5 quart volume. That actually is the room you have, but when I did a test run of mango ginger sorbet (recipe here), we got a thick outside shell of sorbet frozen hard with a core of cold slush. I had to take a spoon and get the hardened sorbet out and then finish freezing the slush. When the unit was only partly filled, though, everything came to a good consistency. So if you have a full 1.5 quarts, I'd try freezing it in two batches. But otherwise, it's marvelously convenient and one of those single-use appliances worth getting.
There's one other caveat. A few years ago, a number of consumers were complaining about the plastic paddle being flimsy in an earlier version. It's still plastic, but I haven't gotten the impression that it is overly flimsy. I'm guessing that there's been enough time for Cuisinart to correct any problems. If after a few batches I find otherwise, I'll report back.
Street price seems to run around $250 to $300. Given the cost of high quality ice cream, et. al., figure that buying 1.5 quarts of really good quality ice cream, not the normal store-bought, would run at least $9. (Think three pints of Ben & Jerry's.) You can make it for half of that, so that would be a savings of $4.50 a batch. That would be about 66 batches to recoup the machine cost, or maybe a few summers' worth. No, this isn't a big money saver, but the quality of what you can create will easily exceed most of what you can buy.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Strange News from the Food Front (6/29/2009)
A weekly round-up of food and drink oddities:
- Orange Violence - A Tennessee couple has been accused of a fight that escalated into assault by Cheetos. (AP)
- When Chips Are Down - A former FDA head, whose book argues that people are addicted to sweets, apparently once found himself in thrall to a pair of chocolate chip cookies. Clearly he was outnumbered. (Crispy On The Outside)
- Strawberry Brat Spat - There will be three different purveyors of strawberry-flavored bratwurst at the Cedarburg Strawberry Festival in Wisconsin. (UPI)
- Can 'O 'Possum - A baby opossum managed to get itself stuck in a soda machine at a gym in upstate New York. Police were stymied until a worker came with a key to the front panel. Did anyone try some change? (AP)
- Must Have Been Thirsty - A couple of would-be New Zealand liquor store robbers changed their mind mid-stick up and settled for a beer from a customer's six-pack instead. (UPI)
- New Kind Of Ice - Scientists have created the final fifteenth predicted form of ice. Maybe they didn't have a fridge nearby? (Technology Review)
- Chili Grenade - Security forces in India are developing a grenade powered by the searing "ghost chili" to incapacitate people. (Reuters)
- Shops Find Eel Supplies Slippery - Shops in the U.K. that sell a traditional meal called eel, pie, and mash are finding that a fishing ban is making the requisite jellied eel tough to find. (Daily Telegraph)
- Does It Include Tip? - A Chinese investment fund manager paid $2.1 million in a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffet. (AP)
- Look For The Ketchup - Canadian police are looking for a man who ran naked past a fast food restuarant and snagged a woman's fries in the process. (Reuters)
- Grocery Sale Or Else - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dropped by a grocery store in Moscow without warning and started telling managers to lower their prices. (AFP)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Recipe: Mango Ginger Sorbet
I came up with this to test an ice cream maker -- and it's definitely worth making. The ginger is subtle and the lemon helps keep the mango from becoming cloying.
Ingredients:
- 1 lemon
- 1-inch piece of ginger root, peeled
- 2 1/4 cups water
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 3 very ripe mangoes (soft to the touch)
Directions:
- Roughly chop ginger and place into medium saucepan.
- Peel zest from lemon and place into saucepan.
- Juice lemon and reserve juice.
- Put 2 cups water into medium saucepan. Bring to boil and boil for five minutes.
- Add sugar and continue boiling until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool as you perform the next steps.
- Peel mangoes and cut flesh from pit. Place pieces of mango into a blender with 1/4 cup water. Blend until pureed.
- Pour puree into saucepan and mix. Pour half of mixture back into blender and blend again until smooth. Pour blended mix into a 1 1/2 quart container. Repeat with other half of mixture in saucepan.
- Cover container and place in refrigerator for at least four hours.
- Freeze in ice cream freezer according to directions until the resulting sorbet is soft.
Makes about 1.5 quarts.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Product Review: Traeger Junior (BBQ055) Pellet Grill – Part II, Smoking
As I mentioned last week, the Traeger Junior Pellet Grill uses an electric system to feed and burn pellets (not the same as for home heating systems) to generate the BTUs for cooking. It's clean -- no carting off ash after cooking, and only a semiannual vacuuming to clear out any residue from pellet burning. Although the smallest model, you can easily fit enough food to feed six (not only do they claim that, but we were able to do it). What I didn't like about the unit is that it didn't get hot enough with its indirect heat source to do a good job of actual grilling. However, I thought that the real strength might be in smoking. I was right.
We fired up the grill on the smoke setting and put in a couple of racks of pork ribs that had been sitting with a rub of salt, pepper, allspice, and ground coriander seed for a few hours. The smoke setting got the kettle thermometer just over 100°F, so closer to cold smoking than to hot. In mid process, I contacted Traeger and mentioned the first part of the review and that we were going to smoke the ribs. They suggested starting on high, getting the meat's internal temperature to about 100°, and then shifting to smoke for the best results. A bit too late for us, but no matter.
I've used conventional smokers before. One advantage of the Traeger is that it can go for long stretches largely unattended, as it continues to funnel pellets at a pre-determined rate into the fire box. That certainly beat continuingly going out to check on the fire and fuel supply. (We didn't have the opportunity to test the pellets "flavored" with different types of wood, like apple or hickory, so made do with what we had on hand.) I'd estimate that it takes only a small part of a bag to run the unit for hours, so it is relatively economical in fuel use. (One 20-lb. bag runs only about $15 to $18.)
After a few hours, I noticed that the kettle temperature was still only about 100°, so I shifted the feeder to medium. I remembered that the high setting had resulted in a kettle temperature of about 300 to 400, so thought that medium would get us smack in the hot smoking range, which is what happened. Although I haven't tried it yet, I suspect that the "smoke" setting would be good for fish or for smoking meat where you planned to cook it some other way after. Medium gets you a bit less smoke, but more heat.
Ultimately, I shifted the unit to high. That eventually caused a bit of a hiccough, though late enough that it didn't matter. Although I had filled the pellet bin, the pellets fed into the system from the middle and left a hole, with additional pellets not feeding in, so the fire eventually went out. But, things were done enough after a total of seven hours. The results were fabulous without barbeque sauce. (We still have some two days later.) Because the two rib racks had to overlap a bit to fit in the unit, part way through cooking I had to shift them. Still, it was an easy way to smoke a lot of food. So although I wouldn't recommend the Traeger Junior for grilling, at under $500, it's a convenient, effective, and well-constructed smoker if you have an outlet you can reach with the power cord. The budget constrained will have to go a different route, but if you like smoked food, this could quickly pay for itself over the cost of heading to a barbeque restaurant, assuming there's a good one in your area.
We fired up the grill on the smoke setting and put in a couple of racks of pork ribs that had been sitting with a rub of salt, pepper, allspice, and ground coriander seed for a few hours. The smoke setting got the kettle thermometer just over 100°F, so closer to cold smoking than to hot. In mid process, I contacted Traeger and mentioned the first part of the review and that we were going to smoke the ribs. They suggested starting on high, getting the meat's internal temperature to about 100°, and then shifting to smoke for the best results. A bit too late for us, but no matter.
I've used conventional smokers before. One advantage of the Traeger is that it can go for long stretches largely unattended, as it continues to funnel pellets at a pre-determined rate into the fire box. That certainly beat continuingly going out to check on the fire and fuel supply. (We didn't have the opportunity to test the pellets "flavored" with different types of wood, like apple or hickory, so made do with what we had on hand.) I'd estimate that it takes only a small part of a bag to run the unit for hours, so it is relatively economical in fuel use. (One 20-lb. bag runs only about $15 to $18.)
After a few hours, I noticed that the kettle temperature was still only about 100°, so I shifted the feeder to medium. I remembered that the high setting had resulted in a kettle temperature of about 300 to 400, so thought that medium would get us smack in the hot smoking range, which is what happened. Although I haven't tried it yet, I suspect that the "smoke" setting would be good for fish or for smoking meat where you planned to cook it some other way after. Medium gets you a bit less smoke, but more heat.
Ultimately, I shifted the unit to high. That eventually caused a bit of a hiccough, though late enough that it didn't matter. Although I had filled the pellet bin, the pellets fed into the system from the middle and left a hole, with additional pellets not feeding in, so the fire eventually went out. But, things were done enough after a total of seven hours. The results were fabulous without barbeque sauce. (We still have some two days later.) Because the two rib racks had to overlap a bit to fit in the unit, part way through cooking I had to shift them. Still, it was an easy way to smoke a lot of food. So although I wouldn't recommend the Traeger Junior for grilling, at under $500, it's a convenient, effective, and well-constructed smoker if you have an outlet you can reach with the power cord. The budget constrained will have to go a different route, but if you like smoked food, this could quickly pay for itself over the cost of heading to a barbeque restaurant, assuming there's a good one in your area.
