Posts Tagged ‘Randalls’

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Thai Kitchen disappointment: not enough heat!


2010
07.08

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Posted in Groceries, Recipes | 4 Comments »

As a Thai food enthusiast, I have been checking out the wares of the grocery stores near my house every time Celebrity Intern and I venture forth on a food-gathering mission, hoping that some kind of spicy green chili paste will magically appear. While at Randalls the other day, joy of joys! We spotted a jar of Thai Kitchen’s Green Curry 10-Minute Simmer Sauce, and snatched it up. The ingredients looked right, and I told Celebrity Intern that I was sure I had tried their concentrated Green Curry Paste before and it had been just the right level of spiciness.

After sautéing up some chicken, letting it simmer in the simmer sauce for the allotted time, and having steamed some broccoli and cauliflower to complete the meal, I served it up with some fancy looking sprigs of cilantro on top:

A disappointment, brought to you by Thai Kitchen's Green Chili Simmer Sauce

Looks tasty, right? Well, it would’ve been, except for the fact that Thai Kitchen’s Green Curry 10-Minute Simmer Sauce is apparently totally lacking in green chili! WTF?! Although green chili is one of the ingredients listed on the bottle (under “green curry paste,” it is the primary ingredient), it tasted to us like there was nothing spicy in the jar at all. I don’t think I even tasted any garlic or lemongrass, so I fired off an email to Thai Kitchen inquiring therein.

The result? NADA. It’s been two weeks and not even a “thank you for your comments!” email in return. Therefore, I must strongly advise Thai-lovers out there to avoid this product. It is bland in the extreme and, frankly, we would have had a better tasting sauce if we’d just made a brown gravy to pour over our chicken.

In the meantime, we will keep on searching for the Thai spice mixtures of our dreams. Stay tuned when we finally hit up an Asian grocery!

Got any suggestions for products we can find locally that will kick our Thai meals up a notch? Any recommendations for spicy green chili would be greatly appreciated!

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Bleu Cheese Bacon Burger, Julia & Ming-Style


2010
03.07

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Posted in Recipes | 6 Comments »

People of Earth: hear me now, believe me later! If you love burgers, this recipe is gonna rock your world. I wouldn’t have even thought it was possible to improve upon the delicious and dead-simple cheeseburger we all know and love, but it is—and it’s not even crazy expeez, either! These are the tips (which we originally learned from watching episodes of Simply Ming and Julia Child on PBS) that will help you achieve godliness on the stove. Please note: today’s recipe is brought to you by the mad cooking skillz of Celebrity Intern, who taught me everything I know about burgers.

  1. Get good beef. What does this mean? Don’t buy the non-specified mystery meat; if they don’t tell you it’s ground round or ground chuck, you’re getting lips & assholes. Buy the good stuff: Angus beef (at least here in Texas) doesn’t cost that much more, and it’s so worth it.
  2. Baby your beef. Don’t handle the meat too much when you’re actually forming the burgers into patties. Pat it into a roughly rounded shape, but don’t try to make it perfect. The more you handle the meat, the more moisture you press out of it, and the more dry your burger will be.
  3. Searing-hot pan. Make sure your pan is hot and ready to go before you put your patties in. It should be hot enough that when you put in a pat of butter, the butter will melt but not turn brown before you put in the beef. (And yes, you are using butter to grease your pan. None of this Pam or margarine or olive oil horseshit. BUTTER!)
  4. Set it and forget it. Put in your patties and leave them be. Do not slide them around, press down on them, or otherwise meddle with the beef once it is in the pan. Let them brown for between 4 and 5 minutes before you flip them over. Do not mash them down once you’ve flipped them! Just let them do their thing. This is the secret to moist, delicious burgers.
  5. Use a thermometer. You’ll know your burgers are ready based on their inner temperature. Insert a meat thermometer and take your burgers off the heat when they’re around 130 degrees F. (Don’t worry; although most recipes will tell you to cook ground beef to 165 degrees, we’ve been eating these regularly with no ill effects, mostly since they’ll eventually get that hot even without the help of the stove. You may want to abstain, however, if you’re knocked-up—just to be on the safe side.)
  6. Cheese and cover. Put your bleu cheese on top of the burgers, which are still resting comfortably in the pan, and then cover the pan with a lid. Let the burgers sit, cheese slowly melting, for at least 5 minutes before plating them up. Use a good quality bleu cheese; we like the Salemville Amish Blue Cheese (available at Randall’s), which has been aged for 60 days. Delish!

Those are the basic steps to great burgers, even if you’re not big on the bleu cheese idea. But if you are, let us also recommend additional toppings (which you really MUST do) of bacon strips (easy to make in the microwave!), some romaine lettuce, and a bit of mashed avocado. Pure decadence, pure bliss.

Wine pairing: a delicious ($5) Chilean wine, the Frontera Carmenere, tastes fabulous with this bleu cheeseburger. Yum!

There should obviously be a tasty and succulent photo of our burgers here, but we were salivating too much to take pictures and gobbled them up before a photo shoot could be arranged! We’ll try to get one eventually, but no guarantees.

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New Sprouts for an organic New Year


2010
01.11

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Posted in News | 2 Comments »

It’s been a while since I last posted, thanks to New Year festivities, new job responsibilities, the darn Horns getting our hopes up and then not Hookin’ ‘Em (as per the local chant) over in Pasadena, and generally just not having any time to myself to jot down notes, so first I must apologize for my absence. I do plan to update at least once a week now that it’s 2010, though, just to keep the momentum going.

So welcome to a new year, a new decade, and a shiny new Shoestring Austin space! This seems like a great time to talk about another new guy in town, at least up in my neck o’ the woods: Sprouts. This “farmers market” styled grocery store opened the doors of their new location at 10225 Research Boulevard (Suite 1000) on January 8, and started off strong with free drinks, food, and even a little music. My Dining Companion (DC) and I went to check it all out and were pleasantly surprised by their prices, which were even lower than those at the nearby HEB and Randalls—and for organic groceries, no less!

Muir Glen organic diced tomatoes, va MuirGlen.com

Month-long specials at the new store include:

  • -Muir Glen organic canned tomatoes at 2 for $5 (these are normally about $5 each!)
  • -Frontera salsa at 2 for $7
  • -Sprouts brand organic salad dressings are all 2 for $5
  • -Seeds of Change Indian-style simmer sauces are $3.29 each
  • -Brown Cow yogurt is 4 for $3
  • -15% off all Good Earth teas

You can also pick up a variety of discounted dog treats for all your furry friends. Plus many of their vitamin brands are between 20 and 25% off for the month of January, so now is a great time to stock up on all your Vitamin C, zinc, echinacea, etc. for cold and flu season.

Weekly deals, through 1/12/2010, via Sprouts.com

If you hurry, you can still score some of these specials (only until Tuesday, January 12):

  • -4 for $1 Russet potatoes
  • -$3.99/lb for smoked Cheddar cheese (sliced)
  • -$2.99/16-oz. bag of Torn & Glasser dried cranberries
  • -$2.99 each for Canadian petite lobster tails!!!

Obviously, you can tell which one of those specials is exciting me the most!

There were lots of great surprises in the store, like their mix-and-match 3-for-$10 wine selections, which DC and I snapped right up, as well as their brown eggs at 2 for $4 and a gallon of organic whole milk for only $3.99. Their prices on ground beef and chicken were the lowest we’ve seen in Austin, outside of Walmart, and their veggies were gorgeous, organic and über cheap (99-cent romaine and 39-cent avocados, w00t!). Since the new store is really close to our house, we’ll undoubtedly be shopping here frequently and loving the savings.

As an added bonus, I think the neighborhood HEB and Randalls may have lowered some of their prices, in response to Sprout’s unbelievable deals, as we popped in today to grab some butter at HEB and got 4 sticks for only $1.99. Even the cashier was double-checking the receipt, scratching her head over that one!

Oh, and if you go into the store on Wednesdays, you’ll score double deals—how sweet is that?

All in all, Sprouts really impressed DC and I, both because of their competitive prices and their “all-in-one” approach to nutrition. You can pick up quality vitamins and dietary supplements while you’re grabbing the basics like milk, cheese, meat and veggies, for one-stop shopping. Their vitamins were also competitively priced with the Vitamin Shoppe next door, which may mean some price wars between the two, and extra savings for consumers. Hooray! If you’re in the Great Hills area, definitely check out Sprouts for all your organic grocery items.