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Photo Friday: Cremas Galore
I’m a little obsessed with the different varieties of crema you can get in my neighborhood. In the past couple years I’ve lived here, there’s been a subtle shift in the population — Dominicans, once the overwhelming population of the neighborhood, seem to be gradually moving out, while more people from Mexico and Central America move in, which is reflected in the products for sale in the small supermarkets here. I think the Crema Salvadoreña is my favorite so far: so thick as to be almost butter-like but with a fantastic sour creamy tang.
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Brave New Food: Karums
When I was a kid, we lived in a very suburban town. There weren’t really any small shops to walk to and goddamn if the ice cream truck didn’t know exactly when my family was sitting down to dinner to come through my neighborhood — an event which only happened a couple times each summer anyway — and we were almost never allowed to leave the dinner table to go buy something.
Now, as an adult, on any given day that’s above 70 degrees, I have virtually no ability to pass by an ice cream truck or deli without buying something sweet and frozen. (And this year, I’m even tracking just how many things I buy on Daytum.)
Which brings me to the photo above. I was in Food Palace (the little store selling Russian and Eastern European things like jam and cookies) when I spotted a freezer chest full of little blocks of K?rums for 99¢ each. I picked an orange one and some kind of peanut/hazelnut one.
I was a bit taken aback by the price because they’re quite small blocks — about half the size of a deck of cards. As my husband, kid, and I all walked home, we tried to figure out what they tasted like, exactly. The coating was obviously chocolate, but inside? It was creamier and richer than ice cream. A bit like custard, but not eggy. Eventually, in the mass of other languages on the wrapper, I spotted a description and ingredient list in English:
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Meet my butter bell’s new best friend.
I love the Pamplie butter, but at the rate we were blowing through it — at $4.39 for 8 ounces — our butter tab was starting to get a little steep. So, I put this butter in last week’s FreshDirect order:
While the Pamplie butter is creamy and rich, almost to the point of being like a cheese, this Lurpak is lighter and more, well, buttery. The “slightly salted” label is somewhat of a misnomer, though — it’s actually quite salty, saltier than the Pamplie. But at a mere $3.09 for 8 ounces, I can live with that.Maybe I’ll save the Pamplie for when I start baking bread more often. Or maybe, as I confessed to Lisa the other day, maybe I’ll get another butter bell and have one for Pamplie butter and one for everyday making-some-grilled-cheese butter…