Cooking with a fistful of peeled California garlic

A pound of organic baby spinach, a couple of fistfuls of peeled Christopher Ranch California Garlic, avocado and sesame oils and a few drops of soy sauce made a great side dish for spice-covered haddock fillets, below.

The leftover organic brown rice I served with the spinach and fish also was prepared with a couple of fistfuls of chopped peeled garlic that went into the electric cooker with organic diced tomatoes, water and uncooked rice. Spinach, fish, garlic and avocado oil were from Costco Wholesale.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor


Costco Wholesale's 3-pound bag of peeled Christopher Ranch California Garlic encourages you to use a free hand with the pungent flavoring in home-cooked dishes.

Just don't make the mistake I did of chopping up a handful of raw cloves and mixing them into a salad made from canned tuna, pink salmon and sardines.

Cooking mellows the Monviso heirloom variety of garlic from California, and I've been adding it to sauteed baby spinach, bottled pasta sauce, organic brown rice and the egg mixture that goes into a frittata.

A 3-pound bag of the refrigerated garlic was $5.99 at my Hackensack warehouse store. 

I squeezed lime juice over Icelandic haddock fillets ($8.99 a pound at Costco), breaded them in a Super Spice Mixture I keep in a tub in the refrigerator and baked them at 375 degrees for about 14 minutes.

The baby spinach with garlic re-appeared at breakfast the next day with an organic brown egg, store-bought tofu, a leftover wedge of yam-and-pesto frittata, and brown rice with garlic.

I chopped up a couple of fistfuls of peeled garlic and threw them into bottled pasta sauce with sardines I heated up while 1 pound of Whole Foods Market Organic Whole Wheat Linguine cooked. When making organic whole wheat shells with pesto, I've thrown chopped garlic into the pasta water. Whole Foods Market organic whole wheat pasta from Italy cooks up al dente in less time than listed on the package.

Nothing could be more convenient for garlic lovers than a big bag of peeled California garlic at a reasonable price. 

Triple washed is good enough for me

Image by thebittenword.com via Flickr

If you prepare family meals five or six times a week, as we do, convenience and speed are paramount. My wife and I don't have the time or patience to use long, elaborate recipes for dinner.

Two of the most convenient products I know are Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix and Boskovich Farms Organically Grown Baby Spinach, both sold at Costco and both pre-washed, so I don't have to use a salad spinner.

I literally grab some and place it in the bowl for an instant salad with my own prepared dressing, which I keep in the refrigerator. 

The triple-washed spinach makes a fine addition to pasta with garlic, anchovies and grated cheese. (The base of the sauce is chicken stock.)

For dinner tonight, I baked almost two pounds of fresh Pacific True Cod Fillets I bought at Costco in Hackensack on Sunday for $6.99 a pound, prepared instant mash potatoes and dressed a spinach salad. The meal was on the table in under 30 minutes.

On Sunday night, I marinated a pound and a half of farmed Tiger Prawns, also from Costco, then sauteed them with garlic and extra-virgin olive oil for about five minutes. I served them with Costco guacamole topped by Goya Salsa Taquera, leftover organic spinach-and-cheese ravioli and a spinach salad. 

The U-15 prawns come cleaned (under 15 to the pound) and cost $9.99 a pound.

A pound of organic baby spinach is $3.99. The last time I bought the organic spring mix at Costco, it was $4.79 or $4.99 -- still the lowest retail price I have found.