Bell's Market

[KatieLoeb]

Another excursion to Bell's Market today. This time I hit the sausage section and I got a quarter pound each of two different salami type meats and some chicken hot dogs. I also picked up some more prepared foods and smoked fish. And I couldn't resist getting some of these:

Cherry Vareniki were as delicious as they looked. I was advised to reheat them for one minute in the microwave. That's a small dollop of sour cream in the middle. I also tried some eggplant halves with cheese and meat in them, some very large meat filled pasta balls (sort of like a giant vareniki), two different kinds of smoked fish - a turbot and some salmon, and another half pound of farmer's cheese with dill (I am addicted to this stuff). In produce - a piece of fresh ginger the size of my thumb and in the juice section, some blood orange juice, both meant for a cocktail I'm tweaking out for the Averna contest. Some split pea soup mix, a vacuum sealed bit of pork shoulder for the soup and some little squeezeable pouches of mayonnaise - both light and with olives. The nice young stock boy was kind enough to help me translate the labels on the mayo packets since there were like 5 different kinds and they all looked the same to me! One more bag of beef/pork pelmeni for the freezer and a rainy day.

I really love this place. I spent about $45 all for everything and I have groceries for about three weeks of eating. Awesome.

[MarketStEl]

Sour cream:

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Given the non-ordinariness of everything else you caught on camera in this photo essay, those containers of Daisy Brand in this photo stick out like a sore thumb.

But: "Kanadskaya" sour cream?

Russian-style sour cream from Canada, I assume?

How does the Russian variety differ from what I find at the local Akame?

[KatieLoeb]

I can't answer that, Sandy. My sour cream was of the regular supermarket sort. But when I need to refill (which ought to be awhile since I use it seldomly) I'll take one for the team and try the Russian/Canadian stuff and report back.

[cinghiale]

Given the non-ordinariness of everything else you caught on camera in this photo essay, those containers of Daisy Brand in this photo stick out like a sore thumb.

But:  "Kanadskaya" sour cream?

Russian-style sour cream from Canada, I assume?

How does the Russian variety differ from what I find at the local Akame?

←

My understanding is that the Daisy was a sub for the маргаритка brand, which was temporarily out of stock.

Fresh dairy obviously can't travel far or long. You're correct: there's a lot of dairy from Canada. But my sour cream came from Brooklyn. It was much thinner than what one commonly gets, maybe the consistency of a thickened sauce. And it was very rich. I used it with the roe I got at Net Cost, and it was nice to give the toast a light coating of sour cream and not overwhelm the eggs. With traditional sour cream, I often found myself beating it to break it down. Still, I'd often be unable to get less than a glob onto the toast and found myself eating roe-flavored sour cream. I also used it with the cherry vareniki. I contrast to Katie, I sauteed them over very low heat (having recently ruined some Port Richmond pierogies with too much heat), after first sauteeing some shallots. I then added two spoonfuls of the sour cream, which quickly soaked into the vareniki, leaving not so much a sauce as a film when plated. Delicious.

Butter, on the other hand, comes from far and wide at Bell's. I tried two from Poland, though I didn't care much for them, as I found them lacking in creaminess. I'm still gonna give some of the other varieties a shot. If I can find a plugra-level butter at Bell's going rates of ca. $3/lb, I plan to stock up.

[mattohara]

WOW!

The Haul:

Some Ahmad teas (my dad likes them)

Gipsy Salami [sic]

Hunter Sausage (like Landjager except not all dried out and wrinkly, mild like a good ole Beef Stick Americain)

Moskovskaya Sausage (a salami with some pepper)

Vareniki (Potato, Cheese and Cherry)

Veal and Pork mini-franks (for Pigs in Babushkas!)

Half-Sour pickles (I would have spent the whole wallet in that aisle, had to be restrained, see pic below)

Grape Leaves (for Dolmares in Babushkas!)

Pickled wild garlic (very mild stalks)

Plugra (it was cheap, 2.99)

Banana Bread (my dad threw it in the cart while speaking in a fake russian accent about how russian banana bread was so much better than american. he was totally oblivious of the sinister-looking rusky in the black leather jacket right behind him)

Goose Pate (hiding beside the banana bread, it looks like a tin of chewing tobacco and we haven't tried it yet)

Chocolate (with a picture of a baby in a babushka)

Blood Orange Juice

Sour Cream.

I'd gladly go there once a month if it hadn't cost us 30$ for a PhillyCarShare car. Please PM or email me when you're going, friends.

Behold, the Pickled Aisle:

EDIT: and Kvas! we also got Kvas! It's like a mix between barley-water and root beer.

Edited March 18, 2008 by mattohara (log)

[cinghiale]

Hunter Sausage (like Landjager except not all dried out and wrinkly, mild like a good ole Beef Stick Americain)

...

Chocolate (with a picture of a baby in a babushka)

Nice pix, Matt.

The friend I was shopping with last time picked up that Landjäger and loved it. His take on it matches yours -- not as dried out as it looks.

I've gotten that chocolate a few times (the first was for the picture). It's excellent.

[rlibkind]

Got back to Bell's Market for the first time since winter and they've expanded into substantial space next door. Most of the new space is devoted to produce, but also organic dairy and lotsa olives. I counted 28 different varieties. Priced considerably below what you'd pay at DiBruno's, and even beats Wegman's and the RTM.

I don't remember the previous store layout perfectly, but I think with the produce space freed up in the older part of the store, it appears they've significantly expanded the dairy offerings . . . which is what I was looking for, since I'm making Liptauer, a Hungarian cheese spread based on feta-like Lipto cheese mixed with butter, paprika and other stuff (a very variable recipe depending on who's making it and which region of central or eastern Europe they hail from). No Lipto, but there was Brinza, which is pretty much the same style fresh sheep cheese, just from farther east. Lipto,Brinza and similar cheese are feta-like, but are supposed to be a tad saltier and sharper. Hence, the recipe calls for creaming the cheese with an equal amount of butter and perhaps some farmer cheese. It will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge, but it's best to let it come to room temp before serving.

Other scores: Krinos taramosalata for half they price I'd pay at Whole Foods, sliced veal tongue (in gelatin) from Gaiser's, an old-fashioned wurstgeshaft in North Jersey, Bulgarian red pepper spread (with eggplant, tomato, onion, etc.), and olives. There was lots more I would have liked to by (especally those cherry dumplings), but my larder at home is already pretty full and I didn't see my schedule freeing up to utilize the more perishable items, like more cold cuts and cured fish. Gotta get back more often than ever six or seven months.

[rlibkind]

Made it back to Bell's again today. The produce section is quite decent and has some good prices. For example, huge Jumanji-sized oranges for 79 cents apiece. I picked up a bag of Mineola oranges (I tried one as soon as I got home: very nice), contained six large ones for $2.19. (They're 50-cents apiece loose. IIRC, they were 75 cents each at Iovine Bros. at the RTM last week.) Sweet red peppers were $1.29, yellows $2.49. If I was in pickle-making mode, they had unblemished medium kirbies for 99 cents.

The olives remain a bargain when compared to most stores, with most priced at $4.99 or thereabouts. There were also plastic container-packed pickles, including cornichons at $1.99/pound. A great variety of eggplant and sweet-pepper based salad spreads (usually called by their nation of origin, i.e., Uzbek, Georgian, Armenian, etc.) were also available by the pound from the olive lady, along with stuffed grape leaves (and not just with your Mediterranean rice stuffing; the Georgian stuffed leaves looked like it was the eggplant-based salad spread). The salads also included some to cater to Asian customers: Korean carrot salad and a couple of Japanese-style seaweed salads, among them. From a self-serve case I picked up eight ounces of Kronos taramasalata for $2.49. (They also have a "lite" version; why bother!)

The breads are near the olive and prepared salad spreads and range around the world. In addition to the expected Eastern European ryes and other loafs, there was a nice selection of Italian breads, lots of Portuguese breads, even some packaged Naan.

In addition to picking up some cold cuts (rolled veal breast, pork role, i.e., rolled bacon) I bought some mushroom, mushroom-chicken, blueberry and cherry-cheese blintzes from the prepared foods counter near the smoked fish. The counter featured some new additions since my last visit last summer: samsas. These are Uzbek stuffed pastries. The pastry looked nice and flaky, with chicken, beef-lamb combo and pumpkin stuffings. Maybe next time.

The expanded dairy cases hold a nice selection of butters, so I purchased an "extra butter" from Poland, $2.59 for seven ounces (200 grams). Not cheap, but less expensive than other high butterfat butters (13 grams per tablespoon vs. 11).

Once again, I had to restrain my purchases because there's only so much room back home. Why do I only manage the trip to the Northeast only twice a year!

Purim is only a month away, so I've definitely got to make a Northeast bakery run for hamentashen, and I might as well revisit Bell's Crossing then. (BTW, the mohn hamentashen at the Famous on 4th Street are superb, the best I've had in a long time: not too big, with a shiny egg wash and loaded with filling; I can't imagine the lekvar hamentashen are any less good.)

[KatieLoeb]

A dedicated trip to Bell's Market today for the first time in a long time. $44 got me some garlic marinated smoked bacon, Russian salami, stuffed chicken skin, several varieties of smoked fish, boil-in-bag barley, half sour pickles, prepared manti and stuffed cabbage, several varieties of prepared salads, fat free olive mayonnaise, non-fat Farmers cheese, two kinds of frozen pelmeni, black currant juice, and a few other things I can't remember. Holy crap this place rocks. I need to go far more often...

Edited May 24, 2010 by KatieLoeb (log)