Bi Mart San Francisco Sweet Potato and Kale.
Bi Rite Market is a high end mini-supermarket chain in San Francisco with impeccable goods and prices to match. They recently opened a branch on Polk St, near where I stay when in town, so I went exploring in the take out aisle.
Key Lime Pie in a Jar.
Two items immediately caught my eye: a sweet potato and kale salad that looked like a full meal in a take out tub, and a jarred key lime pie. I purchased both at $8.99 each, with an eye to creating my own knock off versions.
The sweet potato salad wasn’t so great. The coconut miso dressing didn’t contribute much and the kale was cooked to the point the leafy bits turned to mush. I did much better with a knock off version which featured:
- Sweet potato chunks from a tuber that was peeled then cut into 1 inch squares and cooked in salted water till it was tender but not falling apart.
- An equivalent amount of kale shreds that were not cooked but massaged according to this technique so they were raw, but tender.
- A sesame dressing from Trader Joe with a splash of soy to achieve an umami balance; if doing this at home you could do worse than our Japanese Restaurant Salad Dressing.
What’s left of our knock off version.
Our knock off version was better in every way. It became the combo salad/starch course at a family meal and was nearly gone before I could get a picture. Definitely do try this at home.
The key lime pie in a jar is a nice idea for a gift at holiday time or whenever. Take a 16 oz wide mouth mason jar and start with a layer of pie filling, add something equivalent to a graham cracker crust, then finish with a flavored topping. The topping at Bi Rite combined whipped cream with some yogurt and stabilizing agents so it held its own being transported sideways in a backpack. If you don’t have carageenan in your cupboard you might try gelatin combined with yogurt.
I am going to pursue the pie-in-a jar concept and have ordered these nifty Mason jars with color coded lids from Amazon so I can create for folks. The tops have a recess so another jar can be stacked on top, making them useful for storage of small amounts of whatnot. Check ’em out (affiliate links!) and report back on your own experiments.
