We recently were at a NEW TO US Trader Joe’s (in Fairfax, VA, a very
nice store!).
Hey! Fairfax, VA Trader Joe's! |
While there we decided to
pick up supplies to make a tasty summer appetizer that we had recently at a TJ’s
in Florida – tiny tomatoes with mozzarella on them! We already had balsamic at home (Trader Joe’s,
of course, to be reviewed later in this blog), and we hoped the basil we
planted would be big enough for us to cut a bit off to top the dish off. This is
the mozzarella we chose:
Marinated Celigene (or is it Ciliegine?) Mozzarella Cheese |
Now, there have been two previous mozzarella cheeses reviewed in this
blog – one was our our regular one “the chub” reviewed on day 17 (4 stars). The other one was one that we tried for our
big TJ’s dinner party, reviewed on day 125 (which I personally gave a total of
1.75 stars to, but because it was a dinner party review I had to factor in
reviews of the other guests and begrudgingly use the average of all reviews
which brought it up to a 3…). Normally
we serve mozzarella over TJ’s kumatoes (reviewed on day 5 – 4 stars), and in
the summer we serve it over tomatoes we grown in the garden. But this time our home grown tomatoes were
not ready to be eaten yet, and the taste test we did in Florida using the cherry
tomato variety was yummy, so we went with what we saw – Marzano Tomatoes (sorry
to be so confusing – I will review those small tomatoes soon!).
In any event, this review is about the tiny mozzarella balls! First off, my partner David is the one who
prepared this dish and he reports the container was very, very hard to
open. The size of the balls is good – he
is quite obsessive so he cut some in thirds and some in fourths, but I reckon
if you wanted to you could simply cut them down the middle and call it a
day. The sign said the cheese is
marinating in “salted water” but David swears, “There’s somethin’ oily going on…”. (The label of the actual product lists canola
and Extra Virgin Olive Oil… Maybe the
signage at TJ’s was wrong? When I look
at the photos now I see that the SIGN spelled the cheese Ciliegine and the
package spells it Celigene… Maybe the
incorrect sign was placed above these containers but we did not see any other containers
nearby? Who knows…)
The taste is pretty good. It is
not as great as the chub mozzarella, but way better than the stinky day 125
mozzarella. The biggest problem by FAR
with this dish was the inability of the teeny tiny tomatoes and mozzarella to
hold enough balsamic vinegar! There just
was not enough surface area.
Isn't it PRETTY? Turns out we did have enough basil, yippee!! |
This cheese is not bad, but the convenience of having the tiny portions
does not beat the tastiness of the chub cheese.
Price - $3.49
Rating – 3.5
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