[Sca-cooks] Asian supermarkets [mostly OOP]

[Heleen Greenwald]

Hi Selene,
What a great list of ingredients you came up with!  (I will have to start a
new file. )   :-)

I don't know if you've ever heard of Wegman's supermarkets. They are a New
York State based chain. Great place! They have wonderful international
departments full of all kinds of interesting foods.  I was asking about
Chinese markets because they have even more interesting stuff, stuff I've
never seen or heard of and I was wondering what to look for in that
situation.

I was a cellophane packet of dried stuff that looked like dried sea horses
and had a picture of a sea horse on the front.....

When I was looking for jarred cilantro, all the staff was very nice to me,
but most could not speak English enough to help me. I finally found a high
school kid that spoke both Chinese and English.....

Well, thanks again for that great list of food stuffs.
Phillipa
----- Original Message -----

Phillipa wrote:

> I had the good fortune to be in Philadelphia's China Town yesterday.  My
husband and I visited a few Chinese groceries. Unfortunately, everything,
well, 99% of the stuff, was written in Chinese or Korean.  I was totally
lost. (I did manage to get some great smelling jasmine tea though, 1/2 lb
for $2.89.
>
> Can anyone  suggest which foods or foodstuffs I should look for the next
time I am there, so I can keep some basic Asian foodstuffs around to be able
to make some good Asian food on short notice.

Happily, these days many Chinese groceries formerly limited to ethnic
communities are well-represented in American grocery stores.  You don't need
to go to China Town to get ordinary soy sauce or even some of the more
"advanced" products like rice vinegar.

Do not be shy about asking for help in the Asian markets;  they are happy to
help anybody who wants to buy, and after all everybody's money is the same
color!

One strategem you might not have though of is to shop there for vegetable
seeds for Asian vegetables, particulary if they don't carry things like bok
choy in your neighborhood produce mart.

DO get a rice cooker.  If you burn as much rice as I used to, it's
worthwhile.  The smallest ones are quite affordable.  I'm contemplating the
purchase of a restaurant-sized one for banquet cookery, this will be a
serious investment though.


Some ingredients you might want to get there include:

Peanut Oil - not always available in Anglo markets.  Has the highest smoking
temperature of the edible oils, and a mild peanut taste besides

Sesame Oil - the dark oil from toasted sesame seeds.  Remember that this is
a CONDIMENT not something to do your deep fry with.  Eeep.

Hot chili oil - another condiment.  Actually, you can make this by simple
infusion with peanut oil, dry hot chilis and the secret ingredient, TIME!

Cha Shu sauce - the special sauce that makes that Chinese BBQ pork so yummy
good

Hoi Sin sauce - Happy memory food for me; my mother used to stew beef in it.

Oyster sauce - comes in a bottle like ketchup, serve with steamed green vegs
for instant Chinese atmosphere!

"Chinese Five Spice" another one you can actually do at home, but people
hardly ever do.  Cinnamon, Cloves, some subset of the licquorice-type spices
such as anise, star anise or liquorice root;  there's ginger in mine as
well.

Get some diverse dry noodles.  Wheat noodles for ramen, chow mein or
yakisoba.  Rice noodles for Pad Thai, or fry them dry till they puff up.
Soybean noodles for 'glass noodles" transparent, al dente and very wonderful
with stir fry.  All of these keep indefinitely in a cool dry place.

Tofu is packed in shelf-top sterile packaging these days, like European
milk.  Good to have around.



Most of the other stuff I can think of off the top of my head is either not
Chinese nor Korean or is for pretty specialized cooking.

Thai:  galingale/galinga, frequently cited in medieval English recipes,
still used in Thai cooking
Lemon grass, also a charactaristic spice in Thai cooking;

Japanese:  dried bonito and kombu seaweed for basic "dashi" stock, used for
just about everything including that Miso Soup in every Japanese restaurant
in America.

Korean:  Kim Chee, the Asian answer to aged sauerkraut.  Contrary to popular
belief, this is not always flaming hot, it is available in mild strength.


Selene Colfox



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