[Sca-cooks] Ethnic market epiphanies

[galefridus at optimum.net]

One of the things that I had to learn fairly early on as I've been playing this game is where to shop for ingredients. Ethnic markets of one sort or another have played a major role in this process. I had yet another ethnic market epiphany this morning: There's a supermarket that I walk past every morning on my way to work. I work in one of Little Dominica neighborhoods of Manhattan, so the supermarkets cater to Caribbean origins of the folks who live there. I had never really explored the place, but this morning I had a bit of time so I wandered up and down a few aisles. I quickly found several items that I'd been seeking for quite a while -- sour oranges, for example; a large selection of goat meat; smaller more "normal" chickens (unlike the 4-5 lb heavy-breasted monsters in most supermarkets). It occurs to me that it could be useful to list the sort of items one can find at various flavors of ethnic markets. The markets I've made use of thus far, together with a selection of the ingredients that I've found at them, include:

East Asian (fresh/frozen galangal; wheat starch)
Middle Eastern (old world beans; date and pomegranate molasses; rose and orange blossom waters) South Asian (an assortment of spices unusual to the modern Western palate; ghee)
Italian (raw uncured olives in season; fresh quince)
Caribbean (assorted meats and poultry; unusual citrus fruit)

The above list is by no means exhaustive in terms of either ethnicity or ingredients available. I happen to fortunate in that the ethnic markets that I have access to are mostly large, full-fledged supermarkets -- I know that I have barely scratched the surface in terms what they can supply. And a lot of what I find myself doing is learning how to identify items that are described only in languages other than English (East Asian and South Asian markets are the most challenging in this regard, at least to me).

In any case, I'd to like hear about the shopping experiences of others. Maybe we could even build a database of where to look for unusual or hard-to-find ingredients.

-- Galefridus