[Sca-cooks] Ethnic market epiphanies

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Cariadoc wrote:
> Chinese grocery stores carry Opo gourd, which I believe is the white 
> flowered gourd that was available in the Old World before the New World 
> squash/gourd/pumpkins came in.

Opo is the Filipino name for the gourd, so if you have Philippine/Pinoy population around, their markets probably have some. I've also found opo in South Asian markets. And there's always the Berkeley Bowl - here in Berkeley - which always has an astonishing array of fresh fruits and vegetables, a veritable wonderland of fresh produce.

> Persian/middle eastern/Indian groceries have sekanjabin syrup, semolina 
> (also available in many standard supermarkets), verjuice (labeled sour 
> grape juice)

The Persian name for sour grape juice is Abghureh and the Arabic is hisrim. In my experience it is far more sour, acrid, acidic, and just generally stronger than any verjus made in a California winery. I can pretty much drink a glass of California winery verjus straight up. But not the Middle Eastern stuff - whew! However, one bottle from which i had used a little sat in the back of my fridge for a year and was much mellower after that. I know i've bought it in halal markets, but recently several from which i'd previously bought it not only didn't have any, they claimed not to know what i was talking about. I did find it in a Persian market just up the street - yes, three halal markets in 1-1/2 blocks in Berkeley - one run by Pakistanis, one by Lebanese, and one by Persians.

> sesame oil from untoasted sesame, and almond oil.

Both are easily found in "health food" stores. And in my experience the quality of the sesame oil in the "health food" store is greatly superior to the oily, greasy, bitter, dark yellow oil i've gotten in a halal market, that smelled and tasted just short of being rancid even when i first opened the bottle.

> Also often goat. I managed to find mutton at one hallal butcher, but it 
> took searching, since they tend to use the term to include lamb and 
> goat--at this one he took me into the freezer to show me the size of 
> the animal he was cutting a piece off of for me.

I discovered that when i ask for lamb at the halal market i could be getting tender young lamb, old sheep, or goat. I got lamb many times in a local halal market and it was great. I don't like lamb much to begin with, however, and for one feast i cooked i could barely stand to stir the pot the meat smelled so strong - i think it was mutton, since i've eaten goat before, while living in Indonesia, and this was even worse.

> Edible camphor in an Indian grocery, but that took searching too.

I'm still looking for edible camphor around here, but so far no luck.

> Cubebs in an Indian grocery.

The first time i bought cubebs was in the mid-1970s in a spice shop in Santa Monica, CA. Those are still the best cubebs i have ever purchased. Nowadays, far too many spice vendors are selling false cubebs instead. Real cubebs are peppery and have a fragrant lemony aroma. False cubebs, also known as West African pepper, Ashanti pepper, Benin pepper, Guinea cubeb, and Uziza pepper, are much smaller, have little fragrance, lack the complex flavor of real cubebs, and the wrinkled skin slips off the seeds to reveal a somewhat shiny brick red seed. Caveat emptor!

Also, often the people who run ethnic markets are happy to talk about how they use the products that are unfamiliar to us. So don't be shy to ask.

When i live in or spend much time in a new city in the US, one of the first things i do is look for ethnic markets.

Someone sometimes called Urtatim
who cooked a lot of Southeast Asian food - Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian (and cuisine varies greatly from island to island and one region to another on a single island) back in the 1970s and 80s.