SHOPPING ASIAN MARKETS
I’m guessing that most non-Asians don’t shop at Asian grocers because they just don’t want to pick out their dinner.
From a fish tank.
Or maybe the picking out’s OK, but when the guy whacks the fish on the head to kill it, that’s the deal breaker. Or the gutting.
Maybe the odors of an Asian grocery turn off non-Asian shoppers. (It’s the packaged dried fish.) Or the durian, the spiky-skinned fruit banned on the Singapore metro.
Or, in the meat aisle, the packaged chicken feet. Or the hundreds of cans, bottles, bags, and tins labeled in languages with letters made of Pick-up Sticks.
Get real, people. You call yourself cooks? Then you go to where the food is best, whether you’re comfortable about getting it or not.
In truth, Asian grocers aren’t merely the best places to buy groceries if you’re cooking Asian. Sure, they have 26 varieties of soy sauce or chili paste or rice cooking wine. Each. And as many turns on rice noodles or ramen packages as the stars at night.
But they’re also among the better groceries for most vegetables and fruits, period. And for most cuts of pork. And fresh mushrooms. And dried mushrooms.
And fresh fish.
The latest-available U.S. Census data (2010) shows that the cities of Denver and Aurora average 4.6 percent Asian (in order of predominant country of origin: Vietnam, People’s Republic of China, India, Japan, Philippines, Korea). But I’m telling you: the other 95.4 percent ought to be doing a lot more of its grocery shopping at these Asian folks’ grocery stores.
What cooks want, most of all, in their cooking ingredients is freshness; grocers achieve that with turnover. The more something is purchased, the quicker a fresher item replaces it.
At an Asian grocer, that’s the case in the produce, most meat and certainly the fish aisles. And compared with non-Asian grocers, the prices are not only competitive, but commonly far less. (Examples on a recent visit: limes, four for a dollar; squashes at 68 cents a pound; scallions for 29 cents a bunch).
Let’s say you really are cooking just “Western” tonight. Still, an Asian grocer often makes better shopping sense. All of these, for merely a few examples, are far less costly at an Asian than at a “Western” market: shrimp, heads on or off; oxtail or bony beef for soups or stews; chicken parts for gelatinous broths; indeed, whole fowl of most any sort.
What I love above all, for my own meat-based cooking, is the true nose-to-tail possible pork purchase. For instance, many French preparations call for “lardons” to start. Cookbooks will say, “blanch sticks of salt pork” or “slice uncured bacon” in order to approach getting at real French lardons.
In France itself, these are the small pieces of raw, un-smoked, uncured, unsalted pork belly rendered in a pot. Well, if you’re after raw, un-smoked, uncured, unsalted pork - belly or otherwise - the array at an Asian grocer can be unnerving.
When I cook for my gluten-averse friends, I shop at Asian grocers for rice-based ingredients (rice papers in any number of forms; rice noodles of any size; various sorts of rice grains, brown, sweet or white) and buckwheat noodles or tapioca- and bean-based noodles, flours or ingredients. Sure, you can get some of the same at non-Asian grocers, but neither will the selection or variety be as extensive, nor the price as low.
Yes to wonton or dumpling skins - fresh or frozen - when I don’t want to roll out pasta for tortellini; yes to grey squash at 69 cents a pound when down the street it’s a dollar for zucchini; yes to lemongrass stalks as long as my leg for a third the price of the wee package of sticks of the same hanging in the herb section of the mega-mart.
Yes to panko instead of canned breadcrumbs; yes to Korean pears in December; yes to fresh, real sesame oil, sweet soy sauce, sweet-hot Korean gochujang that wasn’t tinned two years ago; yes to palatable cooking wine; yes to 50-cent ramen packages with terribly interesting flavors.
Yes to smells and greenery and sweet cookies made in Indonesia. And seaweed treats and gummy bears as large as my thumb and persimmons with still-taut skin.
And yes to raw, un-smoked, uncured, unsalted pork.
And live fish.