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Grocery Ninja: A United Nations Thanksgiving

Posted by Wan Yan Ling, November 5, 2007 at 10:30 AM

The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.

I was asked to write about an "ethnic Thanksgiving" and I've been thinking about it all week. But there already are plenty of wonderful ethnic-American floggers waxing gustatory over what's on their (way more cohesive) menu. So I thought I'd share with you a little bit of my world: that of the international student.

Since we hail from all manner of ethnicities, we call our gathering the "United Nations Thanksgiving," and it's a night where we all bring a plate (a common newbie gaffe: to figure the host must be running low on crockery and helpfully show up with a stack of empty dishes).

We try to stick to the concept of "traditional Thanksgiving foods," so there will be turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, yams, corn, and pumpkin pie. Except, because most of us call home and ask mom how to cook it, we end up with particularly unique renditions of these Thanksgiving stalwarts.

With so many vegetarians in the group, it's an unspoken agreement that the stuffing be meat-free. So we will have Indian biryani, Malaysian nasi ulam, Middle Eastern megadarra, Bhutanese red rice salad, and, as promised by the cute new grad student from Italy, his grandma's "kick-ass" panzanella.

The corn almost always shows itself in a giant, savory Korean pancake called pajeon—along with bell peppers, onions, scallions, and squid. It's usually dipped in a soy sauce–rice vinegar–sesame oil mix, but we love tearing into these with gochujang—a thick, sweet, hot-pepper paste made with glutinous rice powder, fermented soybeans, and red chili powder.

You may be relieved to know we've yet to find a way to mess with good ol' pumpkin pie, and so one of us usually shows up with a scrumptiously "traditional" one. But this year, one of the Indonesian moms is actually going to be with us, and rumor has it her pumpkin ondeh ondeh—little chewy cakes (think Japanese mochi) made with steamed pumpkin and tapioca flour before being rolled in freshly desiccated coconut—are legendary. When bitten into, they burst to release a flood of molten gula melaka (palm sugar) in your mouth.

Then, there will be yams—or what most of us in the group know as "sweet potatoes." We like the red-skinned, yellow-fleshed ones from Japan that taste like chestnuts. These will be wrapped in foil and buried among coals in the fireplace. There, they will roast to sweet, creamy, perfection to be savored at the end of the night, steaming hot green tea (or hard cider) in hand.

I've not forgotten the turkey of course, and this year I'm on turkey duty. And because I cannot leave things be, I'm going to do it my way: The turkey will be brined, the baggies of innards within will not be forgotten, and instead of spice-rubs and aromatics, I will use my new favorite condiment: Chinese gha na cai, or olive vegetable. This stuff is incredible. If I were a kid again, this is how I'd describe it: WHAM! POW! SWISH! BANG! WHOOP!

It's that good. The bottle I have (above) lists as its ingredients mustard leaf, olive, salt, and vegetable oil. It has a rounded, robust, slightly astringent tang from the olives, as well as an incredible drawn-out depth of flavor from the mustard leaf. It tastes like nothing I've ever had, and yet it tastes so right—like the perfect marriage of east and west before we had one too many heinous "fusion cuisine" experiments.

I've seared duck with this. I've sautéed pork, stir-fried noodles, grilled tofu, braised chicken, and just had it with plain steamed rice. It can do no wrong. But I'm not telling anyone; people tend to get a bit touchy when it comes to the bird. I'm just going to surprise them—and maybe experiment on roast quail first.

About the author: Wan Yan Ling is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Rhode Island. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work" or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.

5 Comments | Tags: Grocery Ninja, holidays, olive vegetable, Thanksgiving

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