August 30, 2008
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, June 2, 2008 at 8:30 AM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here.
Add enough sugar to anything and you’ve made candy, right? I mean, why else would you find oddments like candied baby crabs, anchovies, and cuttlefish in the Asian grocery snack aisle? Despite the initial ick-factor, they can be pretty good (except for the crabs… those are not my favorite… I have a texture issue with them). If you already eat beef jerky and bacon bits, and are not averse to seafood, then these are just, well, jerky and bits from the sea.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, May 19, 2008 at 11:00 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.
Clockwise from bottom-left: dried oysters, shrimp, seaweed, scallops, and anchovies.
Chinese eateries are often accused of being heavy-handed with monosodium glutamate (MSG)—that cheap, nasty chemical that makes food taste good but leaves hapless diners grappling with the dreaded "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome": headaches, flushing, sweating, breathlessness, heart palpitations, etc. But, since—as Jeffrey Steingarten pointed out in a 1999 essay for Vogue—not everyone in China has a headache, what do Chinese home cooks use to make their food delicious?
Naturally Umami-Filled Foods
Long before "umami"—recognized as the fifth taste after sweet, sour, salty, and bitter—became a culinary buzzword, Chinese cooks identified the presence of umami's savory "mouthfeel" in lovingly tended, double-boiled soups and slow-simmered broths. The resulting full, rounded flavor of the stocks was attributed to their base of poultry, pork, or fish bones and assorted meat scraps—a flavor that that we now know to be chock full of naturally occurring glutamates. Today, it remains the home economist’s pride to be able to coax the magnificent “meat sweetness” or umami-ness of these stocks from nothing more than humble kitchen throwaways.
But when money is no object, the ingredients most prized for their ability to deliver the desired umami punch are the briny treasures from the sea. These commonly include dried oysters, shrimp, seaweed, scallops, and anchovies.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, May 12, 2008 at 10:00 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 just survived my last month in grad school. And I am sad to report that I’m one of those people who clearly do not forget to eat when stressed. Deadlines can be raining down, but my stomach is never in so tight a knot that I will refuse a steaming cuppa hot chocolate. Or a brownie. Or an oatmeal raisin cookie.
Most people put on the freshman 15, deal with it, and move on. I grapple with the “finals 15” every finals period. Which means my first stop after submitting my last paper is never the end-of-finals party—it’s the gym.
Having said that, in my last term of school, I think I’ve finally figured out the antiballoon strategy (or what it should have been all these years). Being cheap, I refuse to shell out money for a muesli bar–type confection, as just one is never enough, and before you know it, you might as well have bought a deli sandwich. But microwave oatmeal quickly loses its shine, so I staged “Operation Find Yummy, Healthy, Instant Food.”
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, May 5, 2008 at 10:15 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.
Last week, the Russian housemate came back from the grocery with a pack of what looked like fossils. On close scrutiny, they turned out to be dried lotus roots—something I should have been excited about, as I’ve been craving lotus roots and had not realized they were available. But, remembering the foul mushiness that is canned water chestnuts, I dismissed the dried tubers with a haughty, "No thanks, they’ll probably taste bleargh!"
Back in Asia, I’ve always bought lotus roots freshly harvested. Coated in a layer of mud that keeps them moist, they look rather like severed human limbs that have been dredged out from the bottom of a lake. Bring them home, scrape off the mud, and give them a good scrub, and they look less eerily like body parts and more appetizingly like giant sausage links.
An underwater rhizome, the lotus plant is popular throughout Asia and is especially venerated in Hindu and Buddhist cultures. The lotus flower represents purity and enlightenment—having grown from mud and emerged unstained from the metaphorical quagmire of human desires. It’s also a highly economical plant, as every part of it—from the stamens to the petals and leaves—presents itself deliciously on the dining table. The stamens, for instance, are infused in water and served as a sweet-smelling tea in India and Vietnam, while Thais enjoy the petals dipped in a spicy, smoky fish sauce called Nam Prik.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 28, 2008 at 10:15 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.
The Argentinean housemate is the one who introduced me to the magic that is creamy sweet dulce de leche. She doesn’t judge me (nay, encourages!) when I whorl the stuff liberally on animal crackers with a sprinkle of sea salt—my go-to snack and instant gratification take on the decadent alfajores her grandmother indulgingly mails from Spain. And she risks life and limb by making the caramelized milk goodness in a pressure cooker with me—despite being convinced the cans will explode and we’ll be maimed for life (plus have to clean burnt milk off half the free world).
She is a swell person, my housemate. And this weekend, she outdid herself by bringing home a large, flattish, cylinder of dulce de membrillo. (Truly, she has brought dulce into my life.)
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Quince paste. Hang on, I’ll fix you some!” she responds. And in two blinks, she's sliced up some sharp cheddar, slivered the orange-red moon of membrillo after flipping it out of its tin, and assembled them atop crackers.
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