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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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 21, 2008 at 1:00 PM
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 know what you’re thinking. “Acorns? Why on earth is she talking about acorns? The weather’s just getting nice and balmy, and she’s featuring autumnal nuts? Bah humbug… it’s spring!”
And so it is. But I promise you, this is a very springy kind of dish. It’s refreshing on a warm, sunny day, light on the palate, easy on the eye (and wallet), and will leave you feeling decidedly sprightly.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 14, 2008 at 10:00 AM
How to Stretch Your Tea, and Eat It, Too
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 don’t know about you, but filing my taxes has left me feeling kind of like the last prune in the bottom of the box—all dried out with icky crystallized sugar on top. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), rice recipes have been showing up everywhere—probably because everyone’s feeling a bit pinched on the money side of things, and rice is one of the most filling and affordable foods to be had for the money.
I doubt you guys need another recipe on how to cook rice, but how about drinking it? There are rice milks, alcohol, and those incredible sweet rice-based drinks Amazake, Sikhye, and Morro Horchata. But they’re all too involved for me in my ripped-off state. I don’t want to spend too much time at the stove, because that will lead to me angsting about holes in my pockets, stirring spoon in hand. Instead, all I want to do is be able to just add water.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 7, 2008 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 know it’s only April, but this may be my food find of the year. Tiny, freshwater crabs—each barely two inches across—are soused with water, sprinkled with Kosher salt, and stuck live in the fridge. Hours later, they’re skillfully pressed and prodded to extract a grainy, coral paste that Pinoys like to mix with freshly steamed white rice, its richness cut through with a generous squirt of calamansi juice—a poor (or busy) man’s paella, if you will.
The thing is, I’m not positive what the gorgeously creamy, salty, slightly tangy stuff is. My bottle says it's "crab fat," and the Tagalog label of "taba ng talangka" concurs—"taba" is "fat" and "talangka" is what those little crabs are called. Yet, I’ve found roughly the same number of sources that claim it as either "crab roe" or "crab fat," and some fence-straddlers that call it "fatty crab roe." Seizing on that, the researcher beau helpfully suggested that since crab roe can be fatty, but crab fat isn’t necessarily roe, the yummy (calorific, cholesterol-laden, highway-to-a-heart-attack) stuff we’ve been sneaking spoonfuls of all weekend must be the eggs.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, March 31, 2008 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 get asked this all the time, so I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of sharing it here before. But the tipping point came on Wednesday night, when the beau and I picked out three magnificent pomelos at Wegmans. In the 25-minutes we were there, we got asked, not once, not twice, but four different times "what is that?" First, by the old guy who had been gravely tossing oranges in the air next to us, making sure each of his picks were "full of juice and heavy for their size." Then, by the lady who watched us place the bowling ball-sized fruit in our cart and blurted out, "Are those giant grapefruits?" Followed by the teenaged cashier who eyed our loot and evidently decided they were mutant oranges, asking, "How do you guys squeeze those? That’s a lot of juice!" And finally, by a grandmotherly-type who spotted the bulge in our bags and beckoned us over, "I’ve never seen anyone buy those…are they any good? How do you pick them?"
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, March 24, 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.
Photographs from FotoosVanRobin on Flickr
My mom’s visiting this week, and I’ve noticed something: Every time my Russian housemate asks about one of the more pungent foods she’s eating, Mom will cock her head to one side, and after much deliberation, respond, “It’s like cheese.” Since a great bulk of what she’s eating most decidedly does not taste like cheese, I’ve puzzled over why her mind leaps to associate the punchier flavors in the Asian larder with it. My theory: For Mom, cheese is one of the most confrontational foods she’s had to share a table with. Hence, in her world, “tastes like cheese” is a most apt descriptor—a Western segue to a Chinese reckoning.
Which, of course, leaves you a tad leery about what I’m about to introduce, doesn’t it?
With all the frenzy over eggs this past Easter weekend, I thought it apropos to share the granddaddy of them all: thousand-year-old eggs. Also called century eggs, these are chicken or duck eggs that have been cured in a mix of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice husks over a period of weeks or even months. The resulting preserved egg, with its quivery, translucent, amber colored (almost black) “white,” and Chernobyl sunset yolk, has been described as “cheeselike.”
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, March 17, 2008 at 9:30 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 going to headline this “Asia’s Red Bull,” but my colleague—who was listening as I mused aloud—chirped, “Red Bull is Asian, silly... I have the T-shirt with the funky lettering!”
I wasn’t about to argue with someone who has a “been there, done that” T-shirt, and granted, that sugary carbonated drink with two charging bulls on the can was a Thai concoction. But the version most of us are familiar with was made-over for “European tastes”—the original being way sweeter (if that’s even possible) and nonfizzy—by an Austrian entrepreneur employed at a toothpaste factory. I guess that’s why he cut down on the sugar.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, March 10, 2008 at 11:15 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.
I’ve been craving these jellies for ages and went hunting for them this weekend, certain that with globe-trotting food trends, I’d find them sitting pretty next to the Taiwanese bubble tea hut, or the Korean fro-yo stand. But several jelly-less hours later, I was forced to concede that not only are these jellies nowhere near as popular as they are in Asia, they aren’t available at all! What gives?
Konnyaku jellies are a wobbly, vegan treat made from the starchy root of the konjac plant, a yamlike tuber that’s also called devil's tongue, voodoo lily, snake palm, or elephant yam. When flavored with hijiki seaweed and sans sugar, konnyaku plays a laudable role in Japanese hotpots or oden.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, March 3, 2008 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.
My housemates get visibly nervous when I offer them food—particularly if I’m bounding towards them, mystery item in hand, with a huge grin on my face. After the (well-intentioned) durian fudge cake of '06 and the Szechuan pepper-in-the-peppermill experiment of ’07, they’ve developed a cautiousness (rather unhealthy, to my mind, and completely un-fun) to the food I bring home.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, February 25, 2008 at 9:30 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.
Long before I was introduced to the snap, crackle, and pop of Rice Krispie treats, I was sinking my teeth into these Chinese soft flour cakes, or sachima. Made with flour, eggs, maltose, and lard (yes, lard—which, gram for gram, has “less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol” than butter, so I’ve never understood why people get so antsy about it), these are chewy, sticky-sweet, and have that fun, universally adored “mozzarella stretch effect," trailing gossamer strands of golden malt syrup between bites.
No, you do not want to eat these with braces or a newly installed crown.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, December 18, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Or, 'Still on a Sour Plum Streak'
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.
You know how most of us have culinary habits that we cleave to? Like my mom would disown me if I ever battered and fried really, really fresh fish—because it would be a "waste." The Chinese, you see, believe fish is best served steamed, a gentle cooking technique that is most unforgiving of mediocrity, with only the most impeccable specimens doing well. There's no hiding in steaming. It's like donning a spandex catsuit; flaws you never imagined break into a song and dance routine.
So I tend to be cautious about appropriating foods from another culture. I mean, you go to a grocery store, you spy something appealing, you bring it home and dig in—it's delicious! A few days later, you're gushing about it to someone, and he clutches you, nearly falling over in pain and indignation. Turns out what you've been doing with the item, how you've been eating it, is the equivalent of eating vanilla pudding on hamburger. Or something horrifying and unorthodox like that.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, December 11, 2007 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.
I remember my friends all thought me very odd when I brought jam and cheese sandwiches to school—despite the fact that numerous Asian pastries and desserts play on the sparky contrast between salt and sweet. Now with the rise in popularity of salt-spiked desserts (caramels, chocolate ganache, oatmeal cookies, anything with dulce de leche), it feels like I've been retroactively vindicated (though I was probably still kooky in a lot of other ways).
But this appreciation for flavor contrasts got me thinking about other unlikely culinary marriages—like watermelon and salt. I've been told "it's a Southern thing" to sprinkle just a pinch on the juicy, red fruit. The slight briny contrast makes the watermelon taste all the sweeter, and to my mind, might be just the perfect way to rehydrate and replenish lost electrolytes on a hot and muggy day—a coloring-free, all-natural, and much more cost-effective form of sports drink, maybe?
Beyond, the "Southern thing," watermelon with feta cheese and mint is a staple in the Mediterranean, and some of my Indian colleagues profess a love for pairing it with pickled onions. In Spain, there's melon and jamón—a close cousin to the melon and proscuitto of Italy. Not forgetting the salt, freshly squeezed lime, and chili powder treatment it gets in Mexico.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, December 3, 2007 at 12:00 PM
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.
A few years ago, I went with my por por (grandma) to the cinema to catch Pride and Prejudice. She used to bring me to Chinese operas staged beneath giant, makeshift tents in fields, and I remember promising her that when I grew up, it would be my turn to bring her to the theater. (I know—what a lousy deal my por por made; she brings me to watch an underground staging of a dying art form, and I bring her to the cinema down the road!)
Anyway, my por por was a good sport and sat through most of it, reading the Chinese subtitles and not even tugging on my sleeve to ask what was happening (like I used to). But near the end she must have had enough, because you know that scene where Elizabeth and Darcy meet in a field and it's all romantic and touching? That's when my por por opened her purse and started fishing around.
Fish, fish, fish. Rustle, rustle, rustle.
I fix my eyes on the screen and try to concentrate on the tears glistening in Elizabeth's eyes. After a prolonged period of crinkling plastic, my por por leaned over and asked, "Yan Yan, do you want some suan mei?"
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, November 26, 2007 at 12:00 PM
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 don't know about you, but I'm still full from Thanksgiving and it's mighty uncomfortable sitting for hours before the computer, trying to churn out a halfway decent paper while feeling (and looking, no doubt) like an overstuffed turkey.
Thankfully, I have company, and the company is just as stuffed. So, in between moaning about how we're ready to explode and helping prune each other's bloated academic prose, the Argentinean housemate and I have been taking turns brewing mate.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, November 20, 2007 at 12:55 PM
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.
There have been "countdown to Thanksgiving" notices everywhere for the past month, so it's safe to say anyone planning on hosting a gathering would have handled all the logistics by now—ordering the turkey, coordinating the sides, outsourcing the labor, etc. But what about the procrastinators among us? The ones who have left everything just this side of too late and are quickly realizing that a clean kitchen and peace of mind are what we would truly be thankful for?
It may be too late to order the organic, pasture-raised heirloom turkey, but it's not too late to dig out (beg, borrow, or steal) the biggest pot in your kitchen and get some curry going.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, November 12, 2007 at 2:30 PM
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.
My family travels several months out of the year, and it is unusual for all of us to be in the same place at the same time. While we travel light, the one item we always have space for is a bottle of my mom’s hae bee hiam or chili shrimp paste. It doesn’t look like much, and it doesn’t even sound like much, but when you arrive in a foreign country and the weather’s cold, the stores are closed, and you’re just not up to greasy take-out…this stuff is ambrosia over plain white rice.
Essentially a meal of just a condiment on carbs, I’ve had concerned housemates insist on my “eating properly." But I’ve turned down expensed sashimi dinners just because I knew I had a bottle of this in the fridge and was craving a taste of home. Made from a pounded and dry-fried concoction of dried baby shrimp, chili, candlenuts, shallots, belacan (fermented shrimp paste), and a touch of sugar, it’s considered the ultimate condiment—priceless because it’s tedious to prepare, chockful of shrimp, and completely reliant on the cook’s experience and “aggak” (estimation) skills to achieve the perfect balance of sweetness, savory-ness, briney pungence, and blistering heat.
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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.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, October 29, 2007 at 1:15 PM
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.
For years, my mom would not allow my brother and me to eat what she called "Western candy." No SweeTarts, Life Savers, Milk Duds, Tootsie Rolls—nothing that had a colorful wrapper and could be bought at a regular supermarket. She had somehow been persuaded by some heartless dentist that eating the same kind of candy everyone else in school was eating (you hear that, Mom?) would give us a mouthful of rotten teeth. Instead, whenever we whined about it heartily enough, she would hand us a stick of candied winter melon (after it had been boiled to death and leeched of all its sugary goodness in barley water) or a handful of honeyed jujube dates and dried longans.
However, if either of us scored full marks on a test, she would bring out the tub of maltose—the same syrup she would use to marinate her char siu (roast pork)—and let us poke a single chopstick in and attempt to twirl as big a glob of the sticky, golden stuff as could be supported on it. The resulting "lollipop" would keep us happy and sticky-fingered for a good 20 minutes—it being a lot more "lick-resilient" than honey.
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