Today, fortified with barbecue, La Mère and I popped over to a NoVa Chinese supermarket, Great Wall, to see about getting supplies for tea eggs. Somehow, the place stocks everything you could possibly want except whole star anise in something other than a one-pound jar ("Son, your great-grandmother bought these spices back in 2009. And unless you squander this patrimony, your great-grandchildren will have enough left for them. It is one of the treasures of our family"). Tea for the tonsils? Chicken extract with ginseng rhizomes? Big crystal chunks that look like rock candy, carefully labeled "alum"? Mysterious cuts of beef marked "meat department"? Yes, yes, and oh yes. Durian, whole, or as ice cream, or in moon cakes. Glistening bins of live snails. Masses of frozen dumplings: cabbage, mixed vegetable, pork, seafood, red bean, or lotus. An entire aisle of sriracha and suchlike heating delights, including bottles of "chily oil," ginger oil, and tiny whole fish in pepper oil. Huge jars of dried scallops, with big warning signs: "Do not sample or eat!" Inscrutable vitamins: "Sheep placenta—with RNA/DNA! From 100% healthy sheep!" The aisle labeled "American foods" started off with white bread and peanut butter, but by halfway down gave up and segued into mochi, bao, yucca extract, and pickled galangal; another aisle, more confusing labeled "Asian foods," mixed Thai, Indian, Chinese, and Vietnamese junk food with abandon. "Hardly worth going to China," murmured my mother. "This is stuff I haven't seen since Beijing."
Not wanting to tip off Il Padre, a reliable overshopper who tends to lose control in good ethnic supermarkets, and disappointed in our hopes for a reasonable amount of spices, we escaped with just my personal indulgence, a couple of red-bean mochi. At $1.29 each, they're a fiendish bargain.
3 comments:
I love "Do not sample or eat!' in a grocery store... and "trout' is my word verification today.
There's no chance I'd be tempted to pitch a dried scallop mouthward, since they look like plugs of cork and smell pungently of the tide, but it's easy to picture some irascible granny lady demanding that she be allowed to check the quality.
Speaking of such delights, what a fantabulous chance to pimp one of my all-time favorite stories, "Chinatown". "The crowded Fung Wah bus lets me off on Canal St. The boy behind me on the train was chattering into a cell phone about Ibiza for the entire trip. It is raining hard, cold, but the streets are crowded, solid with umbrellas, people, food, and noise. I have a backpack, and I walk through the crowded streets, aiming for the East Broadway station, but willing to be diverted by dumplings, caught between bags of garbage and stalls selling ginger root, scallions, and obscure ocean fauna." Mm, fauna.
"The waiters stand back in fear, but a single waiter, unafraid, runs to the tiger and delivers it a full plate of two dozen soupy buns. The tiger laps them into its mouth in a single movement, swallows, and, rises, rejuvenated, bursting back into the street."
Good stuff!!!
And now my word verification is "Thomist". Whaaa??
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