"Why is that?" you ask. "Do you live in some ultra-modern, sleek, ultra-clean bachelor pad with Swedish modular furniture? Do you own a cat? Do you play Yanni albums?"
No - the answer is much simpler: rats don't trust me. Or, to be more specific, they don't trust my pantry. Faced with the sheer unfamiliarity of some of the mystery foods I've brought home since moving to Manchester, any self-respecting rat would be nonplused. I have a recurring mental image of a group of rats standing on each other's shoulders and looking into a refrigerator full of bitter melon, fermented bean curd and pickled radishes:
"Waddaya see, Dwayne?" the rat on the bottom of the pyramid shouts up to the guy on the top.
"Damned if I know!" the leader replies.
I'd be lying if I said that ALL my food is strange and exotic; I do make the occasional purchase of cheese or peanut butter. Last week, I actually brought home a head of iceberg lettuce! I do have to admit, however, that my grocery shopping has been getting more esoteric with each passing week.
I blame the Asian grocery stores.
Now, keep in mind that Manchester is the first city I've ever lived in. The term "city" is a relative one - while this town may not stack up to Paris or Los Angeles or even Cleveland in terms of urbanity, to me it is a bright, shining symbol of culture and sophistication. The proof of this lies in the fact that within a few blocks of my home, there are not one, not two, but four - count 'em FOUR - Asian grocery stores.
I'm hooked. I admit it. I dig food and these stores - all mom-and-pop ones - have very, very cool food that I'm powerless to resist. I love the fact that you can walk into one of these places and find everything from fresh coconuts to live crabs to gummi hamburgers (I'm not kidding!). It's the funkiest experience imaginable. You might expect to find places like this in Manhattan or Toronto, but to find them in New Hampshire of all places is a bit mind-boggling. For one thing, Manchester doesn't seem to have a large enough Asian population to support one of these places, let alone four of them.
The stores are (in reverse order of preference):
Oriental Market - 123 Hanover Street, downtown.
This is the least funky and groovy of the four markets I visit. I have to admit that I've only been in the shop a couple of times and was not all that impressed by the variety of groceries stocked; they seem to carry almost entirely canned goods. This seems to be a Korean-owned store that is as much a gift shop as it is a grocery store, and on that level, it works pretty well, but as I say, their stock of groceries is not overwhelming. On one of the two occasions I've visited the store, I found myself saying, "Well, it's not a fantastic market, but it would be the type of place that would be cool to visit late at night if you were really craving something more exotic than Dunkin Donuts..." It was at just that moment that I was thrown out of the store. It was almost closing time, I was told, then given a stern look. It was 5:30 in the afternoon.
Asian Market Center
- 550 Elm Street
This is the market I go to when I'm looking for a particularly unusual ingredient for a recipe. I went through a phase a couple of months ago when I was trying to teach myself to cook traditional South Indian vegetarian dishes. (This was before I realized that this is one of the most complicated and exasperating cuisines I'm ever likely to tackle - definitely worth the effort, but not worth making TOO often.) This is where I was actually able to find ingredients like urad daal and dried curry leaves. I'm reasonably sure that the owners - who actually seem to BE a mom and a pop - are Chinese or Taiwanese, they stock ingredients from Thailand, India, China, Japan, the Philippines and - if I read the labels correctly in one very dark corner correctly - Indonesia. They have a small produce section. They also carry a fair assortment of cooking utensils as well as cheesy kung-fu souvenirs. I really dig this place for at least one additional reason - almost all of their clientele seem to be Arabs and North Africans. Go figure.
Seoul Oriental Market - The corner of Maple and Valley Streets
This is a hard-core Korean place. When I say "hard-core", I'm not talking about off-color movies - though given the stacks of videotapes which line the walls, that's probably a possibility - but the fact that the store is set up for customers who really KNOW their Korean food. There are no signs in English, almost all the food is labeled in Korean and the staff seems a little shaky in terms of speaking English. That said, this is a VERY cool place! I have found some great food here. My top finds so far - "garlic-stem pickles" which are so spicy they feel like you've just stuck your tongue in a blender, and frozen vegetable dumplings, or, as they are labeled, "Ravioli au kimchee". Even though I'm a vegetarian, some of the more mysteriously labeled packages are very intriguing - "pollack entrails" spring to mind. Apparently, they also have a good butcher section and can set you up with a kick-butt Korean barbecue. I used to think that the people who run this store were really unfriendly until I got into a cooking conversation with a really nice Korean lady at the front of the store one day. It turns out, she is the one who makes the pickles! I told her how much I dig them, and ever since, the staff has been pretty friendly. I suspect that they get their share of "tourists" - non-Asian customers who come in and gawk, then buy something "weird" just for the sake of being able to tell their friends how cool they are. I think that once they realized how seriously I take my food, they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.
Saigon Asian Market - Vista Market Plaza, Valley Street
Don't ask me why I love this place. It has all the warmth and ambiance of a Tire Warehouse. It smells funny. There is no logical pattern to the way it is laid out. And yet I really, really like it.
It is run by an extended family - two young Vietnamese couples who are related by marriage somehow. They are all extremely friendly. I was lucky enough to make friends pretty early on with one of their 8-year old daughters who finds me amusing; she leads me through the store whenever she sees me shopping and helps me pick out food that I've never tried before. She does a lot better at this than her mother, who seems to have never quite grasped the fact that I don't eat meat.
"Try some of this," she'll say, showing me one product or another. "It's very good with beef."
I remind her that I don't eat beef. This always seems to confuse her for a moment before she brightens and recommends that I try it with shrimp. I explain that I don't eat shrimp either - no meat at all.
She furrows her brow, then recommends it with pork.
I shoot that idea down as well, and after some thought, she recommends beef again. We've had this conversation at least a dozen times.
In spite of this, I have found the COOLEST food at Saigon! After reading a posting on a food-lover's website, I found myself looking for fermented bean curd in chili oil. Not surprisingly, this market had it. (By the way, this is a food which should be approached with caution. It is salty enough to make your head collapse.) Ditto with the durian fruit. My 7th grade class and I had read an essay together about this fruit - reputedly the stinkiest, most delicious fruit on earth. (It lives up to half that reputation, by the way.) I have bought everything from incense to coconut milk and everything in between.
My one regret is that I haven't been able to try what I call the "Star Trek" vegetable - it was bright pink and looked like the unholy bastard hybrid of a pineapple and a potato.
