Saturday, March 21, 2009

H-Mart Saturday

The chefs and I took a field trip to H-Mart on Route 40 and Rolling Road. As usual, lots of interesting and unusual foods awaited us. Chef Dawg was looking for some fermented black beans and found them straight-away. Meanwhile, Chef Cat and I took our time strolling though the produce section and checking out what we saw.

These little things, which look sort of like tiny yams, are actually fresh tumeric. Even the chefs haven't seen this before! These rhizomes are boiled and then dried and ground for use as a spice.We're all familiar with water chestnuts, but have you ever seen fresh ones?This is mamey, the fruit of an ornamental evergeen which grows in South and Central America. Wiki says that the skin is a cross between sandpaper and peach fuzz and that the inside is creamy and sweet and orange. The flavour is described as a combination of pumpkin, sweet potato and marischino cherries! This woman is whipping up batches of kimchi, the traditional Korean pickled vegetable dish. The Kimchi Field Museum in Korea has documented 187 types of kimchi.
Because English is not the primary language of the staff at H-Mart, misspellings are frequent and frequently funny.
Frozen Frog Legs

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought the tumeric was some kind of edible grub at first.Guess I've been watching too much Survivor...

Anonymous said...

I thought the same thing about the turmeric. Looks like a bunch of grubs at first glance.

There's an H-Mart a few miles away from me. I've been meaning to check it out. The only reason I haven't is that there's a small international market closer that is more convenient.