Shopping Asian Grocery Stores - New Foods, New Flavors

Cooking Asian style is delicious and can be very healthful. Many grocery stores are starting to carry some of the more unusual ingredients found in these dishes, such as Pad Thai noodles or water chestnuts. If you've got a good Asian cookbook in front of you, however, you may want fresh or canned squid, fresh Chinese Broccoli, or many of the innumerable types of noodles, made from rice as well as wheat.

What you need is a good Asian grocery store, and chances are if you live in a moderate-sized city, there's one not that far away. A quick visit to Google shows Cincinnati has them, as well as Miami, Boise and even Bloomington, Indiana. Larger cities have huge stores the size of Kroger, such as Super 88 in Boston, and VIet Hoa here in Denver.

The key to Asian cooking, as with any cooking style, is to understand the traditions. What is it made of, what are the staples? It's easy to come home with a bag of different bottles of sauces, strange vegetables, and a feedbag full of twenty-five pounds of rice, but if you haven't investigated the style, you will be making Western food with new ingredients, or the stuff they call Chinese at the local Chinese/Polynesian restaurant. Wouldn't you like to try something new, have your kitchen and your taste buds full of the aroma and tastes of faraway lands?

Maybe you'd like some delicate flavors. Try a small bag of Jasmine rice. Get a few vegetables, nothing too exotic. There are some very strong flavors in Asian vegetables and even fruits (I'm thinking particularly of something called the durian, be careful sniffing that one!). Maybe even stick to some things you know from your regular grocery, switching to new types of rice, and trying some new flavors.

It might be time to visit a good Asian restaurant, one that has many Asian patrons, quite possibly in the same neighborhood as the grocery store. Try a hot pot, or some other basic traditional meal. Find out what's in it, how it's prepared, and how you like it. Then go back to the store, and learn about the ingredients.

Next, try a trip to the bookstore, or pick up some books at the store, if they offer them. You now know some of the ingredients, so reading the recipes should be a little easier. You're gradually coming to understand this new cuisine, which is all about synthesis. Just as a burger, fries and a shake go together in the West, so there are combinations which please the taste buds of Asians, and you will grow to love the taste of miso soup, the strange uses of peanut flavors, and a more vegetable and starch based diet, not so heavy in meat.

Here's a strange suggestion: check out some Asian music from the library, shakuhachi or koto, or Chinese orchestra, something traditional. Listen to it for a while. Try to understand that there are new harmonies that take time to appreciate. The same goes for food! After a while, vary your Asian cooking, try some of the more exotic tastes, once you can blend them in the ways that are intended. You may think you know a lot about cooking, but you will find you have the Zen "beginner's mind" and will be amazed at the ways that food experiences have developed over the millennia in Asia.

So go out, find an Asian grocery, and let your new discovery lead you into a whole new experience of life, step by step. You will find it's a lot more than just food, it's another piece of wisdom that the Ancients have passed on to us - and to you!