Category: Ingredient + Produce Features
Writeups on new and unusual ingredients and produce
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I was in my neighborhood African store ordering my usual halal lamb meat when these tomato-looking things caught my eye. I asked the lady if they were tomatoes. We call them chungu, she said, but couldn’t help me with its American name. Do they taste like tomatoes? She couldn’t answer that either, so she got…
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I received a packet of flor de sal, or flower salt, and a packet of sea salt from Terras de Sal in Portugal last week. What good timing, too, because I ran out sea salt and have been using the grocery store type the last two nights. The Terras de Sal sea salt looks and…
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Cameron calls the fruit guy on the corner of Spring and Sixth Avenue our porno fruit guy. He has signs that have adjectives on them like “extra big size cherries”, “beautiful nectarines”, “sweet beautiful pineapple” and my favorite, “all kind sweet apple”. I’ve bought cherries and bananas from him before. Today I walked by and…
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For non-New Yorkers, here’s a quick lesson about my city. New York City is made up of five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island. In my quest to eat more often outside of Manhattan, Staten Island is the least represented on this site. Although it has the most suburban feel in all…
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Most of our group lunches at work are ordered via FreshDirect. Every New Yorker has also seen their delivery vans all over the city–albeit not in my part of Harlem–but I’ve never ordered from them until today. The New York Times announced this week that chef Roberto Santibañez of Rosa Mexicano has collaborated with FreshDirect…
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608 Fifth Avenue at 49th Street 212/489.3747 from $2.50 to $11 each Wagashi, or Japanese pastry, is served in traditional tea ceremonies. They are usually made of Azuki, kidney or soy beans combined with mochi-rice or wheat. The most common types are the jelly and rice cakes which come in different fruit flavors and colors.…
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The Dr. and I stopped by the Union Square Wines & Spirits store before we viewed the amazing Ron Mueck sculptures in the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday. They were having a free tasting of several Bordeaux and Burgundy wines from France with Marcus Lartigau, a French wine guru. We stayed for about an hour and…
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Right outside our Chinatown office, a line forms late in the afternoon in front of a Chinese man’s supermarket cart loaded with a huge pail of black liquid. I took a peek once and realized that hard-boiled eggs were floating in it. I’ve heard of tea eggs before but I’ve never had them, so the…
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During a recent visit to the farmers’ market, there was an abundant choice of root vegetables. I had this conversation with Cameron before where we had to draw on the office whiteboard what we thought were radishes and turnips. Filipino radishes are long and thick like white carrots, while American ones are the size of…
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I have to admit that we didn’t drive from Harlem all the way down to Red Hook to look for a good taco. We made the trip to check out the Fairway Supermarket that opened a few months ago and do our grocery shopping for the week. Walking along the waterfront of Red Hook, you’ll…
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Miss Geolouxy volunteered her services to accompany me for my second search for a good taco. It was after work so we decided to meet at Astor Place and work our way up and down First and Second Avenues from 1st to 10th Streets. I didn’t bring a list of places since the east side…
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In Chinatown, I saw these cool-looking fruits they call dragon fruit. One sign had “gradon” written on a piece of cardboard. Those Chinese vendors get confused sometimes! I couldn’t get any information from them so I did my own research after buying one for $3. They’re native to Central and South America, but they’re apparently…