Tag Archives: Cooking

Golden Pacific Market: a treasure trove

I love–and let me emphasize love–my local Asian grocery store. Since college, I have shopped at many: the 10th street store, Saraga, and the College Mall store in Bloomington, Indiana. Wang’s Oriental Food in Newark, Delaware. And now, here in Chicago, I have found this blissful paradise: Golden Pacific Market on Broadway Avenue, merely 2 El stops south of us.

It’s the best Asian grovery EVER. It’s large. It’s well lit.

Lemongrass, Thai basil, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese broccoli, galangal, Chinese cabbage, baby eggplant, Japanese eggplant, Thai red chilies . . . it’s enough to send me into a fit. A fit of Asian joy.

The employees (or maybe they are the owners?) speak English, and can help me find hard-to-locate ingredients. They accept credit/debit cards with no minimum charge. The aisles are wide enough for a cart. They have absolutely everything. When I go there, I’m in heaven.

The only less-than-heavenly part is climbing onto the Broadway bus with 6 bags of groceries that you can barely carry.

Yes, you will always leave with way more than what you planned on getting. But the red welts on your arms and hands will all be worth it as soon as you get home to your kitchen and can create the most fabulous dishes: Panang curry. Thai red curry. Pad See Ew. Delectable stirfries.

I went there a couple weekends ago to stock up on my basics, and ended up with a tablefull of stuff for a $58 total:

The prices are unbeatable: dark and light soy sauce, for about $2 per bottle.

Ok, the Wasabi peas were a spontaneous buy. But at $3 for a large, large tin, I couldn’t resist.

Have you ever tried them?

Pure green addiction.

These lime leaves will go into my Panang curry–I can’t wait.

Cheap ground pork for Ma Po Tofu.

Coconut cream (not to be confused with cream of coconut or creamed coconut) for a thick, wonderful Thai curry.

And of course, I couldn’t resist getting some new things to experiment with: glutinous rice (to make sticky rice). I’ve been adoring it from afar for way too long–it’s time to get down and dirty with that rice in my own kitchen.

Ginger syrup.

How helpful–the bottle informs me that it’s an ‘all time favourite.’

It is such an inspiration to come home with new ingredients–cheap ingredients–that you can experiment with to your heart’s content. I’ve been reading about Sriracha sauce for ages. It’s all over the blogging world, and now I’m going to try it myself.

These mushrooms are funky.

I bought four varieties to make some kind of delicious mushroom fry–crimini, shiitake, and white beech, as well as the weird little guys above, known as either “Enoki” or “the freak-shaped thingamagings.”

Though I must admit I’m afraid to ask the question that the above picture begs: what does it mean when a mushroom is described as ‘high tech’?

Maybe they are so high tech that we should start preparing our defenses against their carefully planned attack of the world, which will start in my very own refrigerator while I am sleeping tonight. I guess if I don’t show up with a post on Monday at 7am sharp, you can assume these mushrooms have something to do with it–in that case, please send a SWAT team at your earliest convenience.

And the pre-peeled garlic: yes. Yes, yes, yes. It makes me add 8 cloves where I would normally use 5. Peeling garlic is one of my banes. I always do it when my hands are kind of wet, the peels stick to my fingers, and I get extremely claustrophobic.

I knew I’d be hungry by the time I got home, so I also bought some instant soup with udon noodles. You prepare it just like ramen noodles, but it’s 50 times better.

As I boiled some water on the stove, I noticed that the stovetop was getting quite greasy.

“That’s disgusting!” I exclaimed. “Who’s responsible for this disgrace of a kitchen!?”

Then I realized that it was me. “Well,” I muttered, “it’s getting completely out of control. Someone had better clean up his or her act.”

I find it comforting to sermonize myself. It makes me feel very wise. Wise and prudent.

I chopped up part of a green onion for some fresh crunch. It was the perfect lunch: quick and satisfying.

Do any of you shop at your local Asian grocery stores? What are some of your recent ingredient finds?

Tuesday I will be posting a recipe for Pad See Ew, made from some of the lovely ingredients purchased: wide, flat rice noodles. Soy sauce. Garlic. Chinese broccoli. You don’t want to miss it.

In case you’re confused, the message of this post can be boiled down to the following: get your buns to your nearest Asian grocery and indulge your creative side.

And I’m sorry I just ordered your buns around–but try to remember that it’s for a higher good.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Rich and Creamy Tomato Bacon Pasta

I love it. It may be artery-clogging material, but I’ll make up for it by eating my greens and by faithfully attending my Monday workout, which has already created one new muscle on my left leg called ‘Fred.’ It’s all about balance–I like to compensate for things (read: ‘bacon’) rather than cutting them out, as you may have guessed if you have visited some of my other heavy whipping cream and blue cheese-laden recipes.

This dish is quick to whip up, and dreadfully satisfying to dig into. And even though I’m calling it “rich” in the title, I must emphasize to you that IT IS VERY RICH. You won’t need a ton of sauce to go over your bowl of pasta. Oh, and it’s delicious as well over white rice, which is how I chose to consume the abundant leftovers.

My husband loved it. I loved it. Will you you love it, too? I say there’s a 99% chance if you’re in my immediate family, but a 0% chance if you’re my cousin Luke and can’t eat the pasta (gluten intolerant) or the sauce (lactose intolerant).

Let’s dive in! Get ready for a swim on the dangerous side of sauce.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

1 lb cooked farfalle pasta

1 lb bacon

1 large onion, roughly chopped

3 TBS dry sherry or wine

1-26 oz can spaghetti sauce*

1 c heavy whipping cream

2 TBS crème fraîche

3/4 c blue cheese crumbles

salt, to taste

1/2 tsp sugar, to taste

generous amounts of black pepper

cilantro or herbs, to garnish

*you can use plain tomato sauce; just add some brown sugar, garlic and dry herbs to create your own flavor

First, chop up and sauté that bacon in a deep skillet over medium-high heat.

While the bacon is cooking, give the onion a rough dice. Once the bacon starts getting brown, add the onion and continue to sauté until the onion is softened.

This whole process can take a while, maybe 12 minutes or so . . . I wasn’t counting.

Now it’s time to drain the excess grease out of the pan. There’s a lot, and we don’t want this sauce to precipitate an immediate trip to the hospital. Grab your baster and suck out the good stuff. I mean, the bad stuff.

Good, bad, bad, good–it’s all just so relative.

Look at all this grease we have successfully discarded:

Now, add the sherry and deglaze the pan, scraping up any brown bits.

Let it boil away a little, for 2-3 minutes.

Add the spaghetti sauce.

I used a dented can from Big Jake, but you can use any kind, really. And if you’re against premade spaghetti sauce, use regular tomato sauce with some spices (garlic powder, salt and pepper, thyme, oregano, some sugar).

Cover the pan and let the sauce simmer on medium-low for about 10-12 minutes. If you are by chance using diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, you want to leave the pan uncovered and increase the cooking time here, so that the majority of the liquid boils off.

Now it’s time to throw caution to the winds. Grab that crème fraîche:

And eat some! Seriously, it’s part of the recipe.

See the finger swipes? If you have any sense at all for who I am as a person, you knew this was inevitable.

Add the sugar, cream, crème fraîche, blue cheese, and salt and pepper to taste.

A good substitution for crème fraîche if your grocery store doesn’t carry it is sour cream mixed with mascarpone. Stir the whole creamy mess until everything is incorporated and heated through. Dip in your spoon and take a taste, then adjust the seasonings to your liking. I happened to need more salt . . .

. . . and also more pepper.

Also, if you are a blue cheese hater (I know who you are . . . and have forgiven you. I think.) you can totally skip adding the blue cheese and just add some more crème fraîche or something. I happen to be a blue cheese lover, and I added even MORE! I was in the mood to totally rock my own palate.

And here we have the sauce, in all its perfection. And richness.

Here we reach a fork in the road: if you take the path to the right, you could dump your cooked pasta into the sauce. However, I would advise against that namely because the sauce is so rich that you may not want that much with your pasta. Take the path to the left and leave it up to each individual eater to choose the amount of sauce they feel capable of handling.

Garnish with parsley, cilantro, basil, or whatever herb floats your boat.

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