onedaylingers

jellied soy bean pudding (tau foo fa / tau huay / dou hua in the various Chinese dialects) there's a little old man who trundles his cart around NYC's Chinatown selling bowfuls of this... delicious! lotus seeds ground into paste and sweetened are commonly used in Asian pastries and confections also, not in the vegetable arena, but the Chinese version of sundried tomatoes are sweet-tart and delighfully moreish! (greaseless and at a fraction of it's Italian cousin's price too!) I've used it in place of cranberries in trail mixes, cereal, and baking.

Hmm... I did enjoy the stewed butterfly chrysalis that street hawkers sold from steaming vats in Korea... you get them by the dixie-cupful, and spear-your-own with toothpicks....despite the stewed-nature of the chrysalis, I remember them being crispy-ish on the outside with softer insides... vaguely reminiscent in taste and fragrance of Chinese dried shrimp.

In Singapore, a favorite afternoon snack is the Cantonese hum jin peng — deep-fried discs of yeast-leavened dough infused with spices and flecked with sesame seeds. With an added texturizing boost from minute amounts of lye water and ammonia powder (common additives in Asian pastries) the puffs are crisp and light, with a pleasantly springy interior. There are two varieties: sweet, speckled with sesame seeds and filled with a dab of red-bean paste; or salty, redolent of Chinese five-spice powder and dusted lightly with sugar and salt =) I've spied them (still warm, though you really want them piping hot - chuck in the toaster oven) at the Chinese American Mini Market in Providence, RI.

ooh, they have raw ramen noodle snacks called Mamee in Asia...you crumble the noodle brick up, toss in the contents of the enclosed MSG sachet, shake, and dig it.

I have to say though, as lovely a tradition as it sounds, I interviewed several of my Indian grad school mates, and they all paint pretty bleak pictures of the women in the family virtually chianed to the kitchen -- there're barely done clearing up breakfast dishes, before they've to start prepping lunch, and then dinner!

The neighbors got together for a picnic, with every mummy bringing food to share. The lady with 3 kids plonked down a huge platter of 'sushi' which she had made from unseasoned long-grain rice, boiled canned hotdogs, and stale nori. Smiling widely at me, she announced, "Your mom told me you like sushi, so I made these specially for you!" Then proceeded to watch me like a hawk to see if I was eating her 'sushi'. Mom rescued me by very apologetically telling her I was allergic to wieners. Her children, I noticed, did not touch a single one.

I know when I first moved to Melbourne, Australia, I was only shopping in the 'tourist' parts of the Queen Victoria Market. These were the first two sheds off the cooked food/deli sections, where prices are a good 30% - 50% above the rest of the market, and hours are more 'tourist friendly'. It was only after a couple of months that I realised there were more sheds located behind the central parking lot, and these were where the locals shopped. Because public transport is very well developed, and it's a stone's throw from universities and the CBD, you see plenty of people lugging bags of produce or pushing laden personal shopping carts onto trams and trains. Oh, and it also helps that anything you can get at market is guaranteed to be at least 40% cheaper than at the supermarkets, and of way better quality. I was surprised to see farmers' market produce is pricier than in supermarkets in the US!

oooh, they have this totally legit 'raw ramen' snack called 'Mamee noodles' in Asia/Australia. You crush them into bits while they're still in the bag, open the bag, fish out the msg sachet, then toss it all in. good stuff.

My boyfriend's housemate is this all-American bloke who survives on pizza, cheerios, OJ, teddy bear grahams, and oreos. Every now and then we like to switch things around a little -- replace the teddy bear grahams with Annie's bunny grahams, switch the regular Oreos with ones we've carted back from Asia (slighly sweeter, less chocolatey). Sounds mean, but it's all in good fun, and he's usually got such a solemn face on that watching the little facial twitches as he discovers the difference is great =) Plus, they're all computer science PhD candidates, so it's good to see them get creative...

I'm going to be boring and practical and say 'bananas' =) Not the regular Del Monte or Chiquita ones we see at supermarkets though, but the ones we call 'Indian bananas' (kek leng jio in the Chinese Hokkien dialect) in Asia. These small bananas have a pleasantly firm and almost rubbery bite when just ripe, and a lovely sweet-tart flavor.

I think this relates more to culinary 'superstition', but my mom and grandma always forbid me to eat or taste anything from the pot. The belief is that I'll never get married if I do...Since I can't bear not tasting and adjusting flavors while cooking, that 'rule' went out the window when I moved overseas...

Is there anything more deliciously moreish than 'honey-roasted cashew nuts'? ←

PS: Is "itadakimas" a Japanese version of "Saying Grace"? I could only find one other reference to it on eGullet. ←

i wish i like anise or any thing tasting vaguely of liquorice. i've tried and tried...i used to walk by this bakery to school every day, seeing happy, shiny people munching warm, toasty handfuls of their famous fig and anise loaf. i caved one day and bought one, and walked the rest of the way home trying to work my way through the loaf -- it was glorious in every way, except I really can't bear the taste of anise, and I would bite, chew, and wince, bite, chew, and wince. i'm sure i looked very strange =p