Ingredient + Produce Features – Page 3 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Mitsuwa Marketplace

I’ve been wanting to return to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, New Jersey, since the Dr. and I first visited after watching the Romeo and Juliet opera in HD. I’ve also hassled all my friends who have cars to drive me there ever since Anthony Bourdain featured the area in his Food Network show a few years ago. After enough whining from me, Veronica finally relented and picked me up one Saturday afternoon to eat at the Japanese food court and pick up groceries. After filling ourselves with ramen, tonkatsu and pancakes, plus an exciting trip down the aisles of the Mitsuwa grocery store, we ended up in Trader Joe’s where I picked up my favorite dried fruit snacks and at Cafe Archetype where we finished our day with green tea au laits.

You see, New Jersey ain’t so bad.

Kanitama, or crab-egg, omelet on top of rice from China Table Tokyo Hanten was filling.

A delicious bowl of pork salt ramen sprinkled with a red pepper powder from Santoka.

A satisfying bowl of hot miso ramen, also from Santoka, was never finished because we were all full after several other dishes.

A delicately-sized bowl of udon came with pork tonkatsu and rice from Kayaba, next to Santoka.

Mitsuwa Marketplace is on 595 River Road, Edgewater, New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge. Check the Web site for shuttle bus info from Port Authority.

Searching for a Good Taco: Roosevelt Avenue, Queens

The constant rumbling coming from the #7 train above us was a sure sign that we were on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. From 69th Street, we saw people who looked and sounded like us, but only a few blocks away was a completely different enclave of Queens. The Tagalog signs changed to Spanish and the music coming from cars and storefronts was turned up a notch. Colombian and Ecuadorian flags were waving with Mexico’s. There were arepas and ceviches to eat, but today, Miss Geolouxy and I were there to search for a good taco.

Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, where an estimated 44 percent of the more than two million residents are foreign born. The neighborhoods of Jackson Heights and Corona had served as a magnet for a lot of newcomers from Colombia, but the 2000 census revealed a demographic shift in the number of Mexicans.

As our basis of comparison, we first stopped by Taqueria Coatzingo on 76th Street because it’s the one restaurant that kept coming up whenever I did a Google search for Mexican restaurants in the area. We noted the taqueria stands we passed by, plus the other Mexican stores across the street. Our plan was to start on 76th Street, walk up to 80th, and then walk back down to 69th.

1. Taqueria Coatzingo, 76-05 Roosevelt Avenue, 718/424.1977

You can see from the photo above what I mean by avocado mush–I’m just not a big fan. We ordered one chorizo and one tripe taco, but they sent over two chorizos to our table. We didn’t mind because it was our first meal of the day and we were hungry. The chorizo was cut into cubes and was salty enough to whet our appetites, but I prefer my chorizo crumbly. A big plus was the blistered green pepper on our plates. (Note to self: return for the tripe taco.)

2. Tacolandia, between 77th and 78th Streets on Roosevelt Avenue

We walked up to the Tacolandia counter and ordered the al pastor and the lengua, or tongue, taco. The tongue looked and tasted like tongue, but now I’m officially confused with what al pastor really is. In Staten Island, al pastor was the meat carved from a vertical rotisserie. What we got was a slab of fat and gelatinous pork skin.

3. El Poblano, 75-13 Roosevelt Avenue, 718/205.2996

We only ordered one cecina taco to go from El Poblanos. The guy at the counter must have thought it weird that we were only ordering one, so he took extra care and put it in a Styrofoam container made for hotdogs. One of the ladies looked at us skeptically when I asked for it to be spicy, but complied. We shared our one taco on a stoop across the street and it tasted like a cecina all right: chewy and dry.

4. Taco stand on the corner of 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue

The two ladies serving up the tacos were tickled when we asked for their permission to take their photographs. They even had an official translator who sat in the van parked right next to the stand. The beef taco, as Miss Geolouxy said, looked better than it tasted. We couldn’t negotiate the hot sauce to come out of the squeezy bottle, so we doused our taco with the green pepper sauce instead to give it some sort of taste. They had the pickles, too, but they looked pretty gnarly, even for me.

5. Sabor Mexicana stand, directly outside the subway exit on 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue

For our last taste, we ordered two tacos: a suadero, or stewed beef, and for the safe bet of having something tasty before going home, a chorizo kind. The chorizo was crumbly, which I’ve already mentioned I like, and the tips were toasty and crunchy. The beef was just tasteless and dry, almost inedible even with hot sauce.

After only a couple of tacos, I wondered if we should have gone to Corona for Mexican food. There were a couple of Mexican restaurants and a few stands selling tacos, but it wasn’t like my experience in Staten Island where there was a Mexican-something every other door. There wasn’t an outstanding taco, and the frequency of adding avocado mush surprised me. The avocado wasn’t chunky, but thin; it reminded me of Calexico’s “avocado sauce” in SoHo. After our first taste, I had to remind myself to say, Todo, pero no aguacate.

Nyanya Chungu, African Eggplant

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 off her seat behind the counter, walked to one of the shelves and picked up a can of eggplants. Like this, she said, pointing to the can. I asked how I can cook them and she just told me to make my usual stew and add them. I just bought some Thai eggplants from Chinatown to add to a tagine dish, so I was curious how different the African kind would be. I picked up a few to try out.

When making my chicken tagine–the Dr. is a big fan and it’s one of the dishes I’ve mastered in the last couple of years–I skipped the potatoes and added the two kinds of eggplants instead. I diced them only before I was ready to add them to the pot so that the flesh kept its natural white color. (If you use eggplants, whether they be the fat and bulbous American type or the long and skinny Japanese kind, you know that the spongy meat inside turns black if you have them sitting out for a few minutes.)

The more familiar types are purple in color, aubergines as the French call them, but the African chungus I bought were green and had tight, shiny skins; the Thai type has a marbling pattern of green and white. It was an affordable vegetable to throw in a big pot of simmering meat, and turns out, tastes just like the other eggplants that come in different shapes and colors.

Salt-Encrusted White Croaker

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 feels like a handful of rough diamonds. It tastes like they were just filtered from the ocean. The flor de sal is more fine, and because it is traditionally applied to food before serving, its saltiness is less strong.

Terras de Sal mines its salt in Castro Marim, or Castle by the Sea, in the surrounding natural marshland of Reserva Natural do Sapal de Castro Marim. The area is a breeding ground for many species of birds and the salt mines are known to keep its surroundings balanced with the natural environment. All the salt they produce are mined by hand with the aid of wooden instruments and techniques used from a long time ago. When the package from Portugal came, I was very intrigued since I’ve never really distinguished the different kinds of salt available in fine stores today.

I searched for a recipe that uses a large quantity of salt. I used a fish I’ve never heard of: croaker. They were among the newly delivered fresh fish in the Harlem supermarket one Saturday morning and were going for only $2.80 for a whole one. I read later that croakers live in shallow lagoons and therefore eat a lot of shellfish, so they’re meat is considered to be pretty good even though a lot of fishermen think they are a nuisance. (Feel free to substitute with a sea bass.)

When done, the Terras de Sal salt not only gave the fish some flavor, it also gave this dish a uniquely presentable look.

Ingredients:
1 white croaker, cleaned and scaled
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 lemon, sliced, plus some zest
2 sprigs of thyme
2 sprigs of rosemary
1 cup sea salt
olive oil, pepper

1. Preheat oven to 425Âº. Meanwhile, sprinkle the inside of the fish with pepper and stuff with lemon slices.
2. Make the salt mixture. In a bowl, combine the thyme and rosemary with the sea salt, lemon zest and egg white. You can add a little water to get a coating consistency. It shouldn’t be too crumbly.
3. Coat the fish. Spread some of the salt in a roasting pan and place the fish on top. Completely cover the fish with the rest of the salt mixture. Make sure the whole fish is concealed by the salt as this will seal it and keep all the aromas and flavors inside.
4. Bake the fish for about 35 minutes. When done, remove the fish from the oven and carefully crack the salt case using a heavy knife and remove the fish. Serve the fish with a drizzle of olive oil.

Recommended purveyor/s:
Buy your salt from Terras de Sal

Mamoncillo, Quenepa, Ginep

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 saw these green little things. I asked him what they were and he told me they were quenepas and that they are “sweet and sawah.” (I love this guy!) This Puerto Rican girl sitting on a stoop came up to tell me they are from Puerto Rico and showed me how to eat them: you take a small bite to crack the leathery green skin, suck the juice, peel off completely and pop the plum in your mouth. You basically suck it until it’s dry. They are a little sweet and a little tart at the same time. After a few of them, you get a cotton-feel in your mouth because of the fuzzy texture of the fruit’s flesh.

They’re known in the Caribbean as mamoncillo, or mamon, which is also an obscene word. (You’re going to have to email me to find out what it means.) This Jamaican girl from work calls them ginep. She said they grow all-year round in Jamaica although this is the first time I’ve seen them in New York City. According to Caribbean folk wisdom, girls learn the art of kissing by eating the sweet flesh of this fruit. (More than just kissing, I bet.) In Ecuador, my friend Vanessa told me, you eat them with salt.

I’ve saved some of the seeds to dry them and I’ll be roasting them over the weekend. Tune in next week for the results!

Update:
So I put the dried seeds on a baking sheet and roasted them while I read The Times on Sunday morning. I remembered to take them out as soon as my mother asked about the funny smell in the kitchen. Thankfully, I didn’t burn them completely. When they were cool enough to handle, I cracked a few using a nutcracker. The quenepa seed meat was surprisingly tender, just like chestnuts. They were a pretty good snack considering they were spat out by co-workers. Now I feel like I have to tell the fruit guy that the little fruits make good tender, nuts.