From Bratwurst to Bimibap - Part 3 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

From Bratwurst to Bimibap – Part 3 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Mi Tierra Market in Seaside, California sells clean, dried corn husks in bundles among other items, making my dreams for a tamale making party come closer to fruition – now I just need helpers to stuff the husks.

The produce section gleams.  Pasilla, lime-green Anaheims, yellow guerito peppers, and dark green jalapeño peppers glisten there.

Pudgy plantains invite frying, and brown-skinned yuccas feel rough to the touch.  Mi Tierra sells fresh cactus petals with their pickers.  These taste sour and go well with scrambled eggs made with chopped tomatoes and onion.

As usual, the drinks intrigue me.  I love horchata, which tastes like a rice pudding milk shake.  The jamaica juice looks good, too, and is described as a hibiscus flower drink.

Mi Tierra also sells champagne cola and other Mexican soft drinks like the guava and pineapple flavors of Jarritos and mandarin orange.  There is also Aga apple soda and Sidral cola.

Mi Tierra’s true beauty lies in its butcher counter, which extends the width of the building.  The butchers, who work under dangling strands of chorizo sausage, really ham up the service.

The immaculately clean counter presents a wide variety of:

-gizzards

-milk white tripe

-liver

-beef tongue

-neck bones

-hogs’ feet

-slim cuts of steak for carne asada

-ground beef and steaks

-cactus salad

-cream-like cheese called Queso Oaxaqueño

-seafood salad

-fresh fish on ice

-tiger prawns

All in all, the mouthwatering display made me want to run home and open some cookbooks.  (Note: Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless explain technique well in their Mexican cookbooks.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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From Bratwurst to Bimibap - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

From Bratwurst to Bimibap – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Asian-Filipino Market in Marina caters to a largely Southeast Asian clientele according to its India-born owner.  The market offers goods spanning the culinary world from Thailand to the Philippines.

A love for snack foods seems to be common to all these countries judging from the vast selection of taro chips, seaweed chips, shrimp crackers, and coconut crackers for sale.  Snack fantasies led me to dreams of more substantial fare, so I headed over to the instant sauce section.

Many people avoid making ethnic food at home, because it requires a major outlay for basic ingredients.  Ready-made sauces can ease a new cook into a foreign cuisine, which is one of the reasons I like them.

Korean barbecue, Chinese roast duck, Cantonese noodles, and packets of Filipino kare-kare sauces are just some of the temptations on Asian-Filipino’s shelves.

I could smell the warm peppery masala spice mixture in the Indian food aisle before I got there and imagined how good it would taste in ground lamb kebab with cilantro and onion. 

I wanted to make coconut milk with the unsweetened, shredded coconut and season it with curry leaves to poach fish or shrimp.

Instead, I ended up buying a bottle of tea masala to make chai at home.

A penchant for habanera sauce led me to Mi Tierra Market in Seaside, which has Mexican and Salvadoran products.

End of Part 2

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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From Bratwurst to Bimibap - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

From Bratwurst to Bimibap – Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I like to make many ethnic foods at home, so I have learned about ingredients by shopping at local markets around Monterey County, which feature Asian, Hispanic, and European foods. 

The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000 – California) liked my idea for a story on three markets that are still going strong after twenty years: Mecca (German), Mi Tierra (Hispanic – Mexican and Salvadoran), and Asian-Filipino (Southeast Asian).

These stores have changed some items on display, but they can special order usually, if you know brand names.  I have slightly edited the article for clarity:

From Bratwurst to Bimibap

You’ll want to eat before shopping at Marina’s Mecca German Market.

The owner suggests that shoppers fortify themselves with a hot schnitzel sandwich – lightly breaded pork loin on a hot roll with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese – before examining the row of chocolates that fill up half the store.  (Note: This display has changed in 2019.  There are more soup and sauce options on the shelves now, but ask about special orders.)

Among Mecca’s chocolate offerings that seem to change with the season:

-Ritter Sport Chocolates

-Swiss Lindt Chocolates

-Sarotti Whit Chocolate

-Toblerone

-Chocolates with Poire Williams

-Asbach Uralt brandy-filled chocolate

-Mozart Herzl chocolate with a soft marzipan core surrounded by pistachio cream in a chocolate covering

From the chocolates, it’s an easy segue into coffee klatsch territory for Tchilbo, Jacobs, and Eduscho German coffees to go with Mecca’s selection of marzipan, orange liqueur, and chocolate/vanilla marmor cakes.

I highly recommend the cookies, too:

-Bahlsen’s chocleibniz – a butter cookie topped with chocolate

-marzipan cookies with chocolate bottoms

-almond cookie sandwiches with cream filling

-capellas – almond crescents with chocolate covering both ends

-Delobas – puff pastry with blueberry filling

-Florentines – delicate lace-like cookies

(Chocolates and cookies are my favorite renewable emergency foods.)

Eating sweets with your eyes lets you enjoy the deli counter more.

Mecca’s cooked veal and pork bockwurst sausage heats up easily and makes for a tasty meal as does the homemade bratwurst pork sausage.

I asked the owner what the difference is between the Italian and Hungarian salamis, and a customer answered, “About 500 miles.”

From Mecca, I set out for Marina’s Asian-Filipino Market.

End of Part 1.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Mother Lines Genealogy - Part 5 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Mother Lines Genealogy – Part 5 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Once in Wisconsin, the Sawles bought a dairy farm, set up a mill on a stream on their property, set up chicken coops, and made friends with the pig farmers down the road.  They had blackberry bushes on their property for pie and grew strawberries and cantaloupe.  They added nasturtium leaves to lettuce for salads.

Aunt Winnie also picked a white wildflower and deep fried it for lunches with salads.  I think this flower is a wild black locust flower.  The center is black, but the flowers around it are white.  Before deep-frying it, the wildflower is dunked in a batter made with egg, flour, and cream.  It crunches like a French fry, but has a sweet flavor.  I loved these as a kid.

The Sawles supplemented their basic goods at home with market goods like cheese, coffee, and oysters for New Year’s oyster stew.  I remember Aunt Winnie showing me Chinese bok choy cabbage and saying that she and Uncle Sam chopped it up to go with a vinegar-and-oil salad.  I think she alternated bok chou with baked beets dressed in vinegar-and-oil dressing as a salad.  Both are anti-oxidants.

They also bought watermelons in town and made watermelon rind pickles for winter after the cores had been eaten.

Aunt Winnie had a sense of humor.  She once made me Christmas Mincemeat pie and said you had to have beef suet in it to give the chopped fruit the right texture.  She told me that younger girls in families tended to eat a lot of it.

The farm was very self-sufficient, because bacon was eaten everyday.  Roast beef with potatoes, salad, and pie was Sunday lunch.  This farm was English and New England through heritage.  I love what my female ancestors set up after arriving here on a boat.

On the Wisconsin farm, morning glories and gladiolus flowers were permanently on the dining tables in the summer to liven up meals.

I found recipes for the cookies Aunt Winnie made in British Cookery, including saffron ones.

My great-great grandmother probably learned recipes from her female ancestors in Cornwall.  Our official family genealogists David and Frances located birth certificates and gravestones for Margaret’s ancestors including her mother with the same name – Margaret Dunn, Elizabeth Curgenven, Eliza Wakel, Frances Collett, Marry Andrew, Barbara Wills, and Jane Dorrington.

Margaret Dunn Rowe no doubt learned to make Cornish pasties filled with beef and vegetables from her mother.  Pasties resemble meat pies called empanadas from Galicia, Spain originally.

My great-great grandmother, Charlotte Sawle, live in a sea captain’s row house in Porscatho, England.  As a child, I stayed in her quayside home, which had become a bread and breakfast and collected snails on the quay stairs like my ancestors. 

Now I imagine Charlotte Sawle entertaining guests with rum-based English drinks like Cornish punch, rumstafian, and Samson.

Our family’s genealogists have documented a mother line that extends back to 1688 when one Rebecca Hay married Pasco Collins in that year.

I wonder if the chocolate fudge, brown sugar penuché fudge, and confectioner’s sugar divinity fudge that my family eats and makes comes from Pasco’s mother?

In any case, my female ancestors taught me how to set up a food system in my home using quality products.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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