What I Had for Linner: Brooklyn's Chinatown

Hey there! There's an area of Manhattan called Chinatown, but the one I'm talking about is less knock-off purses and bootleg movies and more about serving the local population with food, ingredients and culture from home. I live in the middle of a neat vortex of flavor in Brooklyn ... just a few blocks below me is all South American food and culture, West is Greek, North is Middle Eastern and just past that, Italian, then to my East ... very appropriately, is Asian. I love it and these aren't hard lines, they all blur with other nationalities, so the shopping is great. There are probably several areas considered "Brooklyn's Chinatown" and I've even lived close to a miniature one, but the one I'm talking about is around the 8th Avenue area in the 50s-60s of Brooklyn. Asian specialty grocery shopping is the best there and there's nothing better than walking into a business where you are most-likely the only one that doesn't speak the language.

I usually tell people about my grocery shopping habits and they rang true on this neighborhood stroll. I rarely grocery shop with an intended list past the staples. So, I'll make a list for butter, garlic, milk and the basic stuff I need to stock my pantry and fridge, but when it comes to the produce and meat and such ... I just like to let the ingredients talk to me from the aisles. Kinda like looking at a menu with fresh eyes and reading every single description to see what pops out.

My recent trip to Brooklyn's Chinatown started with a quick bite at Popeye's so I wouldn't be too hungry while shopping, plus it's right across the street from the market, so that helped. Who am I kidding ... I LOVE POPEYE's lol and often call my visit to Chinatown, the "Popeye's Run". Ok, but that's not what was for linner (Lunch and Dinner together) ... Take a look at what was to offer and what I decided on ...
That's it right there, the Fei Long Market. It has aisles and aisles of Asian ingredients. Sometimes I give myself an allotment of 4 or 5 new ingredients and I just pick them randomly and play with them at home, but today was all about the seafood selection by the fish mongers. Look what you see when you round the corner from the side entrance ...
Want a close up? It's hard to find even in Manhattan, it's some geoduck clams hanging over the edge, some fish I've never seen before and some snail-like mollusks.
Just next to them, the razor clams and eels.
The eels were just some happy swimmers! Then you turn the corner and run into the fish monger station. I can't tell you how many different kinds of fresh fish they have and the case that the ice-chilled fish sits on is a huge aquarium and there are about a jillion fish in there just swimming away waiting on fillet time ... grim, I know, but I like fish.
Then, just for fun I walked around to the other side of the store to the freezer/fridge section and ran into some black chicken! I mean really, this is hard to find in NYC and I've only had it once in my life!!

Crazy exotic ingredients, huh? You should see the aisles! Wanna know what I ended up buying and making for dinner?? Take a look ...

Yes, the not so exotic ... mussels! I know ... pretty benign choice given my options. Sorry, this is the "after" and not the "before" picture, but it was good and I didn't think to take a picture until the massacre was over. I sat there filled with sopping bread and mussels trying to figure out how I went to such a familiar place given my options. I dunno, I guess I couldn't help myself when I saw them sitting in the netting. One look and I knew they were farmed and that's less cleaning, less grit and of course, no beard removal. That means easy! Easy is what I do!

If you want my recipe, it's on the newest episode of Cooking for Real this Saturday at noon, great coincidence because I actually pitched this show last year when I was going through a mussels phase and given my options at the grocery store, maybe the phase has revisited.

I titled this week's Cooking for Real "I Want Mussels" I blogged about it last year and I even called the blog I Want Mussels, give a look at the blog post and you'll get a preview of things to come on this weekend's show. I share my recipe for Mussels with Chorizo on the show as well as my version of sopping bread I appropriately call Sop-tastic Garlic Bread. To wash it all down and I toss in my Honeydew Tropic Freeze at the end. Hope you catch it and give the recipes a try! It's easy and mussels are pretty fast if you buy them like I did. Beards are for the birds.

Ok, don't forget ...

New episode of Cooking for Real is this Saturday @ noon/est!! Catch it or DVR it! :-)