Chinatown

Over the course of this blog you will learn about my food shopping habits. Its taken over a year to get it right, but I think I have it pretty figured out now. Last post I spoke briefly about the East Village Cheese Shop (3rd btw 9th and 10th). Today I speak about the outdoor markets in Chinatown. Located on Forsythe street, just south of Canal, along side the Manhattan bridge is a bustling row of outdoor fruit and (mostly) vegetable vendors. I learned yesterday that they are more numerous in the early evening than afternoon. This probably has to do with the fact that they get stuff which grocery stores turn away for being too ripe. In any case, I have begun to go there with a canvas hand bag plus my hiking backpack. The place is great for vegi's, though its easy to go overboard. Like yesterday I got 9 lbs of carrots, and about 10lbs of asian greens. They asian greens are the hardest since they generally go back fastest. Thus in the week or two after I go to Chinatown, I eat a ton of stirfry and often make eggrolls to freeze. Yesterday I made a stirfry plus I bought a little over a pound bass (99cents a pound) and steamed it with scallions and ginger. Really good for the price (it can to $1.10). This method of cooking fish is really easy. You have the monger gut, scale and fin a whole fish, preferably not a thick fish. Then you stuff it with the ginger and scallions and place it on a plate which will fit, with some room on the sides, in a pan of boiling water. You place the plate in the pan but not directly --- so you can put it on a bottle cap for instance. Then leave it be with the lid on for like 10 minutes. The great thing about this method is that once cooked you can just pull, from the tail forward, the entire spine and all the bones with it. There remain some small bones to watch for, but its much easier to enjoy the flesh now.