I once spent a few months, in and around the summer of 2010, trying to source raw olives for a home-curing project. This quest mostly involved roaming hopelessly around Queens, checking on expired leads, and culminated when I encountered an entire slaughtered cow, broken down among two shopping carts, in the back of a small Middle-Eastern grocery in Astoria. Now, nearly a decade later, I finally stumbled upon the elusive jewels at Carnival Fresh Market, a compact wonderland of produce and selected dry goods in Kensington.
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I first became acquainted with Jordan Almonds as wedding favors, and to this day I’m not sure I’ve seen one elsewhere, aside from scant appearances at Sweet Sixteens or other commemorative milestone events. This doesn’t seem an entirely unjust fate for what few would argue as the world’s greatest candy, especially one whose purpose often appears to be largely aesthetic, although I’m glad they haven’t vanished altogether. I was therefore unprepared to find a cousin out in the wild, especially lurking within the aromatic confines of a Middle Eastern grocery. As with many such bits of de-ethnicized cultural detritus, it’s almost surprising to learn that they have an extensive history, one linked to a candying style that that can apparently also be applied to chickpeas, making for a pastel-colored sack of fun. Resembling a small clutch of balloons, these are actually a type of dragee, a confection category which comprises any small item coated in a thin candy shell (technically, M&Ms are dragees, although few would label them as such). These retain the light funk possessed by all dried chickpeas, which makes for a bit of difficulty in enjoying them solely as a sweet snack. As with the almonds, the candy coating also softens the object inside, robbing it of some of its crunch. In terms of specific history, this site labels them as Lebanese, where they have they’re known as “mlabbas aa qdameh,” a fact which squares with the source of the peas, Atlantic Ave’s Oriental Pastry and Grocery. A close relative of Noghl, chickpeas coated in sugar and rosewater, which of course also have an almond version as well.
Long before I had the mental capacity to obsess over the terroir of various types of corn puffs and split hairs on specific tamal styles, I possessed a burning passion for juice. In addition to an early memory in which an anti-drinking-and-driving PSA sent me into what may have been my first fit of neurosis (I thought this was advertising a new law that somehow applied to car-seat sippy cup consumption), many of my fondest mealtime remembrances center around various Nectars of the Gods; my personal favorite was Five Alive, whose classy conglomeration of citruses reminded me of some powerhouse cartoon superhero combo. My only wish was that there could somehow be more types of juice, beyond standbys like apple, orange and grape.
At some point recently (likely while sipping a digestif) I realized that these murky, viscous brews are actually just medicine, or at least sprung from the same fundamental tradition stretching from salutatory medieval herb concoctions to modern cough syrup. Both ends of this historical continuum seek to treat bodily ills through bracing infusions of boozy goo; one is natural, packed with plants and herbs, while the other has departed from the proud historical practice of healing-through-inebriation by embracing chemical compounds aimed exclusively at treating specific ailments. Yet just as these antique brews were/are often used for things other than strict healing, these modern-day equivalents can still be easily tipped over into the realm of pure intoxication.
My journey here starts with the above-pictured Underberg, a favored digestive aid since 1846, sprung from this same medicinal tradition. It's also part of the larger general family known as Kräuterlikör, a class of after-dinner drinks which, thanks to the work of herbalists like Hildegard of Bingen, allows you to quaff deep drafts of what’s essentially condensed forest juice, locally sourced from some of Europe’s most interesting old-growth woods. You can also settle for blindly downing too many shots of Jagermeister (the most famous, if not greatest, contemporary Kräuterlikör) and giving yourself a massive sugar-induced hangover the next day. After years of obsessively scouring restaurants, markets, and the internet at large, I imagine myself pretty well apprised of the general ins and outs of most global cuisines, at least well enough to possess a passing familiarity with some of their products. Every so often, however, I’m totally thrown for a loop, a reminder of how much there still is (and always will be) left to learn. Even in a city where seemingly all the finest fruits of world cuisine are readily available with a little searching, much of Africa, particularly the inner quadrants, remains a huge mystery to the culturally voracious shopper. Enter Adja Khady (I did), an importing and distributing operation catering to a fundamentally Senegalese clientele, but which also offers products from Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and many others. The resulting melange of West African languages printed on colorful bags and boxes made for a bit of initial confusion, but after a little snooping around (and some exhaustive follow-up research) I was able to suss out the proper uses for these ingredients, and even employ some of them myself. Also notable was the appearance of many French items, with a specifically Lebanese and Vietnamese bent, thanks to shared history of foreign administration and resultant cross-immigration of workers and soldiers between these places.
Spotted at the Jackson Heights location of Patel Brothers: a uniquely American pepper product (with an assist from Middle Eastern cuisine), known primarily for its status as a pizzeria staple, enters the Indian market. "Pizza Chill," meanwhile, whether a fortuitous spelling error or a mere consequence of an improperly snipped label, has permanently entered my personal food lexicon.
It took over a year and more than a few trips to different Indian supermarkets, but I’ve finally (and inadvertently) found the answer to the Ching’s Secret Mystery. My original guess, that this was all some kind of reference to a Bollywood character that I was simply not grasping, ended up being not too far off. In fact, Steampunk Hat Man and the man seen below are variations on the same persona - Ranveer Ching - an invented spokesman (played, appropriately, by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh), who’s anchored a series of gigantic, cinematic commercials chronicling his gymnastic proclivity for Instant Indo-Chinese fusion. Ching’s latest outing (helmed by acclaimed director Rohit Shetty, and reputedly the most expensive advertisement in Indian history) finds him parading around a post-apocalyptic landscape as a Mad Max-esque hero, in such elaborate form that my Indian friend had assumed, from passing familiarity with the commercial, that it was a clip from a full-fledged movie. Look below for the blockbuster advertisement, as well as its predecessor, in which we’re finally able to glimpse the equally ridiculous hair-do hiding beneath that asinine hat. As is often the case, I purchased the undeniably radical Mr. Squid, sourced from the tiny Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco Street, primarily because of the packaging, which in this case is perfectly suggestive of the faux-badass decorative t-shirts I favored as a four to eight-year-old. As a committed adult, I’m now forced to settle for four dollar tubes of fun, crispy (but non-fried) squid to show off my gnarlier side. In terms of packaging, Mr. Squid serves well in this regard, with canister art depicting the snacks in a fashion redolent of rigatoni (or bundled hay?) resting in a pile amid a heat-streaked miasma of fire, dust and haze. Yet despite the design bona fides and the decidedly groovy mascot - who sort of resembles a wind-inflated kite mounted with a sunglasses-clad feather duster - these unfortunately tasted a bit like fish food smells. They may also taste like fish food tastes, although I cannot say with any real authority. I’m not the only one who feels this way, but as always, I’m willing to mark this down as a difference of tastes, a cultural gulf between the snacking proclivities of Thai fish fanatics and gormless American potato munchers like myself. In an effort at conciliation, I will be making a real effort to hire Mr. Squid as the official mascot of Snack Semiotics. Imitators beware.
Following up on the Russian theme of the previous post, it seems as good a time as any to delve into this mysterious mayo/mustard combination, bought at not-great cost from the great NetCost supermarket in Sheepshead Bay. The use of a black man as a logo (silent spokesman?), one whose connection to either mustard or mayonnaise seems highly tenuous, seems to be aiming for humorous (perhaps through the overall oddness of this goofy-faced fellow touting a characteristically Russian product?), but lands closer to cringe-inducing. I could, perhaps, leave it at that, writing this one off to a poor choice made from the remove of an often not-so-tolerant culture, but as always I feel impelled to push further, toward the exact set of circumstances that led to this specific abomination of design. Despite heavy Googling (over 30 minutes logged, at least), I found only scant information online about this product, although one clue is that the spokesman appears (at least from my barely-informed outsider perspective) to be dressed like a robe-cloaked Orthodox priest, albeit one clad in an ushanka while gripping a hammer and sickle mounted on what might be a crosier. Or a crucifix? Specifically a blessing cross?
The brand name itself refers to Zakuski: the traditional spreads of light snacks intended to be consumed with vodka. This guy (who, to raise hackles further, appears via a photo whose quality noticeably clashes with that of the illustrated onion domes behind him) also shows up on two horseradish mustard variants as well as horseradish beets, which to me indicates a possible (linguistic?) association between blackness and horseradish itself, especially since this mustard/mayo mix also has a noticeable horseradish zing. The brand's other jars typically feature a more ordinary Russian babushka, with the version shown here specifically described as “Teshchina Gorchitsa,” or mustard from Teschin (a bridge in Odessa). This indicates these spreads may not even be Russian to begin with, although another source does transliterate the word to Tyosha. The latter makes a bit more sense, since Teschin Bridge does not seem nearly impressive enough to have a mustard named after it (assuming, of course, it never served as a site where famous home-made mustards were sold). There’s only so far you can go, however, without a knowledge of the language the item is originally printed in, and so I must call off the search before I go insane. The mustard/mayo (mustardo?) itself is pretty good, at the very least. Not just meat, but tushenka, a stewed, canned Russian delicacy, that like many packaged goods, originated as a military ration. I was mostly drawn in by the red and green color scheme, which is strangely un-Christmas-y in this context, instead landing somewhere between soothing and post-apocalyptic.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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