As someone who has eaten steamed sand worms in Quemoy and still-wriggling shrimp in Tokyo, I know the Far East is a mecca for unexpected gastronomical delights . . . OK, perhaps "delights" is not the right word; you cannot call the snake bile sold in Taipei a "delight."
So let's say "challenges," at least to Westerners unaccustomed to the chewiness of octopi or the crunch of seaweed. Unfamiliar food can seem gross, but there is also a certain Geronimo thrill as you pop something unfamiliar into the old pie hole.
That said, Asia is far away, and you can't be hurrying there every time you have a hankering for bean paste. Luckily, you don't have to -- by now the shelves at every local Dominick's groan with tubes of green wasabi and bins of fresh bok choy.
Still, those limited sections don't offer the overwhelming, I-have-a-feeling-we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-Toto strangeness of actually being there. For that, you have to journey all the way to Niles, to visit the Super H Mart, an enormous Korean supermarket showcasing the cuisines of China, Japan and points east.
My wife had previously taken the boys, who are well-versed in the joys of free samples from years of prowling Costco like a pair of hungry wolves. They were radiant at the prospect of visiting Super H Mart (slogan: "Better food, better life!"), and the moment we walked in, I could see why -- the place is teeming with eager employees offering little paper cups of hot soup, small cubes of fried tofu and dozens of other dishes.
After nearly a half-century of vigorous eating, plus several visits to East Asia, I thought I was at least familiar with Asian cuisine but found myself wandering the aisles, amazed at the sheer unexpected variety. Black goat stew. Acorn starch. Rice powder. Purple yam ice cream. Grass Jelly Drink. Tea-flavored sponge cake.
Here the free samples helped. "Hong Cho Drinking Vinegar" -- the concept never crossed my mind, and, when it did, I can't say my first thought was "bottoms up."
But Ross ran over with a sample of the stuff. My wife took one whiff and cringed, but I was game, and you know what? It really is good, or at least good enough to plunk down $7.99 for a bottle.
We bought sheets of dried seaweed, a tub of neon green fish roe, a loaf of chestnut bread. The boys grabbed bottles of melon soda and aloe drink, and I had to pick up cans of Yeo's White Gourd Drink and Foco Pennywort Drink.
We Americans are a shrink-wrapped people -- we like lots of packaging, and lots of distance between the preparation of our food and our shopping exertions.
Not so in Asia, nor at Super H, where men in rubber gloves stood in the store aisle mixing a huge glass basin of kimchi, the ubiquitous Korean reddish cabbage dish, which was then sold in enormous jars.
Fish is big in Asia, and the Super H seafood section is huge and varied: kingfish, butterfish, filefish, beltfish, cod, red mullet, live tilapia moseying around a big tank and iced piles of no-longer-live fish, lovely in repose, with delicate silver scales, pinkish skin, staring glassy eyes and little toothy mouths, gaping open as if in mute protest to this unexpected indignity.
Several ladies were lined up at a stainless steel trough, snapping long metal tongs expectantly, and, out of curiosity, I joined them, just as a worker in a white smock showed up with four round, rough wooden baskets filled with blue crabs ($1.99 a pound).
He began tossing the live crabs into the trough, and the women went after them with their tongs.
My family gathered nearby and spontaneously voted for a blue crab dinner, nominating me as the officially designated crab collector, a dubious honor, given the difficulty of snaring the obstinate, rebarbative, scuttling clawed beasties. Suddenly, the origins of the word "crabby" became clear.
Back home, cooking the crabs was also a challenge -- poised over the pot, one managed to grab onto the tongs, and though he didn't cry out "I want to live!" as I tried to shake him off, he might as well have.
Did I say "he?" I mean "it."
Each blue crab yields about a teaspoon of meat, making the whole endeavor seem like senseless murder. But everyone else said the crab-eating process was good, messy fun, though to me it seemed like a low-budget restaging of "Alien." I cracked open a can of White Gourd Drink and gamely choked back the sweet fluid, which tastes . . . ummm . . . Ross nailed what I was trying to describe.
"Like liquid marshmallows," he said. "Burnt marshmallows."
I'm certain that someday, as our population blends and obscure Asian culinary tastes become a quotidian part of the glorious American fabric, no one will think twice about stopping by McDonald's for some black goat stew, nor will they peer dubiously into their glass of green aloe drink, as I did, musing that the aloe suspended therein looks disquietingly like phlegm.
That day has not yet arrived, though Super H Mart is definitely here, now, in Niles of all places.
TODAY'S CHUCKLE
Ever notice on a box of cookies it says, "Open here." What do they think you're gonna do -- move to Hong Kong to open their cookies?
--George Carlin
Photo: Joel Lerner, Pioneer Press / Shoppers are given samples of boiled pork belly during Super H Mart's Asian Food Festival earlier this year. ;
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