Searching for ingredients

Supermarkets are light years ahead of where they were twenty years ago, but they still aren’t able to provide everything that an adventurous cook wants to use.  For a cook, I live in one of the most amazing places possible – South Philadelphia.  To start with, my house is three blocks from a traditional modern supermarket and a Whole Foods and I could, if I wanted, fulfill many of my culinary fantasies in just those two locations.  But I also live about five minutes from Philadelphia’s Italian Market.   At one time, the stretch of S 9th St. between Christian and Wharton Streets probably was strictly Italian but today it’s a freeform hodgepodge of Vietnamese, Italian, and Hispanic street vendors selling fresh produce, butchers, fishmongers, spice shops, Italian specialists and Vietnamese and Hispanic general merchandisers.  So my food shopping takes me regularly to the Italian Market, Whole Foods, and Acme.

But even with all those resources available, there are times when you need a specialist.  My true love recently expressed a desire for spaghetti alla carbonara and as I always try to give her what she wants, I needed to source the ingredients.  Even for a dish as simple as spaghetti alla carbonara, that is easier said than done.  For one thing, even in a city with such a strong Italian heritage as Philadelphia, fresh spaghetti is really difficult to find, and by spaghetti, I mean round pasta.  There are at least five establishments near me that sell fresh flat pasta, but nobody, it seems, has a extruder for fresh round pasta.  As I discovered with my failed first attempt at spaghetti caci e pepe, shape matters.

OK, I’ll settle for dried spaghetti.  The egg and cheese are not problems, but guanciale?  Try finding cured pork jowls in a supermarket.  I found an 8 oz chunk in Talluto’s, an unassuming store in the Italian Market that is becoming one my favorite Italian specialists, along with Claudio’s and DiBruno’s (catering a bit more toward the foodie end of the spectrum).  All three do mail order. When it comes to cooking Italian, I know I have tremendous resources available.  But what about other cuisines?

I’m also within walking distance of the First Oriental Market, perhaps the biggest of the supermarkets catering to Philadelphia’s Asian communities, and I use the plural of community deliberately because there is food from several regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.  My pantry is well-stocked with varieties of rice vinegar, chili and sesame oils, mirin, Chinese vinegars and cooking wines, sambals, konbu, nori, preserved vegetables, and dried mushrooms, chili peppers, and shrimps.  They are also a ready source for daikon radishes, garlic stems, Chinese broccoli, and a host of other produce not generally available in a traditional American supermarket.  Don’t get me started on describing the fish counter.

It might sound like bragging, but these are all places that are within walking distance of my house.  I can read a recipe or get an inspiration and if it is Italian, Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Laotian, Korean, or uses ingredients mainstream enough to buy in a high-end supermarket, I’m all set.  If I were more willing to get in the car and drive the twenty minutes it takes to get to West Philadelphia, I’d also have access to Indian, West African, East African, and Persian ingredients because that section of Philadelphia hosts immigrant neighborhoods that are well-served by food merchants offering a taste of home.

So with all these available resources, you’d think I’d be in culinary heaven and for the most part, I am.  I am also, however, somewhat greedy and that prompted this blog today.  St. Patrick’s Day is less than two weeks away and while celebrating the event with corn beef and cabbage, green beer, and images of drunken leprechauns, I prefer to focus a bit more on my Irish heritage and not how the event has become a symbol of Irish-American heritage.  That distinction is subtle but real.  What I found was that if there is such a thing as a dish symbolic of Irish cuisine, it is bacon boiled with cabbage but the bacon isn’t what we Americans think of as bacon. It is often called “back bacon” is usually described as similar (but not the same as) to what Americans call Canadian bacon.  Further research discovered that this back bacon is what the folks in the UK and Ireland think of as bacon and this particular slice of pork is simply not available in traditional or high end supermarkets in the U.S.

I’ve actually come across this more than you might think with ethnic European ingredients.  After returning from a vacation in Sweden a few years back, I wanted to continue the experience at home but loganberries, reindeer, and the many varieties of pickled herring just aren’t available here.  I’ve had Scottish haggis in Edinburgh and were I so inclined to want some here, I would be out of luck. I desperately want to try to make a proper sud-ouest French cassoulet but finding confit duck legs or andouille sausage is all but impossible in Philadelphia.

The internet is an option. I’ve ordered pomegranate syrup for a Persian recipe and bonito flakes from Amazon.  I’ve seen confit duck legs from an online purveyor named D’Artagnan, but I would have had to take out a second mortgage to buy an ingredient for what should be a peasant dish.  Besides, there is something about ordering food from the internet that makes me a little uncomfortable.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to find a place near Philadelphia to buy back bacon before St. Patrick’s Day. Your ideas are eagerly solicited.