A field guide to the Asian food mart 🍰
Do you need a half-gallon jug of soy sauce and a slice of cake the size of your head? Yes.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we’re livin’ large in New Jersey. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Half & half triangle cake at Asian Food Market
1011 US-22, North Plainfield, NJ and other locations in New Jersey and Staten Island
At Asian Food Market, a local grocery store chain in New Jersey with a very literal name, you can buy a giant triangular slab of sponge cake for $1.99, which is what my mom does every time I come home. About the size of my head, the half & half triangle cake is made up of one layer of perfectly level eggy yellow sponge stacked on top of a barely chocolate sponge cake. Both sponges are light and bouncy in a Chinese bakery way that I have never, ever been able to achieve at home, but I will die trying to accomplish. The two layers are spackled together by an infinitesimal schmear of salty buttercream, so tiny it looks comical compared to the giant layers of bouncy cake. If there was a polar opposite twin of the American birthday cake in dessertdom, this would be it: All cake and no frosting, all subtlety, and no sprinkles. I could ask for nothing finer to enjoy with a cup of tea.
A pound of lychee fruits at Asian Food Market
1011 US-22, North Plainfield, NJ and other locations in New Jersey and Staten Island
Asian Dads everywhere will agree with me -- lychee fruits* are simply the best, even if they are apparently past their prime by July. If you’ve never had a fresh lychee before, you’re really missing out. When you get a really good batch, the thin bristly skin barely envelopes a sack of translucent-white flesh, bursting with juices. Unlike coffee, which always smells sweeter than it tastes, lychee fruits are one of those rare foods that taste exactly like it smells. And that’s a good thing, because the fruit smells like a sweet tropical perfume. To hammer the point home, I like to accompany my happy moment unwrapping fresh lychees with a cup of lychee tea.
Roast duck at Asian Food Market
1011 US-22, North Plainfield, NJ and other locations in New Jersey and Staten Island
At Asian Food Market, you can buy a whole roast duck for $23.99, which should last a Chinese family of four for a week. But I brought one back to New York, and my partner ate half the duck in one meal, so your mileage may vary. This is the ultimate roast for me, symbol of family and holidays and homecoming. This is the kind of duck you see hanging in the windows of shops in Chinatown, glistening and mahogany colored. It tastes as good as it looks, marinated in five-spice and the fatty skin dripping in grease. Just between you and me, I like it better than the Peking duck I had carved tableside as a kid at a banquet in Beijing.
Pearl River Bridge Golden Label Soy Sauce (half gallon) at Asian Food Market
1011 US-22, North Plainfield, NJ and other locations in New Jersey and Staten Island
As an expression of her love and care, my mom bought me a half-gallon jug of Pearl River Bridge soy sauce. The jug will look more soy sauce than one could ever consume, but in fact we have four or five empty plastic jugs in our house in New Jersey being reappropriated as storage containers. She even accidentally got me the Golden Label variety, not to be confused with the regular Superior Light Soy Sauce, which my dad doth protested because it was two dollars more expensive.Tbh I cannot tell a significant difference between the golden label and un-golden labeled variety, so unfortunately my dad is right, you should probably save two dollars.
Sweet & salty zongzi with red dates, pork, and Chinese sausage at home
Mama cat’s very own!
To be frank, I’m not quite sure I really understand the backstory of the Dragon Boat festival — or what exactly we’re supposed to celebrate. As a kid, I remember my mom telling me some story of a tragic poet who committed suicide which did not sound like a joyous occasion to me, but did sound very On Brand for her. But I do know that it’s the official day to eat zongzi, one of my favorite foods (yes, I do say that about many foods, but They’re All Good Foods, Brent!!). Zongzi traditionally comes in either a sweet (red dates, red bean) or savory (fatty pork) version, but being an artiste and a maestro of the sweet-and-savory my mom filled them with both. If you find yourself in a bamboo forest, with an endless roll of cotton twine, a fully stocked pantry, and lots of time on your hands, I highly recommend you do the same. The triple threat of fatty pork, red dates, and big slices of Chinese sausage* really works some magic. Or, you can follow a recipe, like this one, and mix and match fillings.
*Which we all know is the best sausage of all!!!
Stay cool,
Soph