No, seriously.  There’s nothing like lard for baking flaky pastries and frying tortilla chips.  If you’ve tried the stuff they sell in supermarkets in the city and aren’t happy with the subpar quality, it may be time for a new approach.  On her blog, The Homesick Texan explains how easy it is to make your own lard in NYC.  All you need is a pot, a wooden spoon, some jars and…a pound of pig fat, which is apparently available at the Union Square Green Market.   Click here to see how you too can render lard in your very own, tiny New York kitchen.

Still not convinced?  Check out Mother Linda’s for a flaky pie crust recipe and the skinny on the fat that makes international cooks go wild.  Or click here for a fantastic refried bean recipe (yep, you need lard for that, too).

In Indian cooking the combinations of spices are often what make the dish.  The word masala translates to a blend of aromatic spices.  The cookbook Classic Indian Cooking says that garam masala is the most important of all of the spice blends.  It is possible to do the leg work and make the masala ones self, but much easier to find a spice store that carries these ingredients already blended together.  At Dual Specialty Store on 1st Avenue in the East Village, they have the entire gamut of spices, dried beans, dried fuits, nuts, rices and chutneys someone would need to make any Indian dish.

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Garam masala in a blend of cardamom pods, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, cumin seeds and coriander seeds. For recipes that use garam masala or other masalas, check out Sailus Kitchen, an food blog on Indian recipes, Andhra food and flavors from around the world.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Once you’ve trekked down to Sheepshead Bay and stumbled through the fresh fruit and veggie market at 1414 Sheepshead Bay Road, you’ll discover at the back of the room what looks like your typical, automated doorway into a supermarket. But this is no ordinary grocery store.

“A baza is so much more than a market,” said Karina Ioffee, a journalism student of Russian decent. According to her mom, “It’s where you went for the stuff that just didn’t exist in other stores, like a depot.”

Her mom couldn’t be more on the money.

As I wandered through the aisles, admiring neatly stocked shelves of Eastern European products, I found myself suddenly starving…and wishing I could read a Slavic language. I deciphered most of the jam flavors with the help of the fruit illustrations on the labels, but the meat was another story.

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Rebecca Currie writes the blog Less Is Enough and was recently featured in the NY Daily News.  This North Carolina woman’s mission is to eat fresh food on $1/day.  On March 7th she made a nice helping of yakisoba, Japanese fried noodles.  The recipe she said came from a friend and she walks the reader through the whole process of making the dish.  In these economic times it is important to watch the wallet, but not necessary to skimp on taste and health.  Check out more of Currie’s posts to see how you can not only eat healthy and cheaply, but also explore other food cultures in the process.

If you’re craving the supremely Spanish dish callos a la madrileña-a stew featuring garbanzos and tripe, head to J & R (NY) Supermarket at 1406 Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay for all your animal body part needs.  In this nation of animal body part phobias, J & R offers all those organs and appendages you can’t find anywhere else-and at bargain prices.

Though traditional callos recipes vary depending on who’s grandmother you ask, many depend on tripe, cow’s feet, cow’s snouts and ham bones for that oh-so-animalicious flavor that leaves you wanting more. At J & R you’ll have your pick of animals.  Many organs come in three sizes: pig, chicken and cow.  more…