My previous post explores one of the 30 vendors that occupy the Brooklyn Terminal Market. Check out this multimedia package that I put together with Heather Chin and Robert Voris. It’s been featured on NYCitynewsservice.com
Terminal Eyes New Beginning
A&J Wholesalers is one of 30 vendors at the Brooklyn Terminal Market in Canarsie. Despite the name, A&J operates both wholesale and retail businesses. Once an Italian specialty market, A&J has adapted with the immigration changes in the neighborhood. Now they offer a combination of West Indian, African and Italian products. Though the Italian products are diminished to one little corner of the shop.
Jay Nespoli has been working at the market for a quarter century and for A&J the past 10 years. He says that many of his Haitian customers buy palettes of products such as flour, rice, dried beans, even bottled water and paper towels to send home to Haiti. The food prices are so outrageous in Haiti that it is actually cheaper to ship food from New York. Check out this article from last year on NPR about the problem of food prices in Haiti: Spiraling Food Prices Buffet Poverty-Stricken Haiti
Mangoes and cod fish are among A&J’s best selling products. Check out this photo collage of some of A&J’s offerings…
Check out our first Blog Talk Radio show, where we interview and field questions to Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet. He talks about his upcoming show, the Amateur Gourmet, on the Food Network’s Food2.com and answers caller questions about off beat foods in New York City.
Just before the lunch rush hits, the Kati Roll Company has the makings for their signature dish sizzling on the grill in anticipation of the hungry passersby. Steaming skewers of grilled chicken, cheese, and beef top the grill and on an adjacent grill there is a huge mass of a spicy potato and peas mixture. These are the main ingredients that can be found in a Kati Roll, a mixture of meats, vegetables and cheeses, marinated in a blend of spices, and rolled in an Indian flatbread.
The exterior of the flatbread is slick from oil and brown grill spots are scattered all over its malleable surface. The achari paneer roll, a spicy cheese roll, is filled with large spongy cheese cubes and mixed with green peppers, tomatoes, red onions and a cilantro chutney.
Banh Mi cart on St. Marks Place/2nd Avenue
When I was walking home with my fiancé Patrick last night, I happened upon a new banh mi cart on St. Marks and 2nd Avenue. Banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich prepared on a soft baguette with a hard outer crust. Each sandwich came with one meat–either Vietnamese meatball, chicken, roasted eel, tuna, beef or pork– and sweet pickled carrots and cucumber, cilantro and optional jalapeños for an added kick.
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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.
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.
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.
Here at worldfoodsnyc we understand that there’s no such thing as home sweet home without good food. Whether you’ve crossed an ocean to come to this culinary melting pot or you just love digging up authentic cuisine in your corner of the city, we’re here to help you out. Check out our site to find tips on where to buy pimentón dulce, who sells cheap feta, how to bake your own baguette or where to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
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