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Park City Magazine / Winter-Spring 2006 / Super Markets

Super Markets

In the past decade or so, while celebrity chefs came to rule the airwaves and home cooks grew more and more adventurous in the kitchen, the demand for exotic and imported foodstuffs dramatically increased. To help satisfy that demand, big chain supermarkets slowly dedicated more and more shelf space to the odd and unusual food items, or at least, the hard to find. Where cooks once had to search out small, high-priced gourmet markets and specialty shops for interesting produce, sauces, spices, and other ingredients, we can now simply shop for those items while we’re buying dish soap, toothpaste, milk and eggs: at our local supermarket.

With the increase in Park City’s Hispanic population in recent years came a corresponding boom in supermarket foodstuffs geared for Mexican and Latin American cooking. It’s difficult now to even remember a time when fresh cilantro wasn’t available at our local food stores. And now Albertson’s stocks imported jarritos—soft drinks from Mexico in flavors like tamarind and mandarin orange. Dan’s sells Juanita’s canned pozole (pork and hominy stew) and Mexican meatball soup called albondigas; and at Smith’s, you can find killer El Pinto green chile salsa from New Mexico. All of our local supermarkets carry fresh and dried chile peppers from ancho and Anaheim to pasilla and Scotch Bonnets. There are even canned piquillo peppers from Spain at Dan’s and over at Albertson’s, you can pick up scented Virgin of Guadalupe prayer candles while you’re shopping for Great Range buffalo meat (which you can douse in a zippy Argentine chimi-churri sauce from World Harbors)!

The Asian-fusion influence on the American diet is well represented on local grocery store shelves, as well. Most markets now carry fresh tofu, edamame, wasabi pastes and powders, yakisoba, baby bok choy, Korean kimchi (mild or spicy), enoki and shiitake mushrooms. At The World Market, you’ll even find wasabi-flavored potato chips. (It might be a good idea to pick up some Spotted Dog Creamy Banana Cream Pie ice cream or maybe their pulce de leche flavor to help extinguish the wasabi inferno.)

But don’t get the idea that supermarket buyers have overlooked “Old” Europe and the Mediterranean. Dan’s carries Maurice French canned Helix snails and The World Market sells clean empty escargot shells to serve them in. Next to those snail shells sit Meica sausages, Gundelsheim sauerkraut, Panni potato dumpling mix from Germany, and rice-stuffed grape leaves from Greece called dolmas. At Smith’s, you can pick up Greek Peloponnese-brand baba ganoush and eggplant spread, and Albertson’s has Telma kosher hummus from Haifa and Osen falafel mix made in Tel-Aviv. For anglophiles, Dan’s stocks James Keillor & Sons Dundee orange marmalade and ginger preserves made in Manchester, as well as Kerrygold pure Irish butter. Wild Oats offers Mahon cow’s milk cheese from Spain, French Mimolette, and cave-aged Swiss Gruyere.

Meanwhile, from closer to home, comes Zatarain’s Louisiana crab boil, gumbo file powder, and blackened fish seasoning available at Dan’s, along with Old South pickled watermelon rind jarred in Alma, Arkansas. From American farmers come the fresh fennel root in the produce department at Dan’s and Wild Oats’ Lacinato kale, white asparagus, and even fresh horseradish root for you do-it-yourselfers.

Thanks to globalization or just savvy procurement policies on the part of our local supermarkets, home cooks can now put a melting pot of culinary delights into their own cooking pots. Try these globally inspired recipes to get you started:

WHERE THE BUFFALO BURGERS ROAM

Get the goods
Salemville Amish blue cheese (Wild Oats)
Meyenberg goat milk butter (Wild Oats)
Lacinato kale (Wild Oats)
Milos dolmas (World Market)
Peloponnese eggplant spread (Smith’s)
Telma Hummus (Albertson’s)
Great Range ground buffalo meat (Albertson’s)
Melissa’s purple wax beans (Albertson’s)
Roland whole piquillo peppers (Dan’s)

Make it

For hors d’oeuvres, serve piquillo peppers, eggplant spread and hummus with fresh pita wedges. Boil purple beans until al dente and then sauté them in goat milk butter tossed with blanched Lacinato kale. Serve as a side dish. Grill or pan-fry ground buffalo patties topped with blue cheese for blue cheese buffalo burgers.

ASIA MEETS THE OLD SOUTH

Get the goods Semi-boneless quail (Wild Oats)
Yellow Asian pears (Wild Oats)
Soy Vey Veri Veri Teriyaki (Smith’s)
Old South pickled watermelon rind (Smith’s)
Fennel root (Dan’s)
Baby bok choy (Albertson’s)

Make it

Marinate the quail in Soy Vey teriyaki sauce and grill until done on a hot charcoal or gas grill. For simple side dishes, slice baby bok choy in half and grill with a smidgeon of peanut oil. Make a salad of thinly sliced fennel with cored and sliced yellow Asian pears, drizzled with pickled watermelon rind.

Ted Scheffler writes about food and wine, lives in Park City, and can be found asking for “paper, not plastic” in the local markets.