One of our favorite shopping trips is searching for specific exotic ingredients at a World Food Market. These Markets are rustic style grocery stores that sell authentic ingredients for different ethnicities, and each aisle is usually devoted to a specific cuisine, like Indian, Vietnamese, Mexican, etc. You can also find the cooking utensils, serving dishes, decorations, incense, and so on, that go along with the food you're making.
The closest Markets we've found are just outside of Northampton, in Hadley. We're in need of a few ingredients for Indian Samosas.
We first discovered our favorite World Market when shopping for food and party favors for my daughter's 14th birthday party. We ALWAYS have a theme, and that year's theme was Chinese New Year, since her birthday and the first day of Chinese New Year were very close to each other. We found all of the ingredients we'd need to make the food, authentic decorations to scatter throughout the house, and unusal items for the take-out-container goody bags. All the girls got their own set of chopsticks (which they ended up using to make buns in their hair!), and they all loved the jelly sticks and adorable mini jello cups. They weren't so crazy about the little cakes and candies - a little too unusual for their tastes.
Our trip today was for: ghee, cumin seed, coriander seed, cardamom, wonton wrappers, tamarind pulp, and dates. We found everything we needed except the cardamom - it was available, but only in large and expensive quantities - much more than I'll need, so I might find a small quantity in a regular grocery store.
Then, after a quick lunch at Fitzwilly's and a stop at Faces, where you can stand around in aisles laughing to yourself without feeling funny because everyone else is doing it too, we headed home.
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7 comments:
happy new year and happy birthday to your daughter. what a flash to the past this post has been for me - faces was one of the our favorite spots wander about in northampton (in fact I have quite a few toys scattered about my office from face). the great shows at the iron horse coffeehouse brought us up to northampton from the hartford area on a fairly regular basis. of course we did eat a few lunches at fitzwilly's
Mouse-
Thank you for the good wishes! Northampton is one of our favorite day trips, and we'll find any excuse we can to go for a visit.
Oooh! Indian Samosas sound good right now! Hope they turned out super yummy.
We can get cardamom powder and pods very very cheaply down here in Oz.
Drop me an email
alaskandavedownunder(at)gmail(dot)com
and I'm sure we can work something out, no worries.
Blair-
This recipe is a REALLY good one, so if you ever need to take an Indian dish to a buffet, people will love you for these. Let me know if you try them...I'd love to know how the Chutney Sauce process goes for you!
Alaskan Dave -
I will definitley be taking you up on the cardamom offer. I bypassed these at the World Food Market, thinking I could get them at Stop & Shop. Well, I could, for $18 for the regular size McCormick spice bottle!
So... Would you like cardamom powder, or cardamom pods, or cardamom seeds?
Drop me an email, no worries.
alaskandavedownunder(at)gmail.com
If I try to make them, I'll post about it on my blog for sure! I LOVE Indian food, but I've only attempted a simple Indian Butter Chicken recipe once. It turned out pretty well, so maybe I'll try these soon!
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