A culinary expedition to Catonsville gave Dining@Large reader Meekrat the chance to pass on both Wonder Bread and live frogs. If that's not the center of the foodie universe, I don't know what is. LV
I've been needing an adventure for some time. Not anything grand (read: expensive), just something off the path. My fearless co-conspirator and I decided on Grilled Cheese & Co. for lunch, then Asia Market
First off, don't trust GPS. Common sense is a foreign thing to these devices, so we got a little lost. Walked into Grilled Cheese & Co. (the reports of tight parking are true) and were greeted with a delicious smell, a very full dining room and fairly loud music. My cohort got one look at the price board, noted what he said was Wonder Bread and promptly declared it a no fly zone.
Off to Asia Market.
The first thing you notice walking up is the large 40-lb. bags of rice in the front window. The second is the aroma of something not very grocery store, rather bayou in fact. Apparently, the entire freezer section was on the blink, so that ruled out those selections.
Next up was the refrigerated section with fresh-made packaged noodles, ready-for-lunch sushi, kimchi in various amounts, a shrimp roll that looked like cleaned innards and boiled salted duck eggs. One row in, and I am already suffering from sensory overload, but am highly entertained.
The rows of pastes, sauces and condiments happily start to merge together in surreal fashion. This is definitely the place if you need a gallon of soy sauce or four different brands of soy sauce in a gallon container. They have every brand i've ever seen domestically and about 100 I've never seen before. My lack of ability to read any Asian language is a bit of a handicap as the English printed contents on most of the packaging is 6-point font.
The noodle aisle produces one of my searched-for things: Cellophane mung bean noodles, looking very much like clear gummy worms. I must have them, and into the basket they go Also, a very good pack of dried mushrooms of unknown sort, the labels unhelpful due to the language barrier. There are two sorts on the end cap, one in green and one in red. We go with the red pack.
There are two produce sections in Asia Market, one is refrigerated. There, near the beginning of the frozen meats, I find my treasure: Durian fruit in a yellow mesh bag with a serious red plastic loop ending. It's surprisingly heavy for its size and the spines are pretty darn sharp for not having actual barbs.
The bayou aroma gets stronger as we proceed to the frozen meats and fish counter. Need a whole cow's tongue? It's here. The fish counter moves from normal to interesting to eeeeeeeeew in six paces. Live blue crabs, stone crabs, eels, crayfish, mussels, two sick-looking but alive buffalo carp, a very crowded tank of tilipia (with a dead fish in the bottom) bull frogs and red eared slider and what looked to be Florida slider turtles (also with a dead turtle in the corner of the tank). The sign mentioned that the red ears were farm raised.
I have the searched-for items. It's time to go.The funk is starting to get to me, and it's about to overcome my cohort. There's a greenish look around the gills, and it's not on any of the fish.
We get into line, and I tell him to go get some air. The Durian is wrapped in a thick layer of newspaper and then bagged, getting a separate one than the rest of our haul.
The Durian, by the way, has a semi crystalline look to it in the sunlight, sort of the resin-like appearance of fresh catnip or sage. Also, the sent easily permeated the paper in the car. Upon arriving home, the poor fruit is banished to the back patio.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I must open it, meaning I also must look up how to open it. A piece of newsprint on the brick and a sharp knife later, it's open. The inside was frozen, probably due to transport and to keep the aroma to a minimum. It's creamy textured, like a washed rind cheese, slightly sweet with a hint of a slightly rotten flavor. I am told almost immediately after coming inside to wash my hands. That doesn't seem to help matters, and I am ordered to (expletive deleted) brush my teeth. Guess someone else won't be trying it.
Asia Market frogs. Photo by Meekrat