The Ecstatic Grocery Store

The Kitchen King once described the New May Wah Market as a food museum, because it contained all the foods that humankind has been eating for the last millennia. While that may be true, the New May Wah Market also caters to the currently-eating set.

The last few nights, I have been so busy installing towel rods, rearranging closets, and checking my email that I haven't had the time to obsess over that burning question of "what's for dinner." Fortunately, Dutch usually takes a late lunch, so he doesn't come home ravenous, but I usually am. As a consequence, we have sampled two new neighborhood Thai places and a pizza joint.

Tonight I decided I was going to cook, so I carved the time out of my hectic schedule to think about it.

The New May Wah is a gigantic Asian market, with the best and freshest collection of fruits, veggies and fresh meat of the 'hood. Its not for the faint-hearted. If you desire chicken, be prepared to slip your hand in a bag and grab a very-recognizable chicken part from the piles. If you stand in front of the crustacean department, you could be at an aquarium, but being a grocery, its more like death row for all the little creatures. While I was wandering the menagerie, I found some fat salmon steaks. I had never tried their seafood before and I usually assume seafood I buy from anyone besides a fisherman is going to have been frozen, and if there is a way to tell before you eat it, I don't know.

I took it home and poached it in beer (a recipe from the Clay Pot Cook Book) and it emerged from the oven a perfect and scrumptious hymn to all that is salmon. The flesh just melted in our mouths and our teeth made that fresh-fish squeeky sound.

Heaven