Due to a combination of factors including our trip to Charleston and, oh, a few blizzards, I have not been to Super H or any other Asian grocery store in many weeks, other than the solitary Chinese grocery store my mother-in-law found in North Charleston. I don’t know if Super H got wind of the fact I was considering moving to Charleston or if I had just missed it sorely, but for some reason it seemed to be even more amazingly awesome than usual this evening.

Oh, my love.

(This picture taken a million years ago when there weren’t 20′ snow piles all over the parking lot. Oh, happy, happy days.)

I remember vividly the first time I set foot in Super H. It must have been 5 or 6 years ago and I’d driven down to Fairfax from Arlington, where we lived at the time, just to check out the big brother to the closer-by Han Ah Reum. I walked into the produce department and immediately gaped in amazement. I remember digging my Blackberry out of my purse and immediately IMing Mark: “I WANT TO LIVE IN THIS GROCERY STORE.” Super H is HUGE and their produce selection is simply unbelievable. And CHEAP! Then there’s the entire aisle devoted to rice, and an entire aisle devoted to noodles, an entire aisle devoted to soy sauces and vinegars….it’s just amazing. You do have to watch out for certain areas – there are a lot of tentacles and other scary things that need to be avoided, but that’s really only a problem in the frozen food aisle, otherwise that stuff is confined to the seafood department in the back that I just pretend doesn’t exist.

Not only is Super H jam-packed with awesomeness, but they’re always playing good music. Like The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Erasure. I don’t know how a Korean grocery store chain got a hold of my high school record collection, but I’m not complaining.

Anyway, I went completely nuts tonight. I should have taken a picture of everything I bought, but it didn’t all fit on the kitchen island at one time. I filled four big reusable grocery bags to the point they were nearly busting, and the bill was only $100. If I’d bought that much at Whole Foods, it’d have been $500. Not that Whole Foods has half the stuff I bought. I think the blizzards have mentally scarred me and I decided I’d better pack my pantry with enough stuff to see us through an entire year or something.

No recipes tonight – it’s very late so I’m just having a huge assortment of fresh banchan supplied by Super H, and some sushi rice – but I wanted to share a few items I picked up that are new to me, with the hopes maybe some of you will supply me with ideas on using it.

Tia To:

I thought this looked suspiciously like shiso, which can be hard to find, so I snatched it up. Turns out I was right: it’s Vietnamese shiso, and apparently it has a stronger taste. There’s a pretty large amount of it for $1!

Frozen bean curd:

I got this because it looked a little bit like fish cake, so I was thinking I could use it in something that calls for fish cake. I’ve never had fish cake before, so I’ll have no idea if it tastes like it or not. I’ll probably add seaweed to whatever dish I come up with to make it fishier. Anybody tried a product like this? Since the tia to is supposed to be good with seafood dishes, I’m thinking about combining these items?

Fermented soybean:

I think I’ve identified this as doenjang, so I’m pretty sure it’ll end up in an awesome Korean soup, but I’d love to hear ideas on this.

Meatless Spaghetti Sauce With Pickled Cucumber

This one is so simply bizarre, I couldn’t pass it up. I’m not sure if I will actually eat it, although it is vegan. It’s fried wheat gluten with pickles. Apparently you put it on spaghetti?! I’ll definitely do a post on this, even if it’s not edible.

Soy Pudding

Not entirely sure why I bought this because it’s just soft tofu, which I can easily make myself, with a syrup you mix in to make a dessert. The syrup is just high fructose corn syrup with ginger flavoring, so I imagine I’ll be throwing that away and making my own syrup using fresh ginger and no HFCS. Anyone tried this stuff? Thoughts on replacing the syrup?

Rice Noodles

I just picked these up because one of the very, very few things I can’t find at Super H are really wide rice noodles, like I’d use for drunken noodles. The Thai grocery has them, but it’s far away. Actually, that Chinese grocery in North Charleston had them! Score 1 for N. Charleston (but 1,000,000 for Super H).

Aloe

I love aloe but I’ve just never bought it fresh. It was only $1 for this leaf so I figured, what the heck. Now I’m not sure what to do with it.

Kimchi!

This is NOT a new product for me, of course, but it’s pictured here because this huge container cost $14.99, and the cashier was raving about it and saying how it’s the best kind and that it was “so expensive” but worth it. Which I got a huge laugh out of, because in Charleston, Mark picked a tiny (Vegenaise-sized) jar of kimchi up at Earth Fare without looking at the price and I was shocked to look at the receipt later and find it had cost $14.99. Flabbergasted. It was just cabbage, carrots, ginger, and salt! Outrageous! When he ate it I asked him if it was the most amazing kimchi he’d ever had and he said no, in fact, it was extremely boring. It wasn’t even spicy. So now we’re always joking about the world’s most expensive kimchi. I can’t believe Super H thinks THEIR kimchi is expensive! (By the way, this kind of kimchi didn’t contain any fish sauce, anchovies, or oysters, but you’ve got to look out for that stuff when buying kimchi. Or make your own.)

Speaking of the cashier, who was Korean, she noted all the Korean food I was buying and seemed quite impressed by my selections. I’m now an honorary Korean!

I’m off to eat my banchan…have a great weekend, and if you have any thoughts on these items, let’s hear them!

Update: Here’s a picture of tonight’s meal:

First of all, I’d just like to state for the record that I HATE SNOW. I am definitely moving some place that never sees so much as a flake of the awful stuff. Mark and I had plans to surprise his mother for her birthday on Tuesday by visiting her in Charleston. Due to a snow storm on Saturday, the day we’d planned to leave, we didn’t get to Charleston until Monday morning. On Tuesday, her birthday, she had to work from 8am to 8pm with a couple hours off in the middle, during which we got lunch. Since she’s off on Wednesdays, the family celebrated her birthday with dinner that night, shortly before which I looked at the weather forecast for back home and realized WE’RE SUPPOSED TO GET TWO FEET OF SNOW FRIDAY AND SATURDAY. Which meant we had to leave three days early in order to rescue Brachtune, as the cat sitter wouldn’t be able to get to her during a blizzard. I set a land speed record of getting us from Charleston to Fairfax in 7 hours, because I’m a race car driver. I didn’t let Mark drive because he drives like a granny.

Anyway, the theme of our truncated visit, in my mother-in-law’s eyes, seems to have been “Convince Mark and Renae to move to Charleston”. High on her list of reasons we should move there are: 1) no snow and 2) no traffic. Both of which are excellent, and enticing, reasons, however, they are both countered with my reasons not to move to Charleston, which are: 1) no Asian grocery stores and 2) no Wegmans. So my mother-in-law set out to take me on a tour of Charleston’s Asian grocery stores to prove I could survive there. She did some googling for Asian grocery stores in Charleston and her top search result was my blog post complaining about the lack of Asian grocery stores in Charleston. Not a great start. Despite this setback, she dug up three addresses for Asian grocery stores, not in Charleston (which really has none), but in North Charleston, which is a whole other city about half an hour north, and she packed Mark and me into the car for a road trip.

This is the Asian grocery store at the first address she found:

If that looks a lot more like a deserted office in an industrial park than an Asian grocery store, that’s because that’s what it is.

Fortunately, the second address was more fruitful:

That’s Hang Lung Grocery (that’s what was on the receipt), and I’m pleased to say their selection rated a B-.

Just don’t wander into that Fresh Fresh Fresh Meat department in back. Trust me.

Korean specialties were lacking, though, and the produce department was very disappointing (this is pretty much all of it):

… but they did have many necessary staples. They also had the world’s largest whisk!

(I’m sorry that Mark does not know how to focus a camera; also he was incredibly embarrassed by my forcing him to take my picture in the store.)

I think Mark, whose idea of a fun day is NOT a tour of Asian grocery stores, actually found as much stuff he wanted to buy as I did, his favorite being:

Thai Red Bull. At $8.99 for 10 bottles, it’s quite a bargain compared to the American stuff. Unfortunately, poor Mark was disappointed to find it tastes like syrup and is not carbonated. So I’m actually going to try using it as an extract and carbonating it myself through fermentation. I’ll let you know how that goes.

And in my final Charleston talk, another complaint of mine has long been that the food is terrible. Not only is it full of meat, meat-flavoured vegetables, meat, and more meat, but it’s all deep-fried. Mark ordered a lettuce and tomato sandwich one time and was horrified to find the tomato battered and fried. There have always been a few reliable places we could go, but overall, I have found Charleston to be pretty un-vegan friendly. But this seems to be changing! We went to the Mellow Mushroom and got a great pizza with vegan cheese (the vegan cheese is not on the menu, but you can ask for it). I was so surprised! Then we went to Three Little Birds, which is hidden behind a shopping center, but is worth seeking out, because they ALSO have vegan cheese! (And vegan soy milk and vegan yogurt.) This BBQ Tempeh Melt on spelt bread (I’m pretty sure that’s a Tofutti single) might not look that great, but it was really tasty:

All in all, Charleston’s definitely making headway, but something must be done about the Asian grocery store situation.

Now, did you think you’d ever get to today’s recipe? I got only a couple hours’ sleep last night, got up at 5:30 am (which is typically a bedtime for me), drove across three states, battled pre-blizzard crowds at the grocery store when I got home, unpacked, did laundry, and basically ran around all day like a lunatic, all on a single meal of cold cereal eaten at 6 am (and a few snacks in the car), which, believe me, is extremely unusual for me: I get irritable if I go three hours without food. So when I finally had a moment to stop and make something to eat, I was exhausted and wanted something in a hurry, but it had to be “real” food and not just another snack. So here’s the nearly instantaneous soup I threw together.

Spicy Rice Vermicelli Soup

4 cups vegan broth
2 Tbsp gochuchang (Korean red pepper paste…if you live in Charleston, you’re out of luck with this, I’m afraid)
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 small can mock abalone
4 oz firm tofu, diced
1 large or 2 small carrots, julienned
2 cups tender pea shoots (or other green, such as spinach)
small handful dried cloud ear fungus (No, I have no idea why I own or can tolerate this ingredient.)
4 oz (?) thin rice vermicelli (I forgot to weigh this for you before adding it to the soup, although I used too much anyway; use what you think is appropriate for 2 or 3 servings)
1 tsp chili oil

Bring the broth to a boil, then whisk in the gochuchang and rice vinegar. Add the rest of the ingredients, stirring the vermicelli well to avoid clumping. Heat for three minutes or until vermicelli is cooked. Note that the vermicelli likes to absorb liquid and will drink it all up if you give it a chance (so don’t overcook).

We seasoned ours with sriracha for additional spiciness.

Now excuse me, I’m going to go pass out.

My early thoughts on dinner tonight were German. My father sent me an email wishing me a happy German-American Day. (He considers himself German-American despite the fact most of my ancestors have been in America for centuries.) But although I’d usually be very happy to go searching Seitan is My Motor for something vegan and German, or eat some sauerkraut, I had a pretty hearty lunch and wanted something fairly light for dinner. Then I read in Jes’s blog that it’s National Noodle Day and I decided we were having noodles instead. Now, I know I could have made German noodles – Bryanna even did a post on vegan spaetlze earlier this year – but I got it in my head that I wanted some sort of spicy chili noodle.

I didn’t take pictures of the whole process: I was in too big a hurry. I was starving, and the boys were apparently starving (Mark’s friend Jathan is staying with us) as well. The good news is this is a one-pot dish and ready in about 15 minutes.

I wasn’t fooling around when I decided to make “chili” noodles: chilis are present in three different forms. It wasn’t overwhelmingly hot despite that, though you can adjust the amount of each type of chlii to suit your tastes.

Chili Noodles

3 bundles udon noodles, or 1 lb. wide Chinese noodles, linguine, or other toothsome noodle
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated or minced
6 scallions, chopped, white and green parts separated
1 jalapeno or other hot pepper, sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into 2″ slivers
6 oz. snow peas
1/2 cup tofu, cubed (optional)
6 oz. bean sprouts
1 1/2 cups vegan broth
2 Tbsp black bean garlic sauce (from Asian grocery store)
2 Tbsp chili garlic sauce
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
3 Tbsp corn starch + 1/2 cup cold water
1 tsp chili sesame oil

Cook the noodles to al dente, drain, rinse under cold water, and toss with sesame oil to prevent sticking. Prep the veggies: chop the bell pepper, scallions, and tofu, slice the chili pepper, grate the ginger, and have the bean sprouts and snow peas ready. Whisk together the broth, black bean garlic sauce, chili garlic sauce, and rice vinegar in a small bowl or measuring cup. In another small bowl, whisk together the corn starch and cold water. In the same pot in which you cooked the noodles, heat some peanut oil over medium high heat, then add the ginger and white parts of the scallions. Stir fry for 30 seconds, then add the bell and chili peppers and fry for a minute or two. Pour in the broth mixture and bring to a boil. Toss in the snow peas, bean sprouts, and tofu, stirring to let them warm up. Add the corn starch mixture. The broth should immediately thicken. When it has thickened, add the noodles and chili oil and stir until well combined and noodles are warmed through. Top with the green parts of the scallions.

Honestly I don’t think the photo does it justice; I thought they were pretty good:

I’ll keep this in my repertoire of super-fast meals.

Brachtune quite rudely jumped up on the table while we were eating. Fortunately Jathan is a cat person, although even cat people don’t want cat tails in their noodles.

Brachtune loves books.

Oh, she doesn’t belong on the table, but it’s so hard to say no to her.

I also couldn’t say no to her when she wanted to go on an hour-long walk on her leash Saturday afternoon, and now I’m covered in bug bites. What sort of stupid bug is out biting in October? Isn’t relief from bugs supposed to be one of the great things about fall?

As for German-American Day, I celebrated it by listening to Einstürzende Neubauten all day. Which didn’t make it too different than any other day, but was pretty awesome anyway.