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All That and a Bag of Krupuk Back in 2016, I wrote a post dedicated to my interminable quest to discover the ultimate ethnic crunchy snack chip. It featured krupuk (aka kerupuk), enjoyed throughout Southeast Asia – amazing crisps that are positively addictive. In the package, they appear to be hard little chips, but they miraculously puff up almost instantly when subjected to hot oil – actually, they’re almost as much fun to prepare as they are to eat – but you can also find them sold in bags and ready to eat. My sweet friend from Indonesia, Elika, whom I met at the New York Indonesian Food Bazaar in Elmhurst many years ago, has stayed in touch with me and recently sent me an assortment of authentic kerupuk. Each photo depicts a single variety before frying (bottom of each plate) and after (top) so you can get an idea of the transformation they undergo. 1. Kerupuk Gandum. Gandum means wheat, one of a variety of starches from which kerupuk are made. 2. Emping Belinjo. Belinjo (padi oats) seeds are ground into flour and used to make emping, a type of kerupuk. Padi oats have a slight bitter, but not at all unpleasant, aftertaste. They’re not really “oatey” in the Cheerios sense because they’re another species, but they’re certainly more like oats than corn or wheat since there’s a satisfying nuttiness to them. Elika suggests a sprinkling of salt on these to lessen the bitter taste. 3. Emping Belinjo Udang. Udang means shrimp. Emping are available in styles such as manis (sweet), pedas (spicy) and madu (honey) and flavors including garlic and shrimp. 4. Rengginan – sweet rice puffs. 5. Kerupuk Udang – my absolute favorite of the group! But you don’t have to take my word for how delicious these are! If you’d like to taste them yourself (and maybe get some to take home) you can find a wide variety of krupuk on three of my ethnojunkets, Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst, Snacking in Flushing, and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Food tour season has begun, and I’d be happy to introduce you to these crispy, crunchy gems. To learn more about my food tours, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun! @erm718

😋 😋 😋 😋 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Pro Tip: How to Book the Funnest Ethnojunket It’s springtime and ethnojunkets are back! Spring means beautiful weather and rainy days and warm sunbeams and chilly fingertips and hat levitating winds and sweet gentle breezes. And sometimes all of those on the same day. So when should you book a food tour? Easy. Try this pro tip to maximize your enjoyment of my ethnojunkets: Choose a date that you’d like to go. Then, three or four days before that date, open your favorite reliable weather app and see if your target date is predicted to be warm and dry – these are walking tours and we spend a lot of time outdoors! And then contact me and tell me which tour you’re interested in and on which day. If I’m available, you’re in! Want to know if these treats will be part of our ethnojunkets (and if “funnest” is a real word)? Only one way to find out. Get the whole story on ethnojunkie.com – link in profile. Good weather, good food, good times!

🎅 A Christmas Minute The sun was setting on one of those rare snow globe days that would have sent Currier and Ives back to the drawing board. My daughter Alex and I were fulfilling our annual Macy’s pilgrimage to see Santa. Our mission accomplished, we paused for a long moment to have one last look at the sparkling snowy spectacle that was Santaland. Perhaps we appeared lost amid the throng of milling, squealing children. A young woman dressed in a green and red velvet elf costume came up to us. It had to be near the end of what was surely an exhausting work day; nevertheless, she approached us gamely. “Did you come here to see Santa?” she asked, poised to once again point out the line. “We came here to see his elves, and you are one of Santa’s elves. We came here to see you.” “Me?” “Yes. You work as hard and give your time and your attention and your patience and your love to these children every bit as much as the jolly gents wearing overstuffed red suits who sit in those cozy little houses do. So we came here to say thank you to you, Caitlyn.” She regarded us for a second and wiping a tear from her eye leaned in and gave us both a hug. I whispered “Merry Christmas”, and my daughter and I continued on our way. Alex looked up at me. “What just happened?” “We just spent one minute of our time giving her something that she might actually remember for years. The most noble thing anyone can do is to help someone, even a total stranger, feel appreciated, feel somehow special, even for a minute.” As we threaded our way out of Macy’s, Alex took my hand. “She gets it,” I thought.

🇺🇦🎄🇺🇦🎄🇺🇦🎄🇺🇦🎄 Recently, I was chatting with my charming Instagram friend Olya who lives in Ukraine and was the inspiration for the Ukraine corner of my website. We were exchanging information about Thanksgiving and Orthodox Christmas foods and I was surprised to learn that Christmas is officially celebrated on two days in Ukraine. The Orthodox Church uses the old Julian calendar so its celebration falls on Jan 7, 13 days behind the Gregorian. But backlash against the Russian invasion has prompted Ukrainians to look westward and now the Orthodox Church of Ukraine allows worshippers to observe the holiday on Dec 25 as well so now it’s twice as special! Olya provided me with a lot of info regarding traditional Ukrainian Christmas foods – and there are many! Here are a few: Kutya (кутя) Best described as a sweet porridge, it’s made from wheat berries, poppy seeds, honey, and customarily includes chopped walnuts and raisins. The wheat berries symbolize immortality and hope, the honey and poppy seeds represent happiness, tranquility, and success. Here’s my homemade version, served in my grandmother’s dish. ⬅ Holubtsi (голубці) Stuffed cabbage rolls are filled primarily with rice, minced vegetables, and sometimes mushrooms; they are prepared without meat on Christmas Eve, the Ukrainian tradition, and with meat on Christmas Day. ⬅ Kholodets (холодець) A savory meat aspic; chilled meat stock gels naturally because of its high collagen content although gelatin is sometimes added to double down on the texture. Chicken, pork, and vegetables come to the party and it’s often served with red horseradish or mustard. ⬅ Fish (риба) in many varieties and styles including fried, baked, stuffed, jellied, or marinated (like this herring) is usually a part of Ukraine’s Christmas dinner because it is associated with Jesus. ⬅ Varenyky (вареники) ... ⬅ Borshch (Борщ)... ⬅ Pampushky (пампушки)... . . . Obviously, there’s lots more to this story! Read the Complete and Uncut version at ethnojunkie.com (link in profile). And thank you so much for your help, Olya! З Різдвом Христовим!

🕎✡️🕎✡️🕎✡️🕎✡️ A Chanukah Miracle in Brooklyn (originally posted in 2021) The Jewish holiday of Chanukah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after its destruction in the second century B.C. The ceremony involved the lighting of a menorah, an oil lamp, but there was only enough oil to last for a single day. By a miracle, the menorah glowed for eight which is why Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated for as many days. In Jewish households, a nine branched menorah is used; a single candle is lit on the first night and an additional candle is added each consecutive night, with the ninth position reserved for the shamash, a helper candle used to kindle the others. Since the Chanukah miracle revolves around oil, tradition involves eating oil-centric fried foods. Sufganiot, jelly doughnuts, are the go-to sweet treat in Israel while Eastern Europe brings latkes to the table, potato pancakes customarily served with sour cream and apple sauce; here, we happily indulge in both. [1] My homemade latkes: shredded potatoes, minced onion, beaten eggs, baking powder, S&P, plus a binder like flour or matzo meal, shaped and fried in plenty of peanut oil and/or schmaltz (chicken fat) if you’re if you’re the decadent type 🙋‍♂️; they’re plated here with the requisite sour cream alongside chunky apple-strawberry sauce topped with sweet crystallized ginger. (You know me: I hadda be different.) Swipe ⬅ [2] The recipe calls for salting and draining the potatoes; I simply set up a colander in the sink, squeezing out the liquids from time to time. But this year, I noticed something I had never witnessed before: the intricate patterns made by the drained, wet potato starch were as beautiful and mesmerizing as snowflakes! A present day Chanukah miracle! Swipe ⬅ [3] The photo enlarged. Now, look very, very closely and you can see a tiny, perfect Chanukah menorah in the pattern. Go ahead, keep searching. Stay focused. Take your time. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll just, um, finish off these latkes while you’re trying to find it…. . . !חַג חֲנוּכָּה שַׂמֵחַ Happy Chanukah!

It’s Thanksgiving: Merry Christmas! For many folks, Christmas season officially begins the moment Santa Claus floats down Sixth Avenue (sort of a horizontal chimney, I guess) at the finale of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And as if a holiday miracle had occurred, somehow stores were already flaunting a plethora of Christmas goods even before he chortled his final “Ho!” All the fall décor had vanished like the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past to be replaced by a full complement of Christmas merchandise. Or did they just leap from Halloween to Christmas skipping over Thanksgiving entirely because as holidays go it’s just not profitable unless you’re a food market? Leaping and skipping aside, I decided to get a jump on the festivities and dash away to the newly opened Wegman’s at Astor Place in Manhattan – for all intents and purposes a take-out restaurant disguised as a supermarket – to check out the “first fruits” of the season. I was eager to see if they too had begun to display Christmas wares like eggnog, eggnog ice cream, and other eggnog infused desserts. Nope. Not a jot or a jingle. I asked a helpful staffer and he replied, “We don’t sell that here.” A modern upscale supermarket that doesn’t sell eggnog at Christmastime? Heresy! He suggested that I try their Brooklyn store. Bereft but undaunted, I took the two subways and one bus required to get there. Now, the Brooklyn store keeps its holiday items sequestered away from their conventional cousins – eggnog has its own display far from the milk – but I couldn’t locate its frozen creamy counterpart. I found a helpful staffer. “Hi! I bought some eggnog ice cream here last year,” I began, “but I don’t see it in the ice cream case.” “We don’t sell that here,” she replied helpfully. “Try our Astor Place store.” “They...sent...me...here,” I intoned, parsing my words. But at least they were offering their panettone (which I covered last year in my “Panettone” story – link in profile) as well as the marzipan stollen you see here. It was only okay. I’m hoping to post more treats as we dive further down the holiday rabbit hole. But it’s still early and like any sweet fruit, the season needs time to ripen.

🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 When Life Gives You Oranges, Make Marmalade. Ever heard of a trifoliate orange? Me neither until a few weeks ago when my friends at Prospect Heights Community Farm were generously offering them, and since I never refuse anything even remotely edible, I accepted. They’re about 1½ inches in diameter, slightly fuzzy, at once both sour and bitter, and contain more seeds than pulp – the very definition of a culinary challenge. I decided to try my hand at improvising marmalade. Since that’s a task I had never attempted, I reasoned that no one could criticize me if the result was less than stellar. I sliced the peels, added the purported pulp, orange juice and sugar, and repeated the procedure using some sweet Valencia oranges (actual pulp!) to offset the aggressive components, and tossed in a handful of dried cranberries because I had some in the pantry (the reason I incorporate many left-field ingredients into my experiments) then cooked the mixture until it reached a marmalady consistency. The outcome was surprisingly tasty for a first effort and complemented toasted English muffins and wedges of brie with equal appeal (no pun intended). BUT: given the frequency of repeated tests involving a touch more of this and a lot more of that, I have quite a bit left over! So what’s your favorite way to use orange marmalade?

Dear Friends: I can no longer keep this to myself. I am an addict, hooked on mithai. What’s that? You don’t know about mithai? Mithai are Indian sweets and since Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, is upon us, I can think of no better time than now to tell you my tale. So gather round your diyas and check out my post “Indian Sweets 101: Meeting Mithai” on ethnojunkie.com! (Link in bio.) दिवाली मुबारक Happy Diwali!

🇧🇷 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Fauxdizio I recently returned to Newark’s Ironbound district, the mecca for all things Portuguese and Brazilian. The area is host to six suburban-sized Seabra’s supermarkets all within walking distance of each other – the mother lode of Portuguese and Brazilian food cravings! Since I was traveling solo that day, I and my OCD decided to hit every one in order to compare and contrast. And it was absolutely worth the exercise, because I struck gold in the form of Brazilian prepared food. I’ve written here about churrasco, Brazilian style grilled meat; churrascarias often offer rodízio where waiters parade an assortment of meats impaled on formidable skewers directly to your table. So I was more than pleased to see that a couple of the Seabra’s I visited had continually replenished extended steam tables and refrigerated counters brimming with a diversity of grilled meats, seafood, authentic Brazilian dishes and the best pão de queijo I’ve had in a long time. Item by item, I filled my containers, hastily scribbling notes between each addition in order to subsequently identify and further research it. I arrived home with my treasures and piled them onto the three plates shown here – not for serving purposes but so that you could see the sheer variety and abundância; obviously, there are considerably more than three meals represented here. Everything was delicious and, more important, a fraction of the cost of venturing out to a churrascaria a few times. So it wasn’t quite rodízio because I had to serve myself, but it was close enough, hence the title of this post. And yes, I’m going to do this again. Soon.

🇲🇽 You’ve heard it before: “Oh, Día de los Muertos is Mexican Halloween, right?” Wrong. Día de los Muertos is decidedly not Mexican Halloween any more than Chanukah is Jewish Christmas – and if any unenlightened soul tries to tell you that, please disabuse them of that fallacious notion inmediatamente! The Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead, is celebrated from October 31 through November 2 (dates may vary depending upon the locality) – and “celebrated” is the proper word: families congregate to memorialize loved ones who have passed away, but it is seen as a time when the departed temporarily revivify and join in the revelry rather than as a sorrowful occasion. Additionally, these days Día de Muertos, as it is also known, serves as a paean to the indigenous people with whom it originated in pre-Hispanic times. One time BC (Before Covid), I headed out to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to get myself into the Día de los Muertos spirit. Sequin-eyed, neon icing-coiffed calaveras (sugar skulls) are relatively easy to find in the neighborhood; this one came from Panadería La Espiga Real, 5717 5th Avenue. Although spirits don’t eat, this one seemed particularly interested in the pan de muerto I picked up at La Flor de Izucar, 4021 5th Avenue. This bread of the dead is customarily embossed with bone shapes, sometimes crossbones, sometimes in a circle, and other traditional embellishments such as skulls and a single teardrop. It’s a barely sweet, simple bun (like so many Mexican panes dulces), light and airy with a tight crumb, and topped with sesame seeds or sugar (like this one) with hints of cinnamon, anise, and orange flower water. Swipe ⬅ A view of the inner sanctum.

Halloween is just around the corner and I wanted to indulge in something that didn’t involve Reese’s Cups, M&M’s, or Kit Kats, so I’ll be goblin’ futomaki that’s decked out in an All Hallows’ Eve costume – I guess that makes it both a trick and a treat. (But, not gonna lie, I’m waiting for the post-holiday sales: just as leftover Thanksgiving dinner tastes better the next day, so does leftover half-price Halloween candy.) In obeisance to the official black and orange Halloween rubric, the black monstermaki (futomaki means thick or fat roll) is wrapped in nori, its conventional costume, and its orange sidekicks are swathed in soy wrappers that come in five flavors/colors: original soy, sesame, spinach green, turmeric yellow, and paprika orange. Swipe ⬅ I filled them with kani (krab sticks), avocado, cucumber, strips of sweet kanpyō (dried gourd) and most important, eel because – in keeping with the holiday spirit 👻 – it’s only one letter away from EEK! Swipe ⬅ And in case you’re wondering - no, I’m not handing out these spookomaki on October 31; the kids are supposed to scare me, not the other way around! Happy Halloween! 🎃🍣

🇹🇯 Qurutob (you might see kurutob) is often said to be the national dish of Tajikistan. Essentially a bread salad (Tajikistan’s answer to Italy’s panzanella, perhaps?), qurutob ascends beyond the level of granting second life to shards from a stale loaf in that it features fresh fatir, a flaky, layered bread that provides the recipe’s foundation. The distinguishing ingredient is a sauce made from qurut (you might see kurt), balls of dried, salty yogurt about ¾ of an inch in diameter that are crushed and rehydrated in hot water; shreds of bread are torn and soaked in the resulting liquid to form the base of the salad. The next layer typically consists of tomatoes, cucumbers, onion slices (I sautéed them a bit to soften and sweeten), cilantro and other herbs. Sometimes bits of roasted lamb shank are added, but it’s optional. My garnish of choice was chopped scallion, toasted walnuts, and a few fresh chili peppers. Swipe ⬅ Mix well and try to get a bit of everything in each bite. Swipe ⬅ It’s a breeze to make and economical to boot. If you’re curious and you’d like to give it a go, both the bread and qurut are readily available either in Tashkent Market, Brooklyn or in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. (Of course, traveling to Uzbekistan will render the proposition considerably less economical, but you do you. 😉)

Mochipia You know about mochi, the popular Japanese rice cake, often sweet but not necessarily, made from glutinous rice pounded into paste. You might not know about hopia, pastries hailing from the Philippines and Indonesia that can be found with a variety of fillings like ube (purple yam) or sweet bean paste enclosed within either a flaky or a cakey dough. This product is called Mochipia, a portmanteau of mochi and hopia, both in name and composition. They’re filled with ube/macapuno paste surrounding a chewy mochi center that provides a snackworthy contrasting texture. Macapuno is a cultivar of coconut, sweet and jelly-like in texture, and often found in combination with ube in Filipino snacks because the two flavors are deliciously compatible. And, of course, we always get some along the way on my Elmhurst food tour. Want to know where? Get the details on my Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 This post is dedicated to someone who loves Spooky Season as much as I love Christmas. Her devotion to all things pumpkin-spice rivals my passion for eggnog. I get it: these ephemeral seasons only come around once a year, and we are obliged to indulge enthusiastically before they evanesce. But because my focus is all about international treats and since Spooky Szn is as American as apple – er, pumpkin – pie, I’ve never been able to write about it here and still stay within my rubric. Until now. I spotted these dim sum at the Main Street level grab-n-go outpost of Royal Queen Restaurant in Flushing. They’re not pumpkin flavored of course and they’re not filled with candy, but they are filled with sweet bean paste so as far as I’m concerned we have an acceptable crossover here. Last photo: couldn’t resist taking a minute to PShop it a bit! 🎃

🇵🇱 Okay. One more post from my Little Poland explorations. I discovered several brands of herring each offering a number of divergent styles in the refrigerator cases of Polish food markets in Greenpoint. In this case, the brand was Lisner and the style was “in garlic sauce”. Not all of the products were equally enjoyable but this one easily made the cut. Plated over shiso leaves (yes, I know, but I’m all about multiethnic), I dressed it up with cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced sweet onion and tiny adorable cucamelons, aka Mexican sour gherkins (yes, I know, but I’m all about...), Mediterranean capers (yes, I know, but...) and snipped Chinese garlic chives (yes, I...you get the idea), accompanied by a hyperbuttered toasted poppy seed bagel. Lots of good eats in this neighborhood!

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Le 2023 Lait de Poule Est Arrivé! Eggnog! First sighting of the year! It’s like waiting for this year’s vintage Beaujolais Nouveau to appear: Le 2023 Lait de Poule est arrivé! (They say that the French have a word for it, and I have to admit a certain fondness for their spin on the word “eggnog”, lait de poule: hen’s milk.) If you’ve read me, you know that I have a few (ha!) guilty pleasures when it comes to holiday food, and for me, nothing heralds the advent of the season like the first appearance of eggnog on supermarket shelves. And snatching it away precipitately as they do every year when the yule log’s embers have barely begun to evanesce only makes the anticipation and craving for next year’s batch more intense. But which one(s) to buy? The brands in this photo may not be my fave – they’re merely the first I’ve found this year: September 27 to be precise! But fret not. I and my OCD are here to offer you the benefits of my research and experimentation regarding this happy holiday quandary. Please check out my essay, “An Eggnog Excursus,” and unlike the holiday libation itself, it’s available year-round under "Deep Dives" on my homepage – link in profile. Check it out at ethnojunkie.com/?page_id=12386 Cheers!

🥮 🥮 🥮 🥮 🥮 🥮 🥮 🥮 Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival – 2023 A visit to any Chinatown bakery this time of year will reveal a spectacular assemblage of mooncakes (月餅, yue bing) in a seemingly infinite variety of shapes, sizes, ornamentation, and fillings, all begging to be enjoyed in observance of the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated this year on September 29. Since 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit, known for his elegance among many other characteristics depending upon where you do your research, I decided to purchase an assortment of these elegant delicacies in order to share them, virtually, with you. For a deep dive into the holiday and these delicious treats, you can get the skinny – er, poor choice of words there – in my Chinese Mooncakes Demystified page (ethnojunkie.com/?page_id=12392) detailing their similarities and differences in an attempt to shed some light (moonlight, of course) on their intricacies. 中秋节快乐!

🇵🇭 One of the first posts on my website, “Dem Are Good!” – ethnojunkie.com/?page_id=816 – exposed my fondness for (read: addiction to) Nagaraya Butter Flavor Cracker Nuts. (IYKYK. And if you don’t, take my Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst food tour and I’ll hook you up – they’re called CRACKer Nuts for a reason.) Like all good things, it seems they have become harder to track down as the years have gone by, but my source, Phil-Am Food Mart at 70-02 Roosevelt Ave in Woodside, often has them in stock. In addition to providing the elusive Cracker Nuts I had been stalking, Phil-Am also offers a considerable selection of top notch locally made prepared food. Since Filipino cuisine is one of my all-time favorites, I can never visit without picking up at least one main dish, in this case a pint of Bicol Express. Bicol Express is made with pork stewed in spicy coconut milk infused with shrimp paste and laden with green chilies. Named for the Bicol Express, a passenger train that ran from Manila to the Bicol region in the Philippines, I guess you could think of this dish that’s both creamy and spicy as running from one terminus on the flavor route to another. It should be served with rice, so I made my version of Bagoong Fried Rice. (Oversimplification: Start with onions, garlic and the all-important Ginisang Bagoong sautéed shrimp paste; fry together; add pre-cooked refrigerated white rice; continue to fry; add scallions and sometimes mangoes to finish.) Masarap! (To learn more about my food tours, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!)

🇵🇱 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Pyzy Posted for the sake of completeness, here are two final photos from my Greenpoint Polish explorations back when I was deciding about introducing a Little Poland ethnojunket. These are Pyzy. In Polish, the letter Y sounds like a short I, so the singular, pyza, rhymes with “is a” – which explains why, although tempting, the title of this post isn’t Easy Pyzy. Now that that’s out of the way, pyzy are boiled Polish dumplings made from a combination of raw and boiled potatoes held together with flour and eggs and commonly stuffed with cheese, mushrooms, or meat (like these). Homespun and heavy, they’re served as a filling main course often with fried onions on the side. Swipe ⬅ The cake rolls are Rolada (like French roulade) – custardy raspberry above and hazelnut below. So maybe we didn’t start with easy peasy, but we ended with a piece of cake! 😜

🇵🇱 Łazanki Almost sounds like “lasagna” but with a cute Polish spin on it – and there may be a connection. From Wikipedia: “Łazanki arrived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the mid-16th century when Bona Sforza, Italian wife of King Sigismund I the Old, brought high Italian cuisine to the country. Accordingly, the name łazanki is reminiscent of the Italian lasagna, the name for a type of pasta in the shape of large, flat rectangles. Since łazanki resemble mini versions of lasagna, their Polish name is correspondingly diminutive in form: little lasagna.” Or so goes the legend. In any event, boiled łazanki noodles are cooked with either fresh cabbage or sauerkraut, mushrooms, onions, pork fat, optionally kielbasa, and topped with sour cream (of course). Tastes as comforting as it looks. More Polish leftover photos to come. Stay tuned.

🇵🇱 Thought I’d share a few leftovers with you. Not leftover food, but leftover photos – from the time not long ago when I was prowling the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn deciding whether I should put together a Little Poland ethnojunket. First up, here is a peek inside a Krokiet, a Polish croquette. Krokiety are crêpes that are filled, rolled up, breaded and fried. They’re served as a snack or as part of a more expansive meal and can be stuffed with meat (like this one), cabbage, mushrooms, sauerkraut or a combination thereof. If it looks like a breaded blintz, you’re not far off – it’s the breading that distinguishes it from its cousins. More leftovers to come. Stay tuned.

🇬🇪 Genatsvale is a touching Georgian word that doesn’t readily translate into other languages. At its essence, it is a term of endearment but it’s actually an elision/concatenation of a longer phrase which loosely deconstructed is, “If you are ever in trouble, let me take your place.” Sweet. It is also the name of a new month-old Georgian bakery at 3070 Brighton 3rd St in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn where the two items I’ve tasted have easily surpassed any other versions I’ve experienced – and that’s saying something. This is Achma. It looks like noodles with cheese, but it is considered a member of the khachapuri family (Georgian breads). It consists of layers of thin handmade dough (a laborious task) interspersed with a mixture of cheeses all baked together until the top is brown and crispy and the cheese is melty and gooey. Their rendition of the dish is outstanding, and yes, we enjoy this seemingly modest miracle on my Exploring Eastern European Food in Little Odessa ethnojunket. (Link in profile.) Swipe ⬅ And speaking of sweet, what’s for dessert? They spell it Gada although I’ve seen Qada more frequently. The dough is rolled out, spread with a simple but rich filling, rolled up, and crinkle cut on the bias. It’s dense yet soft, a little crumbly, sweet but not cloying, buttery but not unctuous. Again, it’s by far the best I’ve had anywhere. No surprise that they know me by now because I keep going back for more – so if you want to buy some for yourself, tell Katie or Linda that ethnojunkie sent you! (This is NOT a paid endorsement, but it IS a recommendation!) Or you could just take my tour to try these and even more delectable treats! 😉 @genatsvale_nyc

🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 The cliché applies to each of New York City’s nine Chinatowns: So many bakeries, so little time. And Flushing is no exception rocking its major chains, smaller collectives, and the occasional singleton. Each is known for its specialties, and each has its loyal followers who passionately champion their choice of who has the best Don Tat (egg tarts), the best Char Siu Bao (BBQ pork buns), the best Jian Dui (sesame balls) – you get the idea. The larger chains have a reliable contingent of the most popular goodies (like the aforementioned) but it seems to me that the smaller the establishment, the more likely you are to find something unique. Shakalaka Bakery at 136-76 Roosevelt Ave in Flushing is one such enterprise. I entered in search of crispy, crumbly, almond thins but was stopped in my tracks by a sign that read “Gooey Chocolate Cookies” perched over a tray of baked goods that looked more like mini loaves than cookies. Obviously, since gooey, chocolate, and cookie comprise a hat-trick, I had to indulge. I’m hard pressed to describe it as a cookie, but I can vouch for the fact that it was a righteous snack on the subway ride back. (What – you thought I’d wait until I got home?) And in other news, although I didn’t purchase it, the label on these diminutive carbobombs in the third photo was “Chestnut Cake”. I think “Cousin Itt Cake” would have nailed it, but that’s just me.

🥝 🍓 🍈 🍍 🍇 🍒 🍎 🍐 Guoyu Spicy Fruit In case you were thinking that Mexico had cornered the market in sweet fresh fruit garnished with a spicy topping (Tajín, for example), please allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I was in Flushing scoping out new and unusual goodies for my “Snacking in Flushing – The Best of the Best” ethnojunket and I discovered Guoyu Spicy Fruit in the revived Golden Mall at 41-28 Main St. They’ve been there about a month offering 16 varieties of cut fruits with a choice of either spicy chili or sweet yogurt mix-ins. You’ll see samples for each of the two options. Taste the spicy sample and then channel Goldilocks requesting spicier than this, less spicy, or just right. Personally, I think the idea is brilliant – so much more meaningful than an arbitrary numbering system that’s relative to nothing. The sweet yogurt option comes with an assortment of toppings such as popping boba, coconut, sprinkles, crumbled chocolate cookies, nuts & raisins, and the like so you can customize your treat per the sample cups as well. Naturally, I was all in on the spicy option. You fill up either size (¾ or 1 liter) container yourself with as many or as few kinds of fruit as your heart desires and specify the topping to be mixed into it. I’m pleased to report that it was truly delicious – how could it not be? But even the smaller size was more than I could finish in a single sitting, so I brought the remainder home with me – and that’s when I went rogue: I tried it over vanilla ice cream and it was positively synergistic. Turned out it was also a perfect foil for mixing into tapioca pudding. The day after that, I anointed my breakfast French Toast with some of the remaining sweet, spicy juice: who needs cloying maple syrup? I will even admit that I poured a bit into a glass of ice cold Coca Cola by way of experimentation – and it actually worked! I am more than happy with this – not to mention that it’s good for you! Fresh fruit and spice – no fat, no sugar added. Plus check out the adorable multi-purpose bucket that it comes in! I’m curious to see what you think, either if you’ve been there or are planning to go. Comment below!

🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 🍦 What’s your favorite flavor? My favorite flavor varies radically depending upon the circumstances at the moment. That particular day was a sweltering New York City scorcher that reminded me of childhood trips to the boardwalk on Coney Island – ocean breezes, blue water beneath bluer skies, cumulus clouds poised to be redefined, the blare of AM transistor radios blasting Top 40 hits competing with a Yankees game, the screech of seagulls in a feeding frenzy fighting over a fried clam – and a mandatory visit to Williams Candy Shop on Surf Avenue for a cup of pistachio/banana twist soft serve. “Pistachio and banana?” I hear you cry. “Is that a good combination?” Of course not. But this is Artificial pistachio paired with Artificial banana. A perfect match made in food laboratory heaven; the two share a strong chemical family resemblance and thus are highly compatible. So on that particular day, this was my favorite flavor: The Flavor of Nostalgia.

😋 😋 😋 😋 😋 😋 Now Boarding! Little Odessa Ethnojunket on Friday, September 1 at 1:30pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket to Brooklyn’s Little Odessa for some delicious Russian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Uyghur, Turkish, Uzbek, and Ukrainian food! An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still some openings available for our Little Odessa ethnojunket on September 1 so here’s your chance to join in the fun! Visit ethnojunkie.com/?p=19260 or click the link in my profile for more information and to sign up!

🇺🇿 Here’s another treat I discovered while looking for new goodies in Little Odessa. These are Tukhum Barak, unusual egg dumplings from the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan. About 3½ inches square, they are unique in that during construction the filling is added while still a liquid. Picture a rectangle of dough folded in half, pinched tightly on both sides leaving a gap at the top into which the filling, made primarily from eggs, milk, and flour, is poured and then carefully sealed. They can then be boiled or pan-fried. In this case, the dough was surprisingly rich, more so than a typical raviolo. The slightly salty filling was barely eggy, sharing the spotlight with the milk and flour, with a subtle touch of sweetness. Want to try them? Of course you do! So join me on my Exploring Eastern European Food in Little Odessa ethnojunket. (Hint: there’s one coming up on September 1!) Please visit ethnojunkie.com/?p=19260 or click the link in my profile and sign up to join in the fun!

🇵🇱 We’ve arrived at the final post in the “Should-I-offer-an-ethnojunket-in-Little-Poland” series and I’ve saved the best for last. Fortunately, the champion kielbasi purveyors are still going strong, their kielbasi are still the best I’ve ever tasted, and they still have the most bewildering assortment I’ve ever encountered. Being an OCD type compelled me to do one of my “one of each please” shopping trips in every one of the best stocked venues. What I did not expect was that each shop had a considerable assortment on display that was almost entirely different from that of their nearby competitors! Among these culinary masterworks, some distinctions are fairly easy to quantify along a sensory continuum: fatty<–>lean, barely smoky<–>double smoked, chunky<–>finely ground, dry<–>moist, and the like. But then you get into specific flavor profiles: wiejska is garlicky with coriander seed, mustard seed, and thyme, kabanosy is flavored with caraway, wiśniowa is smoked over cherry wood so there’s a subtle sweetness to it, myśliwska (hunter’s sausage) is flavored with juniper and slightly spicy (“spicy” is a relative term and these are very tame), bukowiańska is flavored with marjoram and bay leaf...I could go on. (Check out the three photos!) They’re all pre-cooked, ready to eat, and conveniently consumed in chunks (the best way to eat them IMHO) rather than in slices from a 3-inch diameter log. And I’m not even covering varieties like biała (white) which are fresh and require cooking. So now it’s your turn! If this series has piqued your interest, let me know if you’re interested in joining me on a Little Poland ethnojunket to taste some of the goodies from this post and those before it: please email me directly at rich[at]ethnojunkie[dot]com. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

🇵🇱 Polish Baked Goods A few posts ago, I wrote about Moe’s Donuts in Greenpoint. They’re outstanding, they’re unique, but they’re not Polish. A few of my favorite neighborhood bakeries haven’t survived, but that doesn’t spell the absence of authentic Polish goodies. And speaking of spelling and authentic Polish goodies, this is Drożdżówka z Makiem: “bun with poppy seeds”. Polish bakeries typically offer an assortment of sweet poppy seed pastries. The seeds are ground and cooked together with sugar and other ingredients to make a distinctive coarse paste used in dozens of Eastern European dessert recipes. If your only contact with poppy seeds is in the form of a scattering on top of a Kaiser/Vienna roll or a bagel, understand that those savory sprinkles and this sweet poppy seed filling are Poles apart. (Sorry, not sorry.) My recommendation: the more plentiful the poppy seed filling in the pastry you choose, the happier you’ll be. Swipe ⬅ These are freshly baked Pączki, genuine Polish jelly donuts that frequently come coated with a sugar glaze; you’ll find that the distinctive dough differs a bit from most American jelly donuts. It seems that they’re available just about everywhere that sells fresh food in the neighborhood – even if it’s not a bakery – if you just look for them. The filling in these tasted somewhat like apple, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. And of course we’ll sample pączki if I do a Greenpoint food tour – but that’s up to you. I’ll do one more post after this one (Kielbasi!) and after that I’m looking forward to hearing from you to see if you’d like to join me on a Little Poland ethnojunket. Stay tuned!

😋 😋 😋 😋 😋 😋 Now Boarding! Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst Ethnojunket on August 20 at 1pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket to Elmhurst for some amazing regional food from Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and parts of China. An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still some openings available for our Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst Ethnojunket on Sunday, August 20. The tour includes a veritable cornucopia of food (these photos show some examples) so bring your appetite: you won’t leave hungry, and you will leave happy! For more information, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

🇵🇱 🥟 I’ve sampled pierogi from at least four Greenpoint locations (I’ve lost count) in my quest to find the best of the best for a possible ethnojunket to that neighborhood. Here are two of six varieties that also included sweet cheese, blueberry, mushroom, and potato along with a ubiquitous Polish side dish. The one on the left is called Ruskie (pronounced rooskieh) and no, it doesn’t mean Russian; it refers to Ruthenia, a historical region that spans what is now western Ukraine and southeastern Poland, so Ruskie means “Ruthenian”. The filling is cheese (specifically twaróg, Polish farmer’s cheese) and mashed potato, and these were sufficiently cheesy to yield a mini cheese pull when I cut them open. The pieróg (singular) on the right is filled with mięsem (meat). Sałatka Jarzynowa is shown in front (literally “vegetable salad”) and there were as many iterations of this dish in the area as there were pierogi. They all consist of the same basic ingredients chopped together: potatoes, hard boiled eggs, carrots, peas, celery, onions, pickles, mayonnaise, and a variant or two like apples, but despite the similarity in recipes, some were simply better than others IMHO. I suspect it has as much to do with the coarseness of the chop as it does the seasoning. I’m planning another couple of Greenpoint posts to see if you’re interested in joining me on an ethnojunket to Little Poland, so stay tuned!

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com Now Boarding! Little Odessa Ethnojunket on August 15 at 1pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket to Brooklyn’s Little Odessa for some delicious Russian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Uyghur, Turkish, Uzbek, and Ukrainian food! An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still some openings available for our Little Odessa ethnojunket on Tuesday, August 15 so here’s your chance to join in the fun! Visit ethnojunkie.com/?p=19260 or click the link in my profile for more information and to sign up!

🇵🇱 If you read me with any degree of regularity, you know that I’m a foreign language nut. You also know that I’ve been prowling around Greenpoint with an eye toward putting together a Polish ethnojunket. So I was pleased to find an entire aisle of Polish filled cookies whose wrappers I could actually translate: wiśnia – cherry flavor, śliwka – plum flavor, cytrynowy – lemon flavor, advocat – lawyer flavor...wait, what? My BFF Google Translate was no help; it translated Polish advokat as lawyer. And no, having D as the second letter rules out avocado; awokado is Polish for avocado. Of course I bought a bag. The English printed on the pack was even less help: “Crispy biscuit with delicious cream of advocat flavour in the chocolate shell.” Gee, thanks. It was only then that I noticed a picture of a tiny glass containing a yellow liquid lurking behind a stack of cookies on the package. I looked up “advocat drink” (how did we even survive without internet search engines?) and discovered: “Advocaat is a traditional Dutch alcoholic beverage made from eggs, sugar, and brandy. The rich and creamy drink has a smooth, custard-like consistency.” So it’s eggnog flavor that makes them unique and almost Christmassy! We’re definitely getting these treats if we do a Greenpoint food tour. Because if you read me with any degree of regularity, you know how I feel about eggnog! (ethnojunkie.com/?page_id=12386) 😉

🥣🥣🥣🥣🥣🥣🥣🥣 I know. It looks like the dollop of sour cream had begun to temper the borscht in advance of the photo being taken thus rendering it Barbie pink. But this isn’t quite borscht. Yes, the borscht we usually encounter is deep red and beet-based – there’s white rye-based borscht and green sorrel-based borscht too – but this is Chłodnik Litewski. It does contain beets but one difference is the presence of cucumbers, radishes, and herbs like dill and parsley. Another distinguishing characteristic is that dairy in the form of buttermilk, yogurt, kefir, or sour cream is an essential ingredient, not an afterthought, hence its unvarnished ungarnished color. So it’s a hot pink cold soup. Polish Chłodnik (“cold soup”) Litewski (“Lithuanian”) is light and refreshing and perfect for a summer food tour in Greenpoint where I selected it as another example of a treat we’ll experience if I actually do an ethnojunket there. That’s up to you, of course. I’ll post a few more examples and when we’ve reached the last one, let me know if a Greenpoint ethnojunket sounds like a good idea to you! Stay tuned….

🥟 🥟 🥟 🥟 🥟 🥟 🥟 🥟 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: There are a couple of Polish/Eastern European food markets along Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint that probably present as 99-cent stores to an unacquainted customer. You’ll find several aisles showcasing jars of pickled vegetables (expect cabbage, beets, cucumbers and the like), canned fish, jams and preserves, cookies, and beverages plus a refrigerator case containing fish fillets packed in a variety of sauces (yes, please) and an assortment of processed cheeses (no, thank you). You won’t find fresh kielbasi: those are left to a (dwindling) number of specialists in the neighborhood that I’ll cover in an upcoming post. Swipe ⬅ If you read me, you know I’m drawn to the less familiar, like this jar of Farsz. Google Translate, my best friend, suggested "stuffing" or "forcemeat" as a translation followed by "mushroom" (pieczarkowy) and "for casseroles" (do zapiekanek). The product consists primarily of minced mushrooms and just enough bread to hold it together in addition to a gentle touch of seasoning. The company’s website recommends using it for dumplings (pierogi, obviously) as well as in soups and sauces. Swipe ⬅ Since I’m so suggestible, I decided to make pierogi; served them up with bits of bacon, fried onion, snipped chives, and sour cream on the side. They turned out pretty well for a first attempt; next time (if there is one because making pierogi from scratch is labor intensive) I’d combine the mushrooms with some mashed potato. Unfortunately there’s a good deal left in the jar and I don’t know if it will freeze well until another rigorous kitchen session seems like a good idea. (Yeah, right.) I bet it would make a yummy pasta sauce with a bit of cream though. (Easy, peasy.) Hmmm...maybe with a toss of peas? (Who, me? Suggestible?) And just a reminder that I’m doing this series of posts to see if YOU are interested in my putting together a Greenpoint ethnojunket. When we’ve reached the last one, let me know what you think! Stay tuned....

🍩 🍩 🍩 🍩 🍩 🍩 🍩 🍩 In the year 1 BC (Before COVID), I had been flirting with the idea of adding a Greenpoint food tour to my roster of ethnojunkets (you can see them all on a single page – link in profile). The plan involved scoring a sampling of several top notch kielbasi, refreshing cold summertime soups, savory pierogi, pickled tidbits and other Polish treats and sweets along with traditional baked goods. The route would include other neighborhood standouts as well, like Moe’s Donuts at 126 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn. (The story began when Moe, who used to work at the nearby and deservedly famous Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop, moved on to do his own thing...but I’ll save the rest of the tale for the tour.) I returned last week just to scope things out only to discover that, heartbreakingly, many of my time-honored faves had gone out of business. Which raised the question: would there still be enough authentic deliciousness to build a Polish food tour around? I explored the shops that were still standing and fortunately, to paraphrase the song, only the strong survived – easily enough to qualify for a legit ethnojunket. So I’ve decided to let YOU decide. Seriously. Over the next few posts, I’m going to share some pix from my recent visit. After you’ve seen them, let me know if you have some interest in joining me on a Greenpoint Polish ethnojunket! We’re starting the ball rolling with the aforementioned Moe’s Donuts: Dulce de Leche on the left and Samoa on the right. Yes, Samoa like the coconut/caramel/chocolate Girl Scout Cookie but elevated to dessert nirvana because donuts > cookies. I’m usually not a rabid donut fan, but every variety I’ve tasted from Moe’s was a gem. Keep following to check out more Greenpoint goodies....

🇲🇦 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Marrak-ish Whenever I purge the freezer it seems like I always unearth an inconsequential and hence forgotten bit of meat, in this case a sausage link that had no business being labeled “merguez”. So I decided to throw together something that might help it live up to its name while still not involving much work or any shopping: all ingredients guaranteed to have come from my fridge or pantry. The veggie component included onions, garlic, long green hot pepper, sweet red bell pepper, carrots, scallions and a little tomato; the pantry provided dried apricots and prunes. The seasoning was primarily ras el hanout, a blend of Moroccan spices that includes cinnamon, cumin, coriander, turmeric, ground ginger, paprika, and about 20 more plus salt and black pepper, and the garnish was cilantro and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. It’s not authentic, of course, hence the characterization “Marrak-ish”. Served it over couscous with msemen (Moroccan flatbread) and assorted pickles left over from my last Little Levant Bay Ridge food tour. (Check it out – link in profile!) Of course, a normal person would have just fried up the sausage and made a sammich out of it with a side of fries. I definitely have too much time on my hands.

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: “When Life DOESN’T Give You Lemons....” 🍋 🍋 🍋 🍋 🍋 🍋 🍋 🍋 Sometimes I get lucky. My friends at Prospect Heights Community Farm in Brooklyn generously gave me some of their delicious freshly harvested fruits: red raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, pink champagne currants and rhubarb (yes, I know rhubarb isn’t a fruit but it works and plays well with others). Another good friend had recently gifted me some premium whole roasted almonds. Someone else gave me an unwanted bag of rolled oats, and a neighbor was moving out and liquidating her pantry so I scored some light brown sugar. Truly an embarrassment of Rich’s. So I did what any beneficiary of such coincidental serendipity would do: I made a fruit crumble. I already had butter – Danish Lurpak, the best of the best IMHO; it’s usually pretty expensive, but it was a bargain at an unlikely location I visit on my Little Odessa ethnojunket – join me and I’ll show you where it is. (Hint: link in profile.) I had almost everything else on hand that I needed for the recipe. Except lemon juice. So I had to actually buy a lemon. 🍋

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: 🍨 🍦 🍨 🍦 🍨 🍦 🍨 🍦 July is National Ice Cream Month, and I update my epic post about ethnic pops (with a little storytelling thrown in for good measure) annually. It’s everything you always wanted to know about international ice cream all in one place. The story began here: Every August, as a routinely flushed, overheated child, I would join in chorus with my perspiring cohorts, boisterously importuning, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” Little did I realize that rather than conjuring dessert, I was conjugating it and probably laying the groundwork for a lifetime of fascination with foreign languages and world food. We lived in close proximity to one of the best dairies in town; it was known for its wide assortment of locally produced natural flavors, certainly sufficient in number and variety to satisfy any palate. Perhaps my obsession with offbeat ice cream flavors is rooted in my frustration with my father’s return home from work, invariably bearing the same kind of ice cream as the last time, Neapolitan. Neapolitan, again! My pleas to try a different flavor – just once? please? – consistently fell on deaf ears. “Neapolitan is chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. That’s three flavors right there. If you don’t want it, don’t eat it.” Some kids’ idea of rebellion involved smoking behind the garage; mine was to tuck into a bowl of Rum Raisin.... There’s lots more to the story, of course. Please check it out – link in profile – to get the full scoop! 🍨

🇲🇲 I don’t know precisely how many posts I’ve published on ethnojunkie.com; I stopped counting when I hit 1000. But I can tell you that the number of times I’ve suggested that you go somewhere and get something post-haste can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. This is one of those posts. The “somewhere” is Burmese Hut, a new stall in Elmhurst’s HK Food Court at 82-02 45th Ave (definitely not to be confused with its short-lived Burmese predecessor) and the “something” is their fantastic Laphet Thoke. Laphet is the Burmese word for pickled or fermented tea leaves and thoke means salad; in Myanmar, tea is not only drunk, but also consumed as food. There’s no set ingredient list for laphet thoke, but there are four key elements: the tea leaves plus some other veggies like shredded cabbage and tomatoes; the add-ins like dried shrimp; the dressing, often garlic oil, lime juice and fish sauce; and the all-important “crunchies” – expect fried garlic and fried onion, fried broad beans and toasted soybeans plus peanuts and sesame seeds – all mixed together and garnished with green bird’s eye chilies and slices of fresh raw garlic. But basically the performance is entirely up to the chef. And in this case, the chef is a virtuoso. On last weekend’s Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst ethnojunket (link in profile), my guests who had spent time in Southeast Asia were very familiar with the dish, having enjoyed it more than once. I like it so much that I spent years crafting a recipe for it. And after all the experiences of their eating and my cooking, we concurred that this was absolutely the best, most outstanding version any of us had ever tasted. Go there. Go there now. Order their spectacular Laphet Thoke. And tell them ethnojunkie sent you.

🇹🇭 Khao Nom Nom Nom I always try to kick off my food tours with a crowd pleaser, something that will elicit an enthusiastic “yum” from my guests. Our Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst point of departure is Khao Nom, 42-06 77th St, known for their Thai desserts but also featuring a significant number of savory dishes. I’ve written about Khao Nom’s cuisine so many times because they’re just that good; you can find a compilation of five posts from as far back as 2018 at ethnojunkie.com/?p=12693. Although choosing an appetizer seems like an unproblematic task, making a decision is daunting because each of the ten they offer is a gem. (You know how I know that, right?) Lately, we’ve been starting with this pair of winners: [1] Kao Pod Tod. A deep fried fritter that features sweet corn, black pepper, garlic, and cilantro, combined with rice flour and served with Thai cucumber relish sauce. [2] Hoy Jor. Tofu skin in lieu of a spring roll wrapper filled with ground pork and crabmeat, fried and served with sweet and sour sauce. To savor these and over a dozen other treats from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and parts of China, please check out my Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst ethnojunket – link in profile – and sign up to join in the yum – er, I mean fun!

I’ve been offering ethnojunkets in Brooklyn’s Little Odessa for over 10 years and I’ve witnessed some stellar Eastern European and Russian food markets fail, only to be replaced by even brighter stars. The prepared food buffet is the feature attraction at these locations. They come and they go. Some are eclipsed by the competition, some just self-combust for no apparent reason, some are even decimated by natural disasters. (Anyone else remember the beloved M&I International Foods that succumbed to Hurricane Sandy back in 2012? We can be BFFs.) Exquisite Foodland caught COVID and closed for a couple of years, but it has reemerged seemingly unscathed. Gourmanoff regrouped into yet another NetCost Market, its parent company. And not long ago, in the shadow of the spectacular Tashkent Market opening across the street from it, Brighton Bazaar gamely attempted to hang on but was ultimately extinguished by its rival. When their gates came down for the last time, I wondered what business(es) would occupy those digs. Enter Samarkand Bazaar. It positioned itself head to head against its neighbor, Tashkent Market. The battle will be noteworthy in that they are cut from the same piece of cloth, at least superficially. They both stock comparable regional baked goods, produce, refrigerated and frozen food, cakes and desserts, smoked fish, and boxed, jarred, and canned food. Not to mention the fact that they are less than 300 feet from each other. But, of course, the real reason to visit either one is the overwhelming selection of prepared food. They present many of the same dishes; Samarkand has a few I haven’t seen in Tashkent, although Tashkent has many not to be found in Samarkand. I’ve tasted well over a dozen of Samarkand’s offerings; Tashkent has a slight edge IMHO but I’m willing to wait until Samarkand gets it sea legs. Swipe ⬅ Slides of just a few of their goodies: Want to know what these yummy dishes are? Want to try ’em? You know what to do. Join me on my “Exploring Eastern European Food in Little Odessa” ethnojunket! Get the details on my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

🐉 🚣 🇨🇳 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Dragon Boat Festival – Zongzi Day Dragon Boat Festival, the time-honored Chinese holiday that occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, commemorates the death of the beloved poet and scholar Qu Yuan in 278 BCE. The holiday interconnects the poignant tale of his demise, dragon boats, and zongzi, the traditional sticky rice dumplings associated with the event; in 2023, the date corresponds to June 22. Swipe ⬅ Zongzi (aka joong in Cantonese) are fashioned from sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and shaped into triangular semi-pyramids tied with twine. At your local dim sum parlor, you might see sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves but those are Lo Mai Gai, usually rectangular or pillow shaped and featuring chicken – different but also delicious. Swipe ⬅ They’re made with an array of fillings, some sweet, some savory, and the particular flavor distinctions vary throughout regions of China and elsewhere in Asia. Here in New York City, it’s easy to find savory versions packed with peanuts, pork belly, lap cheong (Chinese sausage), ham, salted duck egg, dried shrimp, mushrooms and more in various permutations and combinations; they’re available year round in any of our nine Chinatowns. (Yes, nine. We are blessed.) Sweet types include red dates and sweet bean paste. For best results, steam them first, then snip off the twine, unfold the leaves, and dig in. This one has all of the savory ingredients I mentioned (you can play Where’s Waldo with it if you like); it came from M&W Bakery, 85A Bayard St in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where they offer at least five varieties. And yes, of course that’s one of the stops on my Manhattan Chinatown ethnojunket! To learn more about my food tours, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

🇻🇳 It seems that Bánh Mì, the deservedly vaunted Vietnamese sandwich, is ubiquitous these days. In the past I loved them, but lately it feels like the thrill is gone. Have I gone off my feed on these beauties? I vividly remember the bánh mì I once craved. What happened? So I decided to return to a place that I used to visit frequently about 20 years ago, before bánh mì eateries were as common as taco joints: Bà Xuyến at 4222 8th Ave in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. For old times’ sake, I got a Bánh Mì Thịt Nguội, the Combination Number 1, in an attempt to try figure out why my tastes had changed so radically. Turns out my tastes have not changed. Not in the least. The Number One was still number one. But the pervasive copycats have been ruining it for everyone. And we’ve become inured to their (IMHO lackluster) product. I’ve even heard a few foodies applaud the bánh mì from some of those wannabes. For starters, using the right bread is crucial. A Vietnamese baguette is paramount, as opposed to a hero roll you could pick up in the bakery department of your local supermart. They’re made with a combination of wheat flour and rice flour – for that initial crunch and subsequent crackle. It should be toasted, slightly sweet, sturdy enough to stand up to its fillings but still airy, fluffy and a little chewy, with a crust that’s crisp but not so inflexible as to declare war on the roof of your mouth. Now for the fillings. Pay attention, impostors: it’s more than just a few slices of Vietnamese cold cuts and some shredded veggies. For the classic, Bà Xuyến’s sine qua non condiment is a blend of Vietnamese pâté and melted butter (and probably some Maggi seasoning) slathered on the bread before loading it with ham, head cheese, pork roll, pork teriyaki and BBQ pork, and finally topping it with sliced cucumber, perfectly pickled carrots and daikon radish plus cilantro and spicy green pepper. My two cents. Sorry, not sorry. Marvin and Tammi said it best: Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby!

🇺🇸 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: There’s the Beef! (The answer to Clara Peller's question – IYKYK) I recently attended an outdoor family gathering where grilling was the order of the happy day. An abundance of spectacular homemade dishes (“appetizers” falls far short of reality) was available well before the meat was ready and I wasn’t shy about sampling all of them. More than once. (No photos, but it gave new meaning to the term groaning board.) Needless to say, by the time the steaks came off the grill, my capacity had been pretty much maxed out and after a couple of bites, I knew my appetite had met its Waterloo. Now, when you have a chunk of perfectly grilled ribeye posing fetchingly on your plate, you don’t cast a longing glance over your shoulder as you walk off; you ask the host if you can bring it home in service of prolonging the ecstasy. How to do it justice the next day? Start with a warm baguette, layer with arugula, bacon, and ripe tomato, then thin slices of ribeye bathed in melted truffle garlic butter, and top with Cabot white cheddar cheese. Cavatappi macaroni salad on the side. Definitely not your mama’s steak sammich.

🇮🇹 There are few things about which I am a purist. (One is not ending a sentence with a preposition. See first sentence.) Another is the pronunciation of the versatile and much beloved fresh pasta filata cheese, mozzarella. Now, I’m not advocating that we all embrace the charming Sicilian-American argot, “mootzadell” like the neighborhood paisans I remember affectionately from my yout – er, youth. That’s a long ō in there. Mozzarella rhymes with “Totes umbrella”. “Matzarella” just cheeses me off. To my ears that sounds like a diminutive female Jewish cracker. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to the real subject of this post. MozzLab at 502 Henry St, Brooklyn, is a contemporary cheese shop specializing in hand stretched mozzarella made fresh daily (along with its cousins, buffalo burrata, treccia and stracciatella) plus a few other cheeses as well as an array of Italian sandwiches incorporating them, a tempting selection of antipasti, and a mini Italian market. I had heard about their “Mozzarella Bagels”, a sandwich that includes prosciutto, speck (a type of cured, smoky ham), and mortadella in which bagel-shaped mozz stands in for the bread. I planned to get just the dairy part as a surprise for a vegetarian friend who loves mozzarella but the hitch was that they don’t sell the cheesy toroid by itself. I’m unsure why fulfilling the request was so daunting; I tried explaining what I wanted in English, then to the staff in my defective Spanish (hablaban español pero no inglés) and finally in fractured Italian to the owner (the Big Cheese?) who was adroitly stretching fresh mozz with great panache before my eyes. But when I referred to him as “Il Maestro”, he smiled and made a couple for me as a special order while I watched. The first photo shows what I did to mine when I got it home (those sandwiches looked too good); the second shows the plain unadorned version I gave to my friend. Everything I tasted from MozzLab was top quality and the atmosphere projected the warmth and camaraderie you’d hope for from a local business and its regulars. Kind of reminded me of the handful of Italian specialty shops from my neighborhood as a kid,

’Jever go to a sprawling Asian supermarket and load up a wagonful of ingredients in anticipation of a marathon of Chinese home cooking that portends hours in the kitchen but promises rewarding results, and then realize you don’t have any energy left to make something for yourself for that day because you’re exhausted from errand overload, so you trudge over to the freezer case and grab a package of frozen assorted dim sum figuring there’s absolutely no work involved – just steam the little bastards while you put away the real food? Don’t.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 It’s Pride Month 2023! And here’s my humble culinary contribution to the cause: the LGBTQ Sandwich! I created this tribute some years ago and now I share it annually. You all know the classic BLT, of course: Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato; those ingredients are all present and accounted for in the LGBTQ. The original BLT is typically dressed with mayonnaise but I upped the ante by using Guacamole instead of mayo and added a hint of sweetness with Quince paste (aka membrillo) to balance the touch of tart lime juice, aromatic onion and garlic, and spicy jalapeño pepper, my spin on guacamole. It’s served here on marble rye/pumpernickel bread so as to include swirling carbs of color but if I ever manage to locate bread that’s black, brown, and white, I’ll update my recipe and my photo. And for those who prefer the acronym LGBTQI, that’s Iceberg Lettuce in there! 😉 Swipe ⬅ Here’s another special treat I prepared to celebrate Pride Month: a rainbow bagel with mixed berry cream cheese and local (and by “local” I mean from a garden three blocks from my apartment) blackberries, pink champagne currants, and strawberries. Swipe ⬅ And finally, looking through my old photos for one more sweet way to celebrate Pride, here's a wedge of rainbow crepe cake from the now-closed Dek Sen, the Isaan Thai restaurant that had been an Elmhurst highlight. Happy Pride!

One of the stops on my Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen ethnojunket is Balady Foods, the recently expanded Middle Eastern market at 7128 5th Ave in Brooklyn. The array of treats pictured here includes soft, salty, squeaky Nabulsi cheese that hails from Palestine, electric magenta pickled turnips, foul mudammas (bean dip), Lebanese makdous (oil-cured eggplant stuffed with walnuts and red pepper), sucuk (the generic word for sausage found all across the Middle East) and several types of black olives all resting on a piece of msemen, flatbread from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). Many of these goodies came from Balady but other establishments are represented as well. And there’s so much more to taste on this food tour! Get the details on my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

🐟🥣 Nai Brother Sauerkraut Fish Chinese Sauerkraut Fish seems to be a “thing” these days. I don’t know if it’s a surge in popularity or just better marketing, but I’ve been spotting it more frequently lately, if perhaps under alternate nomenclature. Note that it bears no relation to the sauerkraut you get from the dirty-water-hot-dog cart stationed on every corner in Manhattan. This dish, Signature Spicy Pickled Fish, came from Booth 21 in Flushing’s New World Mall Food Court at 136-20 Roosevelt Ave. The soup, faintly oily in a good way, arrives brimming with hefty chunks of fish fillet, tofu, and pickled mustard greens along with an array of fresh vegetables. It’s kicked up with hot red peppers and Sichuan peppercorns and manages to balance spicy and sour. The vegetable contingent includes thin slices of potato, barely cooked and crisp, mature bean sprouts, cabbage, celery, and sundry other greens. White rice on the side to offset the sting. Nai Brother has partnered with YanYan Tea, also floating around Flushing, so there’s a wide selection of creative drinks available to cool your palate in case the soup turns out to be a bit spicier than you had anticipated.

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com Now Boarding! The Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen in Bay Ridge on May 20 at 1pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket to Bay Ridge for some amazing regional food from the Middle East – Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, plus Morocco, Greece, and Poland! An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still some openings available for our Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen ethnojunket on Saturday, May 20. The tour includes a veritable cornucopia of food (these six photos show some examples) so bring your appetite: you won’t leave hungry, and you will leave happy! For more information, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

On a recent Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst ethnojunket, I picked up some satisfying snacks at Yi Mei Bakery, 81-26 Broadway. A variation on classic char siu bao. There was a subtle sweetness to these Roast Pork Pastries, a perfect combination of thin slices of juicy char siu, flaky dough, and black and white sesame seeds. If you buy one to take home, definitely warm it up for maximum enjoyment. Swipe ⬅ The Meat Floss Cake was indeed cakey per its name: pillowy soft, savory and salty but also with a slight overtone of sweetness. Each cake was coated with meat floss and comprised two halves married by a thin layer of creamy custard (see last photo). If you’re unfamiliar with meat floss, meat (pork is common) is cooked in a sweetened, spiced mixture until it’s soft enough to be shredded and fried resulting in a final texture that’s fluffy and looks a bit like wool. It’s remarkably versatile and commonly used as a topping for rice or congee, as an ingredient for filling buns and pastries, or for just plain snackin’. You’ll see it in two similar variations at your local Asian supermarket, pork fu and pork sung, and based on my experience I think the shelf life is practically eternal. Want to know if these treats will be part of our Elmhurst food tour? Only one way to find out: check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Brobdingnagian Bargain Dining (See what I did there?) So progress continues at Elmhurst’s revivified HK Food Court but incrementally at best. They move things around as in a protracted game of chess and, with a few exceptions in the far right corner, I can’t really determine who the vendors are – or perhaps there’s only one, because the crew seems to wander freely among all of the stations. Each has some signage, but I’m not convinced that it corresponds to the contents of the steam tables beneath. None of which has anything to do with the food, of course. But I have stumbled upon two items worth considering. Casa Fried Chicken, when it’s staffed and when the chicken looks reasonably freshly fried, offers unreasonably inexpensive fare: wings are 4 for $2 and big honkin’ chicken parts are $1 each. The piece on this plate was about six inches wide and 2½ inches thick. “Is that a thigh?” I asked incredulously. She enclosed it in a wax paper bag and answered, “One dollar,” avoiding my question. At home, my autopsy revealed that it appeared to be a thigh somehow firmly affixed to a breast based on the color of the meat but not on the skeleton or any anatomy I was familiar with. It was agreeably seasoned though, and for the price it was a genuine bargain. The Fried Rice Noodles are flavored modestly, well lubricated, and possess the satisfyingly chewy texture of an archetypical comfort food. And I’m addicted to the stuff. You’re looking at roughly a quarter of the large size which weighed in at over 2½ lbs: $5.75. I’ve fallen into the habit of bringing one of these home every time I visit because since they’re delicious but not overpowering, they’re easy to tinker with by adding other ingredients (meat, fish, veggies, etc.) and enhancing the seasoning appropriately thus creating something you didn’t dine on the day before while staying well within your budget. This meal cost about $2.50. The remarkable feature of these noodz is that they are enormous! I’ve unfurled one in the second photo; it measures about 7½ x 5 inches and that’s not the largest of the lot. I see a fusion Chinese Lasagna in my future.

🥟 🥟 🥟 As I was hungrily exiting Jmart in Flushing’s New World Mall via the down escalator to the Main Street side, I spotted an array of dim sum on my right and a selection of Chinese roast meats near the window that overlooks the sidewalk. (My version of serendipity.) Peering a bit further in, I noticed a steam table array (the typical 4 dishes + soup + rice) and a small sign that read “Royal Queen”. Now, Royal Queen restaurant on the third floor of the complex has been around for a while, but this crowded niche was new to me. I pointed to a trio of crispy fried shrimp dumplings and brought my booty downstairs to the food court. Swipe ⬅ Each dumpling contained at least one whole shrimp and then some; no ground paste to be found – just deliciousness beyond my expectations. Swipe ⬅ Here’s how the window looked from the sidewalk on Main Street; it’s directly across from Mickey D’s as you can probably tell. 😉

🇲🇽 Cinco de Mayo falls on May 5 this year. (Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.) And over the years, particularly during the height of COVID, I've played around with a lot of Mexican home cooking – surely not authentic, but certainly yummy. Here are a few examples: Chicken Mole. Shredded chicken, sautéed onions and the like combined with a packet of Mole Rojo Oaxaqueño (took the easy way out that time) topped with some crema Mexicana. (Check out the post that I wrote back in 2021 about the subtle differences among commercially available Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran cremas – link in bio; search Cremature Judgment). In the back, rice cooked in chicken broth along with onion, garlic, red bell pepper and achiote for color; freshly grated cotija cheese sprinkled on top. On the side, black beans, corn, and jalapeños with red pepper, onion, garlic and spices including Mexican oregano and Tajín. Swipe ⬅ And what did I do with the leftovers? ¡Las quesadillas estaban deliciosas! For a side dish, I made esquites, the Mexican street food favorite: grilled corn with garlic, jalapeños, scallions, cilantro, crema and lime juice topped with crumbled cotija cheese and Tajín. Swipe ⬅ On another occasion, I was jonesing for fish tacos and it wasn’t even the officially sanctioned “el martes”. Besides, it gave me an excuse to break out the comal and make salsa cruda. There’s nothing auténtico about these, but they were a cinch to prepare. Pan seared fish, cut into chunks and set into a taco shell along with avocado, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, and a bit of crema, all awaiting some homemade salsa to do the heavy flavor lifting. Swipe ⬅ The salsa cruda started by charring white onion, tomatillos, tomato, and jalapeño on a comal – shown here mid-blister. Added rehydrated dried ancho and chipotle chilies, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, olive oil, salt, and a pinch of cumin and Mexican oregano. I chopped it all by hand because a blender or food processor creates a thin salsa which is fine but I prefer some crunch. Swipe ⬅ The finished product. And last but not least... Swipe ⬅ ...guacamole! . . ¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com Now Boarding! Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst Ethnojunket on May 5 at 1pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket to Elmhurst for some amazing regional food from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and parts of China. An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still a few openings available for our Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst Ethnojunket on Friday, May 5. The tour includes a veritable cornucopia of food (these six photos show some examples) so bring your appetite: you won’t leave hungry, and you will leave happy! For more information, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com Now Boarding! The Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen in Bay Ridge on April 30 at 1pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket – this time to Bay Ridge for some amazing regional food from the Middle East – Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, plus Morocco, Greece, Mexico, and Poland! An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still a few openings available for our Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen ethnojunket on Sunday, April 30. The tour includes a veritable cornucopia of food (these six photos show some examples) so bring your appetite: you won’t leave hungry, and you will leave happy! For more information, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com Now Boarding! Little Odessa Ethnojunket on April 25 at 1pm! Here’s another chance to take part in a scheduled ethnojunket to Brooklyn’s Little Odessa for some delicious Russian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Uyghur, Turkish, Uzbek, and Ukrainian food! An ethnojunket is a food-focused walking tour through one of New York City’s many ethnic enclaves; my mission is to introduce you to some delicious, accessible, international treats (hence, “ethno-”) that you’ve never tasted but soon will never be able to live without (hence, “-junkie”). My most popular tours are described on the Ethnojunkets page on my website but there are always new ones in the works. A scheduled ethnojunket is one which is about to happen soon. Generally, I try to keep the group to a maximum of six people or so; it’s a comfortable size: larger groups tend to get impersonal and less participatory. But occasionally, only one or two people have signed up for an ethnojunket – and when it comes to food tastings, the more participants, the greater the opportunity to taste more dishes! So when that happens, I announce it in the “Now Boarding” section of the Ethnojunkets page. Subscribers always get email notifications about these. And this is one of those occasions! There are still a few openings available for our Little Odessa ethnojunket on Tuesday, April 25. The tour includes a veritable cornucopia of food (these six photos show some examples) so bring your appetite: you won’t leave hungry, and you will leave happy! For more information, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast, is the Muslim holiday that signifies the conclusion of month-long Ramadan; in 2023, it begins on the evening of April 20. Ma’amoul are shortbread cookies filled with a paste made from dried fruit, often dates but sometimes figs, or nuts, such as walnuts or pistachios; they’re frequently associated with Ramadan but fortunately are available year round. Paradise Sweets, the Middle Eastern bakery at 6739 5th Ave in Brooklyn, was offering three kinds the day I stopped by: clockwise from left, pistachio, walnut and date. Swipe ⬅ Can a cookie actually melt in your mouth? These were wonderfully fragile, disintegrating into a crumbly powder like a Mexican polvoron: you’ll start with a bite, but you’ll want to finish with a spoon. For those who don’t care for uber-sugary cookies, the good news is that this version is not especially sweet; I discovered that the flavor seems to blossom in the company of a hot beverage – tea or Arabic coffee would be perfect. Swipe ⬅ Some of the smaller markets along the way were offering prepackaged ma’amoul like this one from Pâtisserie Safa, a Montreal based company. Its structural integrity was sturdier than the freshly baked specimens and the cookie was surprisingly tasty. Both the dough and the filling were significantly sweeter than the locally crafted examples and I detected a welcome note of orange blossom water that enhanced its flavor profile. Swipe ⬅ Another survivor of the pandemic is the stalwart bakery Nablus Sweets at 6812 5th Ave. These are Qatayef (aka Atayef), made only during Ramadan and especially for Eid al-Fitr; they're often sold by street vendors in the Middle East. They start out with a batter akin to that of pancakes but they’re griddled on only one side, then they're filled with white cheese or nuts, folded into a crescent, fried or baked, and soaked in sweet rose water syrup. Swipe ⬅ This pair enclosed a syrupy chopped nut filling. . . And there are still some openings on my Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen ethnojunket in Bay Ridge on April 30! Get the details on my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

🇬🇪 🇹🇷 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: Battle of the Cheezy Noodz I’ve said it before: any region whose cuisine includes both dough and cheese has a signature dish that layers them in a delectable baked creation. Sometimes that dough is leavened and baked into bread, sometimes it’s dried and boiled into noodles – an oversimplification, I know, but you get the idea. At its most fundamental, Noodles and Cheese, unadorned with sauce, meat, or veggies, is at once down-to-earth gratification and elegant-in-its-simplicity indulgence. (Ashkenazi Jews will immediately home in on Lokshen mit Kaese.) On a recent “Exploring Eastern European Food in Little Odessa” food tour, I decided to do a comparison of two examples, achma from Georgia and su böreği from Turkey. Interestingly, but unsurprisingly when you think about it, achma is considered a member of the khachapuri family (Georgian breads) and su böreği belongs to the borek clan (stuffed filo pastry). Most recipes for these call for a combination of two compatible cheeses: a salty, crumbly type like feta plus a soft, springy variety like mozzarella. You’ll see imeruli and sulguni in Georgia and beyaz peynir or künefe peyniri in Turkey, for example. Essential features for any of these treats are a crispy crust enclosing soft noodles and melty, slightly salty cheese. I purchased a slice of each from two different markets and brought them over to the boardwalk for an A/B comparison. [1] The Georgian Achma [2] The Turkish Su Böreği Want to know more about them? Which one prevailed? I’ll tell all when you join me on my Exploring Eastern European Food in Little Odessa ethnojunket! There are still some openings on my April 25 tour. Get the details on my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

Since food tour season is in full flower and there are some new businesses in the neighborhood, I decided to revamp my Middle Eastern Bay Ridge ethnojunket, “The Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen.” Did you know that Bay Ridge and Beirut are cognates? Just kidding. One of the treats along the route is sellou (سلّو, aka sfouf or zmita), a unique unbaked Moroccan sweet made from toasted flour and ground almonds, sesame seeds, sugar or honey, cinnamon, and anise; as you’d expect, recipes vary from family to family. At Nablus Sweets, 6812 5th Ave, Brooklyn, I spotted a huge brown mountain of it and purchased a small knoll, broken here into two little hillocks. It’s soft in texture, somewhere along the cookie<–>brownie continuum but drier, crumbly but crunchy from nuts – just break off a chunk and enjoy, perhaps with a cup of tea. If your knowledge of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean sweets is informed primarily by honey drenched baklava and knafeh, give this one a try (available particularly around Ramadan); I highly recommend it. There are still some openings on my Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen ethnojunket in Bay Ridge on April 30! Get the details on my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

Most holidays come equipped with delectable, traditional foods and Orthodox Easter on 4/16 this year is no exception. According to Wikipedia, the Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is the second largest Christian church with approximately 220 million baptized members. The majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians live mainly in Southeast and Eastern Europe, Cyprus, Georgia and other communities in the Caucasus region, and in Siberia reaching the Russian Far East. Each region has its own distinctive, specialty baked goods that are prepared in celebration of the holiday. Many are sweet breads called pascha (or some variant), from Greek/Latin meaning Easter, and ultimately from Aramaic/Hebrew meaning Passover. ⬅ If you go out in search of pascha, you’ll discover vastly divergent varieties depending upon the heritage of the bakery you land on. Polish versions I’ve sampled are puffy, yeasty, a little sweet and are designed to be pulled apart and shared at the table. Some other Eastern European and Russian styles are more like a cheese-filled bread, with veins of sweet, white dairy goodness running throughout. This photo was taken surreptitiously in a Russian market. Shhh! ⬅ This is Romanian pască. It is unique (at least in my experience) and undeniably stellar. This dense delight, about nine inches in diameter, is actually a two-layered affair, with a rich topping/filling that is virtually a raisin-studded, hyper-creamy manifestation of cheesecake that sits atop a sweet cake-like bread; the religious theme is easily recognizable. ⬅ In Brooklyn’s Little Odessa, it seemed that every market was selling kulich, a Slavic Orthodox Easter bread. Not as sweet as pascha, it’s always dressed with a snow-white sugar-glazed cap and colorful sprinkles. The Ukrainian legend reads куліч (cake) пасхальний (paschal) and around the beltline з великоднем (Happy Easter) христос воскрес (Christ is risen). And at Orthodox Easter this year especially, as the deplorable, inhumane Russian invasion of Ukraine still rages, our thoughts and hearts are with the heroic, resilient, brave, beautiful people of Ukraine. We are all Ukrainians now. 🇺🇦 💙💛

🇪🇬 Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: This is Om Ali (you might see umm ali), أم على. The phrase translates as “Ali’s mother” and of course, fables abound as to its name. Essentially Egypt’s answer to bread pudding (only better if you ask me), it’s made with phyllo dough, milk (and occasionally, richer dairy considerations) and sugar, sometimes elevated with raisins, nuts, and cinnamon. There are legions of recipes for this traditional Ramadan treat; the day I tried it in a restaurant that has since closed, my delightful version came with sour cream and ground nuts on the side for garnish, ad libitum. I understand that a rendition is available in Astoria’s Little Egypt but I haven’t been back there for a while; report TK.

✡️ 🇫🇷 Passover is upon us and folks are enjoying a special traditional holiday treat, the macaroon. Or is it a macaron? There seems to be some confusion regarding these two very dissimilar cookies with very similar names, but oh, what a difference an O makes. Let’s get the pronunciations out of the way first: macaroon rhymes with “black balloon” and if you honk the final syllable of macaron through your nez, you’ll nail the proper French pronunciation of that one. But is this just some culinary coincidence? . . . Read about these sweet confections and learn why there’s a conflation conflagration! Check out the Complete and Uncut story on ethnojunkie.com – “Macaroons and Macarons: So Close and Yet So Far”. (Link in profile.)

🇮🇹 🥧 If you follow me, you know that I’m a sucker for international holiday foods, sweet treats in particular. And since I live from holiday to holiday (hey, whatever works, right?), I always look forward to Easter for traditional Neapolitan Grain Pie. For starters, don’t be deterred by its name in English; I suspect “Pastiera Napoletana” has a more agreeable ring to it. The aforementioned grains are wheat berries, and their presence is no more unusual than grains of rice in rice pudding. They’re embedded in a sweet ricotta/custard cream infused with orange blossom water and augmented by bits of candied orange peel and citron along with a touch of cinnamon; the heady aroma of orange and lemon is key to its success. The rich filling is swaddled in a delicate, crumbly shortcrust shell. This example came from Court Pastry Shop, 298 Court St in Brooklyn; I’ve written at least three posts about them on my website (link in profile) – they’re that good. Per favore, if you have a solid Italian bakery nearby or even a bit of a walk away (think of the calories you’ll burn!), head out there and try this delicacy for yourself while the season is still upon us. Grazie!

🥚 🐤 🥚 🐤 🥚 🐤 🥚 🐤 Since I love to put my own spin on holiday dishes, here’s how I do deviled eggs for Easter. More holiday posts coming up.... Happy Easter, everybody!

🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️ Two notable celebrations of the season, Easter and Passover, are concurrent this year. It’s no coincidence that the Italian word for Easter (pasqua) and the Hebrew word for Passover (pesach) are closely related, although culinarily the holidays couldn’t be more disparate. During this time of year, Jewish families are expunging their homes of even the most minuscule crumb of anything leavened, and Italians are baking Easter breads like they’re going out of style. Italy’s traditional seasonal bread is La Colomba di Pasqua (“The Easter Dove”), and it is essentially Lombardy’s Eastertime answer to Milan’s Christmastime panettone. These deliciously sweet, cakey breads, in some ways Italy’s gift to coffeecake but so much better, are fundamentally the same except for two significant distinctions: the colomba is baked in the shape of the iconic dove that symbolizes both the resurrection and peace, and the recipes diverge with the colomba’s dense topping of almonds and crunchy pearl sugar glaze. Traditionally, a colomba lacks raisins, favoring only candied orange or citron peel, but as with panettone, fanciful flavors (including some with raisins) proliferate. The first photo shows a colomba in all its avian splendor. Frankly, I think it’s a leap of faith to discern a dove in there, but if you can detect one, you may have just performed your own miracle. Swipe ⬅ Hard pressed to see the dove? Fret not, for this photo has the cake turned upside down so the columbine form is somewhat more evident. Swipe ⬅ The third photo depicts a version that features bits of chocolate and dried peaches within and crunchy crushed amaretto cookies atop. Just wondering: There’s no debate that American kids bite the ears off their chocolate Easter bunnies first. Do you suppose that Italian children start with the head, tail, or wings of the colomba?

✡️ Previously on ethnojunkie.com, I did a springtime post that included a story about someone who dared me to come up with an ethnic fusion Passover menu. I wrote: ..................... Well, far be it from me to dodge a culinary challenge! So although obviously inauthentic, but certainly fun and yummy, here’s to a Sazón Pesach! Picante Gefilte Pescado Masa Ball Posole Brisket Mole Poblano Potato Kugel Maple Chipotle Carrot Tzimmes Guacamole spiked with Horseradish Charoset with Pepitas and Tamarindo And, of course, the ever popular Manischewitz Sangria! ..................... It was all in good fun, of course, but it got me thinking about actually creating a Jewish-Mexican fusion recipe. It isn’t strictly Kosher for Passover, but I thought the concept was worth a try. So here is my latest crack at cross cultural cooking: Masa Brei! Now you might know that Matzo Brei (literally “fried matzo”) is a truly tasty dish consisting of matzos broken into pieces that are soaked briefly in warm milk (some folks use water), drained, soaked in beaten eggs until soft, then fried in copious quantities of butter. Typically served with sour cream and applesauce, it’s heimische cooking, Jewish soul food, at its finest and it’s easy to do. So I thought it might be worth a try to swap out the matzos for tostadas, the milk for horchata, the sour cream for crema, and the applesauce for homemade pineapple-jalapeño salsa. A sprinkle of tajín, a scatter of chopped cilantro – and it actually worked! Happy Passover! !חג פסח שמח

Today’s post from ethnojunkie.com: White Rabbit Ice Cream! My first taste of Chinese candy came about when I was a kid; it was so very long ago that I can’t even remember which Dynasty it was. The novel confection was White Rabbit, a chewy, creamy, milk-based taffy (although technically, it’s toffee because it contains dairy) and it’s a godsend to dentists world-wide. Swipe ⬅ Years later, when boba drinks were just becoming the rage in Chinatown and the line for the solitary Tiger Sugar in Flushing coiled around the block, an enterprising challenger, With Sugar and Tea (long gone but not forgotten), opened up nearby. The flavor of its signature drink boasted spot-on doppelganger rabbitude. Swipe ⬅ Three’s the charm, of course, and the ultimate rabbit out of a hat trick is this White Rabbit ice cream that I stumbled upon recently in SF Supermarket when I was prepping the 2023 version of my Elmhurst ethnojunket. It sports an ingenious lid that conceals a handy spoon and it definitely tastes like the real deal. Swipe ⬅ Which naturally raises the question (especially since this is the Year of the Rabbit) will we sample this delicacy on my Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst ethnojunket? Only one way to find out: check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!

As I indicated in my last post, some additional vendors have emerged at the new incarnation of Hong Kong Food Court (82-02 45th Ave in Elmhurst) and it’s my self-imposed duty to keep you informed about them! I was encouraged to find a Burmese stall, Thar Gi, with a menu of about eight items including this Burmese Thick Noodle Chicken Salad. Swipe ⬅ In addition to their standard menu, there’s a display case featuring a selection of dishes, mostly curries with various proteins and the same sauce, targeted for heating up at home. I asked if they could heat one up for me and this is their Beef Curry. They didn’t have rice. Go figure. I’ve enjoyed a great deal of Burmese food over the years – even prepared some myself – and I’ve always been a stalwart fan. I was hoping for a little more personality from these two dishes. We’ll see if anything changes as they settle in. Swipe ⬅ And here’s one more from Lan Zhou Ramen, highlighted in my last post: Cumin Lamb Burger. Definitely tasty and on the Ethnic Eats in Elmhurst ethnojunket. To learn more about my food tours, please check out my Ethnojunkets page – link in profile – and sign up to join in the fun!