Your Local Creepy Asian Market

If you like trying different kinds of foods, I recommend finding an Asian market nearby. My local Asian market is fortunately only about a mile away from me, and it's enormous. Not surprisingly, it's got a very clever and interesting name: Grand Asia Market. The place is huge. It's the size of a regular grocery store, but there's nothing regular about this one. It's an experience every time. There are aisles and aisles of foods that I have no idea what they are, all the writing is in Chinese, no one speaks English, the smells are downright terrifying, and the prices....fantastic!

I thought I was aware of what most vegetables were until I strolled through the produce section...anyone know what the hell a garanga is? If you are a serious carnivore, they've got just about every organ from every animal you can think of....livers, feet, gizzards, kidneys, frozen blood, intestines, and I even found pork uterus. What someone does with that I have no idea. Given that we are below the Mason Dixon, my guess would be deep fry it, throw in a side cup of ranch, and serve it to hungry rednecks.

I like to go into this place with an idea of what I'm shooting for, because after about 15 minutes the smell starts to get to you. They have about 15 different kinds of whole fish out on ice, octopus, crabs and even live tilapia and trout. It smells like a fish market. Not only do they have durian fruits, but they even have durian fruit flavored popsicles. Take a minute to google a durian fruit - you'll find plenty of videos of people trying to eat them, some vomiting before it even hits their lips. I want to try one, but I won't go it alone. Let me know if you're down and I'll pick one up. My favorite line from the wikipedia article on durian fruit is:

"... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia."

Anyway, they've got nori sheets, 5-10lb bags of sushi rice, and just about anything else you could think of to make sushi rolls, including the bamboo mats. The picture quality sucks because I didn't care how everything looked on the plate and it was taken with Jensen's Blackberry, but it sure tastes good, and for about $12 I made somewhere around 7-8 rolls. This one was mostly tuna, avocado, and cucumber, with different sauces.

Quail eggs on top? Sure, they've got them too.

A computer-printed label above the tuna steaks says "sashimi grade" in parenthesis, so who knows if it's really sashimi grade. We've been doing this for a few years now though and people only got sick once, so I can't say I'm too worried about it.