Found a New Adventure

I love cooking, I'm pretty good at it too. I'm always eager to try new things.The problem is finding new unusual ingredients. The wife and I found a new grocery store today, called Eurofresh Market. It beats the Middle Eastern/Polish place on 95th and Harlem that sells whole goat and sheeps heads. This place was huge and had everything! (I'm going to ramble, so hold on) They had fresh sugarcane (chewing on a piece now) unusual veggies from all over the place like bitter melon, yard long beans, chive flowers, cactus pads, 3 or 4 kinds of bananas and plantains, an entire section for unusual peppers. Bakery was huge, with everything from baklavah and hamentaschen, to kringles and cannolli. The meat dept had lots of fish, including skate and saltcod.They also had flank steak, rabbit, lots of lamb, including kidney, hearts and fresh tongue, and packages of chicken feet of all things. Next time I fire up the smoker, I know where to go for whole pork shoulder! They had an entire cooler section of stinky, smoked, salted or canned fish (I love stinky fish) Many of the aisles were filled with Polish, German, Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, or Italian products (we got 3 foot long squid ink noodles). Some of the Eastern European stuff I couldn't identify even after looking at the package. I got about 5% of what I want to try.

I'm looking through a German cookbook now, hasenpfeffer, beef tongue with various sauces, skewered lamb kidneys, dozens of sausages from scratch. I still don't know what the hell anyone does with chicken feet...I'll try Chinese for that.

BTW, tonight we used eye of round to make medium rare roast beef. The drippings were made into a gravy with a roux and beef boullion, baked potatoes and steamed broccoli. (20 minutes of prep followed by 2 hours watching T.V. and waiting)... Supper only cost us about 14 bucks. I'll post the recipe if anyone wants. Why people think home cooking is hard, and choose to live on frozen pizza and bologna I'll never know....