On what ingredients I bought let loose in an Asian supermarket.

My favourite Korean staples, probably the most controversial ingredient in Indian cooking & the candies I always buy at the Asian grocery store.

Today, join me on a post-Christmas, pre-New Year shopping trip around one of the best Asian supermarkets I’ve ever encountered, where I explain why each item ended up in my shopping basket, and why they are ingredients I’m excited to cook with / I think you should be cooking with too.

Rest assured, I’m working hard on the first few bits of regular content of 2023: my January ingredient essay + recipes are in production, and I’m working on putting my finishing touches to my first paid-subscriber-only Kitchen Cupboards interview of the year, too. To make sure you don’t miss out, sign up here:

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It started with an offer from J’s parents to take me to a big Asian supermarket off the A1 they’d been telling me about over dinner the night before whilst we were out sourcing ingredients to make dinner, finding, as so is often the case over the festive period that the fridge was packed full of food… but not all that much to make an actual meal with.

What I found on arriving at the Bedford branch of Central Oriental Superstore was one of the most exciting things that had happened to me all break: a more comprehensive selection than anything I could find in the two small stores I frequent in Canterbury (though I have heard an industrial estate-sized Starry Mart¹ has opened?), and which was also much easier to browse (and carry things home from) than a visit to London’s Chinatown.

So, in the spirit of the 2010’s era lifestyle blogger I once was, here are all the ingredients I grabbed on my way around Central Oriental Superstore, and why:

Seedless Tamarind Pulp

I received a copy of Hoppers: The Cookbook (ad) for Christmas after loving dinner at their Soho restaurant when we finally managed to snag a table in October and there is so much Sri Lankan food in there I can’t wait to make - I’ve already made the Devilled Chicken this week which was as unusual as it was delicious, and the Yellow Rice, which I’ve instantly added to our rotation.

Whilst I still need to hunt down some pandan leaves for the freezer as they appear in so many of the recipes (annoyingly they had just one pack, but someone had left them out the fridge on a counter and they looked less than happy) I did grab a block of seedless tamarind as the book does make it clear it is so much better for authentic Sri Lankan cooking than the pre-made paste I usually cook with. I opted for seedless, as the instructions for prepping seeded pulp at the front of the book had extra steps!

Lee Kum Kee Premium Dark Soy Sauce

My preferred brand of all-round soy sauce for most applications, I always try to buy big bottles in Asian supermarkets as it usually costs more for much smaller bottles in the regular supermarket.

100% Pure Mustard Oil

Common in regional Indian cooking, especially in making pickles, mustard oil is the oil extracted from black mustard seeds; it is bright, pungent, tastes a bit like horseradish, and is a very, very controversial foodstuff. This bottle, like many, is marked for external use, meant to be a cosmetic, not a food, because many Western health authorities don’t think it is safe to eat. Nik Sharma has the best article explaining all of this over at Serious Eats.

But, I have a few achar recipes that call for it that I want to taste authentic. Hence, why I snagged a bottle when I finally saw it in the wild to see what difference it makes to my cooking.

Mae Ploy Massaman Curry Paste

Massaman is J’s favourite, and mine if I can order one without whole peanuts in the broth (loathe the things), but every paste we’ve tried so far either Thai or Western-made has been terrible and tasted nothing like the real deal. So, obviously, when J spied one we’d not tried into the basket it went.

Making a chicken massaman for his parents later that night I found this was the best paste we’d tried yet: the flavour was right, though I think they went a bit heavy on the dried shrimp in the mix, though I don’t know if this is because every version I’ve tried has toned this flavour down for a Western market? Guidance on a postcard would be much appreciated, thank you!

Bonito Flakes

Dried smoked fish flakes, I’m usually served these at Happy Samurai, one of my favourite Japanese restaurants in Canterbury and also my favourite place outside of London to order sushi. They're usually found curling at any slight breeze (they're that light and wispy) alongside a generous squidge of Kewpie mayonnaise² atop their excellent Okonomiyaki. I’m looking forward to using them to finish and add a touch more unami to bowls of anything even vaguely Japanese in persuasion.

Sweet Potato Vermicelli

I’ve kept failing to buy these for years to make a specific sweet potato noodle dish with pork and black bean sauce in Koreatown: A Cookbook (ad), either because when I go looking for them none of the words on the noodle pack are in English (and having never cooked with them I can’t tell them from sight) or because when I’m ordering online I keep forgetting. I’m very excited to try these noodles now, because the last time I tried to substitute normal noodles for a dish in the book it ended rather badly.

Gochujang

As the topic of my first ever ingredient newsletter, it is no secret that this thick, sweet, brick red Korean chilli paste is one of my fridge essentials, perfect for making Korean Fried Chicken, Dakdoritang (a Korean chicken and potato stew I simply adore), to use as the base for Kimchee Fried Rice, or even to add a subtle, spicy kick to a meat-and-tomato pasta sauce.

I’m not picky about what brand I buy as long as it is a Korean one in a tub, not a Western version in a jar. I’m excited about this one as it is much bigger than my usual tub; I could have gone bigger, but it both becomes spicier but also becomes less sweet and nuanced once opened over time in the fridge.

Korean Rice Cakes

Long, chewy, toothsome, tubular Korean rice cakes are one of my all time favourite foods, even if I don’t get to enjoy them that often. They’re most commonly cooked into Tteokbokki, a dish where they’re simmered in a spicy (seriously the one at Kimchee in Kings Cross is one of the spiciest Korean dishes I’ve ever eaten) gochujang-based sauce with spring onions and ribbon-like fish cakes which is usually how I prepare them, though they’re excellent crisped up and coated with honey and soy sauce too.

You can find my Tteokbokki recipe in One Pan Pescatarian (ad), if you’ve got a copy: I’ve made mine vegan, as the right fishcakes for this are so tricky to get a hold of.

Thai Sweet Chilli Dipping Sauce

This was one of J’s additions to the basket, as he’s not a fan of the locally made one I buy as it is a bit too runny for him as it is made without stabilisers. I don’t know what the brand is as I can’t read most of the bottle, but this one has an extra tang to it than you’d expect from a Western-designed supermarket brand. Jury is still out on if we’ll be getting this one again.

Coconut Cream Powder

Whilst it lasts forever in the can, coconut milk - especially the additive free brand I buy - goes off quickly in the fridge, even stashed in a sterilised jar. Coconut cream, or coconut milk powder is an excellent way to avoid this as you can just mix up what you need, but not something I often see for sale outside of specialised stores.

Boro Coconut Cookies

These looked fun, and for 95p why the hell not? They turned out to be curious, made with tapioca flour they were rather powdery whilst still crunchy in texture, but with a good coconut flavour. I’ll not be buying them again, but equally, I can’t seem to stop eating them.

Red Bean White Rabbit Candies

When I was at school these iconic Chinese candies had an almost cult-like status and were hot currency, even once we discovered you did not have to barter with the international students for them, and that they could easily be obtained in the old-fashioned Chinese grocery which stood underneath what is now a Sainsbury’s local up by the train station. White Rabbit’s are relatively soft milk candies, each individually wrapped in white, red and blue paper, and then again wrapped in a piece of rice paper. Needless to say they’re stupidly addictive, and whilst I now have more self control than to buy them every time I see them, I’ve never seen red bean flavour before. I adore red bean anything in Asian sweets and desserts, so I’m excited to try these!

Jasmine Tea

I start every day with a cup of Jasmine Tea - green tea scented with Jasmine blossoms, made by picking unopened blossoms in the morning, before blending or layering them with green tea so that the flavour infuses when they open at night - and whilst my preferred brand is Dragonfly Tea, I do like to try different brands. This was disappointing though, a weaker green tea than I’m used to with only a hint of jasmine.

Hello Panda Biscuits

A favourite snack of mine for as long as I can remember, and J’s as soon as I started dragging him into the Asian supermarket on the walk between where we were each living in London when we first started dating. The matcha-filled biscuits are my favourite, the chocolate ones his, but he tried the chocolate filled chocolate biscuit ones for the first time this time and he much prefers them! Strawberry are good, too!

1. A rather excellent online resource for ordering imported Asian food items here in the UK.

2. A delicious Japanese mayonnaise made with only egg yolks and rice wine vinegar, rather than the whole egg and spirit vinegar. Oh, and a healthy dose of MSG. It is slightly sweeter, and a lot more savoury than Western mayonnaise, and is preferred in our house; dedicated mayo hater J adores the stuff.