The adventurous will browse the aisles for duck tongues and kielbasa, others will go for the big bottles of soy and giant tubs of tahini – everyone will be keen on the prices
THERE IS NO denying it, supermarket shopping isn’t much fun. Nobody is ever going to argue that stocking up on bleach, kitchen towels and two-for-one microwave dinners is a caper-filled adventure but, seriously, do our supermarkets really have to go out of their way to be uniformly sterile?
There’s the sameness of layout in the dreary aisles of identikit readymeals. Add to the mix a soupçon of guilt because you’re not supporting small, local businesses in your quest for the cheapest cartons of orange juice, and a drizzle of resentment because you know the psychological tactics they employ to make you spend – most expensive products at eye-level; fruit and veg to the front of the store so that you purchase your “healthy” foods first, alcohol at the back. Then there’s the inevitability that you’ll probably mess up at the self-service till and have to call for assistance. All-in-all it is an enervating affair.
Visit some of the ethnic shops that have sprung up in Irish towns and cities over the last decade, and potentially, more exciting times await, especially for the culinary adventurous.
Asian stores have the longest presence here but whether it’s yams and plantain crisps in Afro-Caribbean shops; pierogi (dumplings) and kielbasa sausages in eastern European ones, or Middle Eastern offerings such as tahini paste and baklava, the makings of most global dishes are now readily available.
Well-travelled Irish people who want to recreate their holiday dishes at home and foodies inspired by the latest Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook know to head straight to these stores. But they’re also a favourite haunt of anyone on a budget as these are the places to go to if you want to stock up on industrial-sized bottles of soy and sweet chilli sauces, fresh and dried herbs and spices, as well as noodles and rice. Often you can get this stuff at a much lower price than you’ll find in your average supermarket, although this is not a given, as our price comparison shows.
Asia Market is one of the longest established retailers and wholesalers of Asian food in Ireland, supplying products to restaurants, shops and takeaways around the country. At its shop on Drury Street in central Dublin you can pick up everything from fresh Irish lobster to sushi rolling mats.
When it first started trading in 1981, the city’s Chinese community was small but it has increased substantially in the past 10 years and the shop also carries products from Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.
So why are products, such as soy sauce and rice so cheap? Asia Market’s Eva Pau says it’s because these are key ingredients in Asian cuisine and also because they have 30 years’ experience in the trade. “When I go into other supermarkets and see soy or chilli sauce, I’m just shocked by the small bottles they come in and how expensive they are. In Chinese cooking, we use soy sauce every single day. We source it direct from Hong Kong, which is why we get a better price. If you’re not familiar with the product, you don’t know where to get it,” she says.
“They [other supermarkets] probably get it from other suppliers and obviously the price would be a lot higher. But this is our area, our niche. All brands in our store are carefully selected by our purchasing team to be the top number one and two brands used locally in Asia.”
The shop’s percentage of Irish and Western customers has risen to close to 40 per cent, according to manager Irene Tang. On the Pricewatch guided tour of the store, she pointed out some of the star products.
“It depends on the section but for Thai vegetables, the best seller would be small round aubergines and sweet basil. Malaysians love instant coffee mix – they prefer it to fresh coffee.
“Irish people head straight to the spice section. Frozen prawns are very popular, as are fresh prawns and crabs which come from Howth and sea bass [labelled parrot fish] and sea bream are the most popular fish because they are the most economical.”
Ah yes, frugality. Chinese cuisine is noted for not wasting any part of the animal. A browse through the meat section of the freezer reveals a bag of duck tongues (a Hong Kong speciality, served deep fried); chicken feet (ideally stewed until tender and served in a variety of ways); pig “fat end” and, ahem, pig’s uterine.
To a Western palate, the latter might seem unappetising (to put it mildly) but it’s just a re-adjustment of perspective: it’s offal and very much in line with the on-trend “nose-to-tail” eating movement, championed by star chefs such as Fergus Henderson.
Even foodies confess to being slightly bemused about some of the more esoteric products available. Food writer Katy McGuinness says she tends to go, list in hand, and admits that there’s a fair element of “I don’t know what that is” when she shops in her local Asian market.
She stays clear of the frozen seafood sections: “I’ve read too much about fish farming in south east Asia to ever want to go near them,” she says. She stocks up on items like mirin, sake and fish sauce. “I went through a real phase of cooking out of Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey and if I was stuck for ingredients, I’d get them there – odd things that you’d never have at home or wouldn’t usually pick up in a supermarket, like palm sugar,” she says.
Does she think that buying those giant bottles of sauces and sackfuls of rice might prove a false economy, in the sense that shoppers mightn’t actually get through it all? “They last me a long time and I don’t have to think about them for a while. I can’t find sake or mirin at my local supermarket and I hate not being able to make a dish because I don’t have something, even though it’s only a couple of tablespoons that I need.”
Helen O’Riain of the Cook’s Academy in Dún Laoghaire, which runs courses in Thai, Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese cooking, says that ethnic stores are a superb place to begin stocking a larder. “Obviously it’s great for different varieties of soy sauce, including gluten-free varieties like tamari, as well as fish sauce, vinegars, good fresh vegetables, rice and rice paper for wrapping spring rolls, and good quality noodles.”
For those of us who might have thought that all noodles were created equal, O’Riain disagrees. “It’s like good quality pasta. If you cook a lot with these products you begin to notice that some are not as good as others and it is trial by error, depending on what you like.”
As a regular shopper at ethnic supermarkets, George Parkes says he goes mainly for the ingredients, but that price is a factor too. Then there’s the element of randomness that also appeals.
“Usually there’s ginger, chillies, soy sauce, tofu, wasabi peas, gram flour for falafel, curry spices and the occasional can of cherry cola on the list,” he says. “There have been many times when I picked up something and it could have been tasty but equally it could have been disgusting. There was this Serbian red pepper relish that I bought called ajvar that looked so inviting but actually tasted horrible and bitter. But I love the fact that you can root around and find weird stuff to experiment with.”
