When my husband asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day I said, “All I want is your aunt’s Pancit recipe”. Well he was successful in getting me a full list of ingredients. LOL.. few measurements and lots of vague language like noodles. I have not made a lot of Asian cuisine in my many years of cooking and I realized I was just going to have to wing it.

 

 

 So here I was looking for an Asian market to get my ingredients. I called my girlfriend who shops for Asian specialty items often and asked her where the best place to go was. She recommended Super 88. She said they will have everything you will need. I could hardly wait to go. So, the next day I ran into the city with two kids. In a matter of 18 miles and 40 minutes later I was standing in another land.

 

 

Here we are the Super 88. I really didn’t know what I was looking for-noodles and Chinese sausage (key ingredients). Oh boy.. I walked in and it was like venturing into the candy store. I was surrounded by all of these new ingredients and foods. The scary part is that most of it was not in English so I had little knowledge about what I was actually buying. I walked around aisle after aisle trying to make out the bottles and sauces and products by looking at the pictures on the label. The spices were relatively cheap so I kept throwing things into my cart. Luckily I looked up on the Internet what the Chinese sausage looked like so I knew one thing I was looking for. I wandered into an aisle looking for patis –all I knew was that it was a kind of fish sauce that could not be substituted..hmmm, so many bottles of fish sauce and they all looked different. But where was patis??? I stopped to ask a woman who worked there and she did not speak English. Good thing there was a young man next to her that said oh patis, use this and pointed to a bottle. He said you don’t want the stuff you have-it will kill you and tastes horrible. Few…I was saved by the nice gentleman. One ingredient down. I was now off to the noodles. Hmmm. How hard could this be? Well it would be like walking down the salad dressing aisle for choices. There were so many noodles. I was trying to look at the label and guess what it would look like cooked or look for some clues like a picture to know what it was used for. I finally asked two separate people (one shopper and one worker) again, no one spoke English. I was on my own. I placed several noodles into my basket and then realized that they had a fresh noodle section. I walked over and placed several more packages of noodles in my basket with the hopes that I had the right one somewhere in my basket of noodles. The remaining of the shopping trip was very overwhelming for me, no one to help and so many choices. Soy sauce, soy sauce, soy sauce, soy glaze, thick sauce, thin sauce, and sweet sauce. What was the difference? I wanted a personal shopper someone who knew what they were buying or knew what to use it for. I knew I was in the midst of some good stuff here, I just didn’t know what was what. All this fun and it was time to get home for the bus, 12 bags later, 4 types of Chinese sausage, 6 bags of noodles, some sauces and who knows what else. I left the store hoping I would have what I needed to be able to pull off this one dish.

 

 

And so it came, the BIG night. I whipped out the wok or should I say dusted off the wok and began cooking. I became a bit confused over the recipe and the time of cooking. I was worried that the sausage wasn’t cooked enough or that I didn’t have enough sauce.

 

Finally I was done. I was very pleased with how it came out. I know next time what I need to tweak, add, or use less of. I knew the real test would be my husband. He was the one who would be able to tell me how authentic it really was. When he came home I was excited for him to critique it. When he tasted it, I got a thumbs up. He said that it was pretty darn close and it was very good. That was good enough for me. The hardest part now is finding the ingredients closer–good thing I bought enough to probably make it several more times before needing to go back.

 

 

Never fear making new recipes or venturing into a region that you are not used to cooking. I think the next month I have so many Asian ingredients we are going to be doing a lot of experimenting. Thanks Aunt Eva for letting me in on your family secret.

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