| View Larger Image | The Asian Grocery Store Demystified (Take It with You Guides)
by Linda Bladholm
by Jonathan Eismann
| | List Price: | $16.95 | | Price: | $12.71 | | You Save: | $4.24 (25%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks | | | | | Sales Rank: | 271742 | | Studio: | Renaissance Books | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 240 | | Publication Date: | April 15, 1999 | | Publisher: | Renaissance Books |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
A food lover's guide to all the best ingredients.Do you want to prepare an Asian meal as delectable as those in restaurants? Are you too intimidated by the exotic ingredients to try? And what's inside those mysterious bottles, bags, and boxes in your local Asian grocery store anyway?This handy Take it With You guide provides the answers. Author Linda Bladholm, who has lived, worked, cooked, and dined in locales as diverse as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Laos, and Vietnam, takes you on a tour of a typical Asian grocery store and expertly describes what you'll find.Make Your Next Shopping Trip a Successful and Fascinating Journey.Peppered with over 400 illustrations, plus stories about the ingredients used in every major Asian cuisine, this guidebook identifies and tells you how to use the vast array of meats, fruits, vegetables, noodles, tofu, rice, and delicacies. A bonus section of the author's favorite recipes will help you create savory, authentic dishes that will impress everyone-- and it will open a window onto the remarkable civilizations of the Orient. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 23 reviews)
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Makes me hungry 
No matter where you live in North America, at some time you will encounter some kind of Asian cuisine. Sometimes it's in a can, or of dubious authenticity; sometimes it appeals to you even if you're not of Asian heritage, sometimes not. You shouldn't limit yourself to the offerings at restaurants, though. Get yourself to an ethnic grocery and start discovering what the rest of the world eats. This guide helps explain what those bumpy squash-looking things are in the produce section, what the various kinds of soy sauce are, and why the type of rice you buy and cook makes a difference. The book concludes with some recipes, including quite a few for Chinese-style herbal soups.
July 13, 2007 | |
demystified groceries
very helpful book when looking for asian ingredients at asian food stores. very good descriptions of all listed ingredients
January 18, 2007 | |
Helpful, but not perfect. 
This book is an interesting read in terms of "demystifying" some Asian ingredients when shopping in the local Asian market. Unfortunately, not all are as well organized as Ms. Bladholm's local store! I enjoyed reading it, but would not consider it a guide when actually going to the store. My main problem with the book is the line drawings, which are not very helpful. My own favorite book of this type, and most useful for getting a visual image, is Martin Yan's booklet "A Simple Guide to Chinese Ingredients and Other Asian Specialties" which has nice clear color photos of all types of Asian foods, from vegetables to canned/packaged foods.
No book is going to be perfect, as in my experience it all depends on the owner/type of market as far as what is carried. For example, the market I usually go to is run by a Korean family, so there is not much in the way of Japanese foods. Sometimes I've found the best way to shop is online, or surfing online stores to get a sense of what you need.
In short, the book is good in content, but there are other sources out there for more visual people (like me).
June 07, 2006 | |
I keep it in my bookbag....
...for those times when I hit Chinatown on my way home. It is a very useful guide.
February 27, 2006 | |
Excellent!!!
Before picking up this book, note that it was published in 1999... it doesn't seem THAT long ago, but in terms of your average American's familiarity with Asian ingredients, it's practically eons. While Chinese (or Chinese-American, more accurately) food has been around for a couple of decades (a little longer in big cities), Japanese and Thai food have really only been scooching their way into smaller cities and middle America for the last ten years or so.
Therefore, when this book was published, a lot of the ingredients were wholly unfamiliar to many people. Nowadays, lots of them will seem familiar: wasabi, pickled ginger, sesame oil, chili oil, lemongrass and so on. However, as much as you might be able to recognize the green paste on the corner of your sushi plate, do you really know what a whole wasabi root looks like? Or where you might find it in your asian grocery?
This book helps to break down the linguistic and cultural barrier, offering suggestions as to Asian names for common items, where you might find it, and what you can do with it. Asian grocery stores, by the way, are not just good sources for ingredients for Asian cuisines, I buy all of my fresh herbs at our local store because they are at least 50% cheaper than at the supermarket. You just have to know what you're looking for, and this book will most certainly help you find it!
December 17, 2005 | |
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