A Taste of Home

WHERE FAMILIES SHOP TO CONNECT WITH THEIR CULINARY TRADITIONS

Home chefs from distant places eager to prepare their family’s favorite dishes from back home can find the necessary ingredients in the abundance of specialty markets here in Silicon Valley: Indian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Caribbean, Ethiopian and on and on. For others who want to explore those cuisines, it can be hard to know where to begin.

Walk into a market that caters to cooks from faraway lands and, unless you’re also from that place, it might feel, well, foreign. There might be exotic greens with names like fembrake, sitaw and sea tangle; aisles of mysterious sauces and spices; and eye-catching snacks that you know are crunchy and salty but you can’t translate the packaging.

But go with a “guide” who is familiar with those foods—and maybe they or their parents and grandparents grew up with them—and you can be fast tracked to what to try and what to buy.

I recently visited the Korean Hankook Supermarket with Flora and Heidi Park [pictured above], a mother-daughter team deeply connected to the foods that Flora grew up with in Korea; and the Filipino market Seafood City with Tiffany and Dhory Sison, two sisters well versed in Filipino cuisine thanks to their family elders. Among other delicious items, I went home with lumpia, Korean pancakes, ingredients to make bibimbap and a package of fresh premeasured vegetables to make Filipino Sinigang soup.

HANKOOK SUPERMARKET, SUNNYVALE

“When I first arrived in the U.S., I’d buy a cabbage and then friends in Korea would send the other ingredients I needed,” said Flora Park as she and daughter Heidi led me into Hankook’s produce section. “But now everything’s here.”

Scanning the vegetables, I was impressed by the scale of certain items. There were napa cabbages as big as watermelons, pillowcase-sized bags of soybean sprouts, bundles of long flat chives, and bins of Korean radishes. “The best Korean radishes are half white and half green,” Flora told me.

“We use the radishes, cabbage and flat chives in kimchi,” said Heidi. “My mom makes it all the time and even has a special kimchi refrigerator since it’s so strong-smelling.”

Kimchi—a salted and fermented vegetable mix—has been made for thousands of years and is now on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list of important food traditions. There are endless regional variations, but cabbage, Korean radish, ginger, garlic and red peppers are the most common ingredients.

The store’s biggest collection of kimchi is in the back, where refrigerated shelves display large jars of it, some with full heads of fermented napa cabbage in them. Other parts of the store have more specialized versions of kimchi and a large selection of banchan, which are small Korean side dishes.

“Growing up, every night my mom came home from work and cooked a complete meal with soup, kimchi, banchan, meat,” said Heidi. Now a working mother with a preschooler and a newborn (born since this was written), Heidi is a master of the shortcut. “My mom still makes everything from scratch, but I often don’t have time. Banchans I’ll buy—they don’t taste as good as my mom’s but work in a pinch.”

The middle of the store is stocked with a huge selection of banchan and other Korean specialties packaged to go. Flora suggested I grab the Bibimbap Namul, which contained four elements: one spicy and one mild radish dish, plus cooked royal ferns and aster leaves. “Mix them with rice,” she said, “and any protein you want … or an egg.”

When we cruised a freezer aisle, Flora suggested I take home the Jayone brand of frozen scallion pancakes. I had them recently with gochujang sauce (a Korean favorite made from red chilis, glutinous rice and fermented soybeans) and it was a fast, easy and delicious meal.

“Or for lettuce wraps,” said Heidi, “buy marinated meat as a shortcut and put a perilla leaf [there were plenty in the produce section, they add a basil-mint-like flavor] inside a red lettuce leaf along with rice and a soybean sauce called ssamjang. I’ll also throw bean sprouts in my rice cooker with the rice and throw roasted sesame seeds on top as a quick and easy dish.”

“Ssamjang is really good for Korean BBQ, too,” Heidi pointed out. “My mom makes it from scratch but sometimes I’ll buy a jar. None of her recipes are written down; she tells me ‘just taste it.’ If there is something I’m craving, I’ll call her.”

“Ssamjang is really good for Korean BBQ, too,” Heidi pointed out. “My mom makes it from scratch but sometimes I’ll buy a jar. None of her recipes are written down; she tells me ‘just taste it.’ If there is something I’m craving, I’ll call her.”