A VISIT to New York City’s famous Chinatown always excites me and my daughter Patricia. Everything is so not American–like the improvised stalls along the crowded streets where regular stalls sell the good meat, fresh or live seafood, fruits and vegetables. Reminds me of our markets at home. So many Filipinos also do their food shopping in Chinatown so it is not unusual to hear both Tagalog and Bisaya being spoken, haggling with vendors. There are even nice Chinese vendors who have picked up the words “mura”, “masarap” and “salamat.” But some of them brought their nasty “Hong Kong”
demeanor to New York City.
Patricia was craving for “Pinakbet” and steamed crabs. The overwhelmingly abundant produce in supermarkets here does not have our native vegetables so we have to make a special trip to Chinatown to get the ingredients we need. We usually make the rounds for vegetables and fruits before we pick out our favorite seafood to keep the freshness. The native ampalaya, long beans (sitaw or batong) and the long eggplants were available as we expected. The fermented shrimps (bagoong) from Pangasinan can be bought in the stores, too. In fact, one can buy a lot of Philippine products here. Our surprising buys include tropical and exotic fruits, as well as live seafood. Most of the tropical fruits are temptingly displayed on stalls–mangosteen (at $ 8 a lb., which is extremely expensive) along with affordable ones like jackfruit, rambutan, lychees, longans, dragon fruit, mangoes, senorita bananas (small and sweet), guavas. I got excited when I finally found cherimoya at $7.00 per lb.–actually, an expensive price to pay. We got carried away choosing the cherimoya and were oblivious of the fact that it costs us a fortune. We ended up paying $20 for seven fruits.
I had my first taste of cherimoya in San Diego California (cost only $4.99 per lb). The taste of this delicious fruit can be likened to custard apple (atis) and soursop (guyabano) combined. The size is as big as an atis with a smooth, thin green skin. Cherimoya, with the creaminess of custard apple and sorbet-like texture of soursop is native to the Andes. They are grown in South and Central America, South Asia and Southern California. The seeds germinate and the plants grow only in high altitude. Cherimoya, atis and guyabano belong to the same Anonas family.
The Maryland or Blue crabs, which come from the Chesapeake Bay are abundant in summer season. They come in different sizes and placed in wooden crates to prevent them from crawling out. We always feel lucky since female crabs (with the yellow aligue) are always abundant. Americans prefer the boring male crabs. The crabs we bought were still alive when we got home. I had to place a heavy cover when I steamed the delicious crustaceans. Meanwhile, we had to open all the windows of the apartment when we cooked the Pinakbet to air out the smell of “bagoong.” Our dinner at home of Steamed Crabs and Pinakbet was crowned with the glorious taste of cherimoya.