The Frying Pan

Stephie

04:10

Stephie

04:24

Looks unassuming - but if you start eating, you’ll find clams, half a crab, shrimp, calamari, fish… it’s cioppino and yours truly is in a state of stew-garlic-and-sourdough-induced bliss. And the margarita didn’t hurt either.

So @Cascabel, we went for one of the more traditional places tonight, but it was nevertheless quite nice and not “just feed the tourists in bulk”. One word: Seafood!

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell might also be the Yogurt @rumtscho's used to is 'different' from what you get. There's a lot of variation in bulgarian vs greek vs indian cause of the culture and milk

Cascabel

07:12

@Stephie cioppino is soooooo good

and sourdough

Tinkeringbell

09:10

@JourneymanGeek maybe. I did get a "thick" yoghurt (Greek style, 10 percent fat) instead of what goes for just regular yoghurt here (0 - 3 percent fat)

@Stephie sounds fishy :P

rumtscho

09:33

@Tinkeringbell Hey Tinkeringbell! I'm tickled happy to see you tried it.

It is supposed to be really thin. The intended consistency is to be like water. Normal supermarket yogurt at 3.5% is fine, the classic recipe wouldn't use anything else. (Unless you have access to real sheeps' yogurt, which would be 6% and more fat and have a real barnyard smell. But you don't get that in Western Europe).

If you want the dish to be thick, it's no longer considered a soup, but a salad. The name is "Snowwhite's salad". It has the same ingredients, no water at all, and it is garnished with black olives.

There, the preferred yogurt would be strained yogurt, which means to hang the yogurt in a cheesecloth until its weight is reduced in half (you can catch the whey and use it for something if you want).

To me, it tastes completely different from that 10% yogurt from the store. But in the West, many people use both interchangeably.

Tinkeringbell

10:09

@rumtscho ah! That's called "hangop" here.

I never had that but my mom loves it

It literally translates to English as "hang-up" :P

rumtscho

@Tinkeringbell I think that english speaking people have other associations with that term :)

Tinkeringbell

Hahaha yeah

I might try the salad sometime too :)

Without olives. Somehow, I don't like olives or capers

rumtscho

They're an acquired taste, yes. And not everybody acquires it :)

Journeyman Geek

10:36

Olives vary wildly :D

(I love the greek and turkish stuff, the spanish stuff is meh, and salt cured olives are kinda whooooa)

rumtscho

@JourneymanGeek I don't know what kind of olives you get where you live. Possibly even something else that we get in Western Europe.

I would never try to separate olives into "spanish", "turkish", etc. Because there are huge differences in style/taste within each country.

And also there are some huge brands which make terrible stuff that's widely exported.

I absolutely love Greek olives from brands which sell inside Greece (they get exported to Bulgaria too). Not all kinds of Greek olives, but most of them.
When I buy Greek olives in Germany, they are classes worse than that. Except the Kalamata, they tend to be OK.

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho differnt brands'countries :D

the greek ones we get a bigger than the turkish ones

rumtscho

@JourneymanGeek hehe, I know. They have to market them somehow :)

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho its also the store. The one we go to basically sources all over the place so you might get the same 'brand' but different countries :D

rumtscho

This is my local olive store

Journeyman Geek

10:44

lol

I suspect that's better than what I'd get here :D

rumtscho

You see that "bar" thing with the small hand-written labels? From closeby, it looks like this

Journeyman Geek

I'd seen something like that in france, in a truck :D

rumtscho

so I go there and buy some amount of the olives I point to.

These are all Greek, Regina is a Greek brand.

prices are between 5 and 8 Euro per kg.

In Germany, there are a few Turkish stores which do something similar, but with a choice of 3-4 kinds of olives. At least in my city, they might be better in cities with large Turkish enclaves.

Journeyman Geek

Oh 'mine' are in jars :D

so more supermarket brand than specialist

rumtscho

yes, the ones I buy here in Germany are also in jars, and not too tasty. But they are edible :)

not the supermarket-own brand black ones though. These are like taste-free sponges soaked in black pigment (which they literally are, says so on the box). I never eat them, except when some restaurant dares strew them on a pizza or something.

hey @fyrepenguin! Nice to see other people coming in to chat, beside the usual suspects. Welcome!

(I know you've been in here for some time now, but I think I've never chatted to you directly).

Journeyman Geek

10:52

@rumtscho I tend to like em green and almost crunchy :D

also if I ever go to an olive farm, I'd probably ask if I could try one raw :D

rumtscho

@JourneymanGeek yes, these are good too

@JourneymanGeek I've never had, but I've heard they're terrible

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho Bitter but a lot of foods I like are bitter

rumtscho

apparently, the texture is hard like an unripe pear or something

besides bitter, I believe they're also astringent. And unpleasantly dry.

But I get it that you want to try!

Journeyman Geek

I mean

rumtscho

I'm very much a "try everything once" kind of person.

I'd try myself one too, even if I don't expect to like it.

Journeyman Geek

10:56

either 1) everyone gets a show cause it really is terrible

2) there's a small crowd wondering why the heck the brown dude can eat olives raw :D

rumtscho

I like your way of thinking!

have you ever tried your dog's food?

Journeyman Geek

Can't eat it, its got meat

(also smells terrible)

There's some things I won't eat

Fermented bean curd

Fermented tofu (also called fermented bean curd, white bean-curd cheese, tofu cheese, soy cheese, preserved tofu or sufu) is a Chinese condiment consisting of a form of processed, preserved tofu used in East Asian cuisine. The ingredients typically are soybeans, salt, rice wine and sesame oil or vinegar. In mainland China the product is often freshly distributed. In overseas Chinese communities living in Southeast Asia, commercially packaged versions are often sold in jars containing blocks 2- to 4-cm square by 1 to 2 cm thick soaked in brine with select flavorings. == History == According to...

Boguht this one, the red version...

it smells like something died, got resurrected and died again

rumtscho

11:18

@JourneymanGeek ouch!

Fermented food can be very funny, yes, and not in a good way.

It's basically spoilage, only done by non-pathogenic organisms. But if you didn't grow up with the smells of these particular strains, your nose is turning is generic "spoilage detector" on.

@JourneymanGeek I have tried my cat's food.

I know it's a huge comedy staple, eating cat food, but I don't find it repulsive in the abstract

and in person, it smells good to me

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho my dog used to leave the dry stuff for a bit to air :D

rumtscho

Which is absolutely expected. Producers know well that it's pet owners who choose the food, not pets, so they take care to make it smell good to people.

Journeyman Geek

(also ate a lot of mashed baby (not garden) peas)

rumtscho

At least to meat-eating people. I can imagine that, if you grew up vegetarian, you've never gotten to a place where you enjoy a meaty smell.

Journeyman Geek

Probably

rumtscho

11:23

@JourneymanGeek ah yes, the dry food smells worse than the wet food.

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho there is the deep cultural factor

rumtscho

@JourneymanGeek many dogs enjoy some proportion of plant food in their diet. I think it's even good for them - if not necessary, they can at least get nutritional value out of it, unlike cats.

@JourneymanGeek that too!

I'll admit that I sometimes have difficulty shopping in Asian stores, especially Chinese stores, because of that background smell they have. Even though I only intend to buy food which I like.

And I imagine that, when a Chinese person steps into them, it smells like heaven and home at once.

Indian stores can also be a bit not-so-appetizing to me, because there are some spices I dislike. Anything anise-containing I hate (and that's personal not cultural, many people on the Balkans love anise) and I only eat fenugreek in small amounts.

@JourneymanGeek is it the same for you the other way round?

I don't know if you have ethnic european stores or something like that. But if you have ever had the experience of stepping into a place which reeks of, say, thyme and lavender, does it feel foreign-and-slightly-unappetizing to you?

Journeyman Geek

12:31

@rumtscho I like thyme. BUT I find wet markets (which are more chinese) a bit overwhelming

there's a handful of uhhh

european ethnic stores but they are generally out of the way

rumtscho

I had to look up "wet market", turns out it's a Singapore-specific wording :) But the markets themselves are of course known everywhere.

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho something we take for granted :D

rumtscho

I think that wet markets in Europe don't have their own smell. I don't know if I'm blind to it, or it's really that the stuff we sell doesn't smell that strong (mostly fruit and vegetables, few spices).

Journeyman Geek

Ours also has meat and fish sections

rumtscho

That's from my local market in Sofia. I'm really lucky to live 5 min by foot from there. It's one of the good ones - there used to be many, but they're dying off now.

Journeyman Geek

12:36

Ours used to be like that, then the government decided it was unsanitary and disorganised

and built the current system of things

rumtscho

@JourneymanGeek I have never seen those at a market. Maybe in small towns back in the 90s, when market happened once per week, a meat truck would arrive.

You can see a bit that at this market, there are stalls in the middle, and stores around them. So there are butcher and dairy sellers in these stores, but not at the open stalls.

Journeyman Geek

@rumtscho think having a butcher or 5, fish mongers and vegitable/fruit vendors in the same building :D

rumtscho

in fact, the storefront behind the bearded guy in the picture is a dairy store. But the net one to the right, with the red text on white background all over the shop window, is a pawn shop, nothing to do with food.

Journeyman Geek

sassymamasg.com/…

this is one of our usuals :D

rumtscho

@JourneymanGeek I somehow dislike wet markets (I'm starting to love the term!) which are in a building. They become very sterile somehow, and unappetizing.

Journeyman Geek

12:41

@rumtscho that's vaguely the point :D

though in person, they're chaotic

rumtscho

Having a roof overhead is good, but a real building, with four walls, makes it no longer a market, but a department store for food :)

Journeyman Geek

lol

Too much chaos for our government :D

It isn't quite a supermarket either

its kinda its own wierd thing

rumtscho

I visited London a couple of years ago, and the moment I fell in love with the city was when I visited Borough market.

It's maybe a modern version of what a good wet market can be, in a century when it's no longer farmers directly from the field bringing unpredictable types and amounts of produce to the seller, without middlemen and with minimal regulation.

@JourneymanGeek yes, I've seen those. I don't like them that much.

Where they exist here, they tend to have some decent stuff in the "nonperishable" stalls. Like Italian sausages, specialty cheeses, etc. But the fresh produce is as bad as at the supermarket.

I love the "Tekka market tips" in your article!

>
If you are buying meat, poultry or seafood you must specify exactly how you would like it presented to you. Most of the produce at the wet market is still in its ‘original condition’, which can include things like heads and tails still intact! Be specific in your instructions to avoid finding unwanted surprises in your shopping bag when you get home.
In busy Tekka Market, don’t let the pushy regulars or flying pieces of chicken (yes, it happens) daunt you!
Just remember to bring cash – no credit cards accepted at Tekka market!

Transcript for