Miso like Alton Brown

Since I was so inspired by Alton Brown in the newest Good Eats episode, "Turning Japanese," Friday I made a little jaunt to a local Asian market. In the downtown area of the small town where I work, there's an Asian market. I haven't a clue as to why this little town of a population barely over 13,000 has this awesome place, but I an so glad it does.

The market opened about two years ago and I've shopped there several times. A couple of times I've gone just to stroll the aisles, although its not a big store it is very fun to look at the different items.

But this time I had a game plan and shopping list. Promptly after work, I headed down and hoped everything needed was available.

Since I had been there before and scoped the items, I knew the odds were good to find everything. I have purchased miso paste before, so that was easy to locate. The noodles and rice were all together, so I scanned the shelves and found the buckwheat noodles without problem. Another item I had purchased there in the past was rice wine vinegar, so the mirin was quickly located as well.

I knew they sold nori but wasn't sure about kombu. This was my first stumbling block. I stood there for a moment trying to figure out what was needed and what to buy. As AB told us, the the vast majority of items were in Japanese with very little or no English on them at all. Those foreign characters sharing back at me made my head swim. I could locate a bag of something that looked like the type of seaweed Alton used. But I found was strips of seaweed, not sheets. The seaweed did have the white stuff on it and an image on the back of the bag had a stockpot. I figured, that would be it and put in my stash. Fingers crossed.

The last item to find was the fish flakes or bonito flakes. Again I was a little puzzled about where this would be located in the store. I searched around and saw a row of bagged things. Again, I had to use visuals to find it. The bag I picked up looked to have fish flakes. That was it and I had located it all. I get my tofu at Kroger of all places! So it was a great success.

Oddly enough, I have trouble locating some of the items AB uses in his regular ol' "American"recipes at times but these unusual items were easy to procure.

A big tip... if you go on your very own Asian market quest be prepared to use your eyes to find your goodies.

Now, to the cooking! :)