Me: (to a man who clearly worked at the shop) Do you sell arrowhead root?
Man: No
Me: ok, thanks
I go to get back on my bike when I see a bucket about five feet to the right of this man filled to the brim with what looks like arrowhead root.
Me: (pointing to bucket) Isn't that arrowhead?
Man: No
Me: Are you sure?
Man: No
Me: Do you speak English?
Man: No
So again, I look to my magic phone to confirm that this bucket of weird tubers is indeed arrowhead and, upon confirmation, I take a bagful in to purchase.
I'm excited to revisit this particular Chinatown establishment when I have more time and am not too lazy to lock up my bike. The inside of the store seemed to hold many bizarre treasures that I would like to investigate further.
So I bought these things days ago. Thankfully, they keep well as long as they are submerged in water. So every time I opened the fridge, there they were, bobbing around in their big red bowl of fluid, looking like alien babies.
I finally made this dish last night after riding to the proper supermarket for the rest of the ingredients. Buying heavy items like milk is a pain when you ride a bike so I definitely procrastinated.
The dish I made was Arrowhead soup.
I also used regular black pepper instead of white pepper. White pepper is expensive at Nob Hill. When I next get up to Berkeley Bowl I'll be sure to grab some of 10% of the price.
The annoying this about this dish is peeling arrowhead, which sucks.
I also followed the recipe's instructions to "quarter, peel and chop" the apple. In that order. This was a stupid mistake because it is waaaay easier to peel a whole apple than one that is already cut up.
But once everything was in the pot it was ok.
Until the pot boiled over. I hate my stove. Hate it.
If anyone out there has a tip for altering a stove so it cooks at a lower temp, please let me know.
(I love how I wrote that like I have more than one reader. One reader who gets a verbal summary of the blogs before I even write them. What a sweet man.)
Then into a bowl it goes, a little dill and eat. Pretty simple.
In the book the author describes arrowhead as a mix of potato, apple and water chestnut. That's exactly what this soup tastes like.
Which is probably why she wins awards for this stuff.
So I just got a flyer for the week's specials at our asian market, and I see arrowhead root. I have never HEARD of arrowhead root, and yours is the first recipe I could find on google (and it took three differently worded searches!) Ha- maybe I'll try this :)
ReplyDelete