Food Ingredient Heaven (Ingredients from across the Globe in London)

Went for a 4km walk to explore the new neighbourhood. Aside from the Arabic Supermarket that I found on Day 1, next to Waitrose, Today I found a Russian supermarket, French Supermarket, Oriental Supermarket (food products from Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, Thailand & Malaysia). All within a 15 minute walk from home.

No Indian Supermarket, but I did find 2 Indians running "Spar"

Then of course there are the M&S Food, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons etc.

I am in Food Ingredient heaven!

For those looking for Indian Food Ingredients in London, my friends recommend the following areas :
1. Heathrow / Hounslow
2. South Harrow - South Indian food items - Idli rice, rice powder, red rice - & well cleaned fish - Then eat in Saravana Bhavan or at La Masala ( Spicy Sri Lankan food)
3. Wimbledon area
4. Southall - for North India ingredients
5. Eastham - has some good shops
6.  Drummond St in Euston - the most centrally located Indian grocery store. Even stock paneer, dosa batter etc etc.  And Gupta sweets across the road does better samosa, jalebi etc than Ambala Sweets
7. www.itadka.com for online orders.

Thanks to Deba, Urvi, Prasad, Praj & Sharky for sharing this gyaan (knowledge)
 

Grocery Shopping in London

In all our jaunts across town, I rarely hear English being spoken between people, unless it is a business transaction. The guys from whom we bought our phone connections were from India and Sri Lanka. Our Coffee Shop guys all speak fluent Italian (I still follow bits of conversation) and I had a broken Arabic conversation with an Algerian managing a French Pattiserrie. We had a brilliant meal last week at Daquise - a Polish restaurant. Our neighbours in the building are from Japan and Australia. Yes, we seem to have landed in the middle of a much larger melting pot.

For groceries, we have tried Waitrose, Sainsbury, Selfridges (we were in the store browsing) and Marks & Spencer

So far, I think I love the raw ingredients and cold meats from Marks & Spencer the best. Much superior in taste and flavour to Waitrose.

Sainsbury is good for last minute buys and general groceries and cakes, but we didn't like their sandwiches.

Selfridges has a lot of premium products and organic produce, but the readymade food costs as much as eating in at an average restaurant.

Waitrose has very high quality Organic products and their spices are fantastic. (turmeric, jeera, corriander), but I did not like their cold meats at all, especially when compared to Marks & Spencer.

My local grocer is from Egypt and has a meat section which sells things like gizzards. I've asked him to keep an eye out for tongue for me.

Borough Market was brilliant and I can't wait to go back. However, I'm still getting used to the cold and don't like shopping in the open air in the current weather.

My fridge in this house is miniscule compared to my 600Litre fridge, which I had to leave behind in India - no way I would have been able to fit it inside a kitchen in Central London. So I'm learning to buy in smaller quantities (Brajesh who helps in carrying the groceries here, would not agree to this statement :) )

But the range of food and quality of meat is excellent and I'm loving cooking with all these ingredients. Such a massive change after our last posting in Ahmedabad, where I had just 2 places to choose from to buy meat and there was hardly anything new in the vegetable markets to try except the winter specialties. - fresh turmeric, amba haldi etc

Fingers Crossed, that I will be blogging more. Lets see.