At the Tostaduria

A year or so ago I started missing some items not in my local supermarket:  caraway seeds (for rye bread), gluten flour (to help my multigrain breads), tomatillos (for Mexican salsa verde) and okra (for gumbo).  With help from members of the International Association of Chile I discovered tostadurias:  stores specializing in spices, herbs, grains, legumes, fruits, nuts, condiments, and so on.  They didn’t have tomatillos or okra – I’m still trying La Vega for those – but they seem to have most everything that one might want in dry and preserved foods. 

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My favorite, and the one where I eventually found caraway seeds (comino aleman or kumen) is Susana Kuschnir Silva’s in La Vega, Santiago's large public market.
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Photo, front to back, left to right:

Dried tomatoes

Peruvian chili pepper (Ají panca)

Spanish chili[1] (Ají guindilla)

Toasted sesame seeds

Green peppercorns

Cardamom

White sesame seeds

Brown rice

Dried mushrooms (callampas secas)

Toasted Chilean hazelnut (Avellano chileno)

Susana, here surrounded by vanillas, vinegars, soy sauce, mustards, chocolates, agar-agar, jams, oyster sauce, etc., speaks English and has great patience if you need help figuring out how to ask for dried blueberries, or bittersweet chocolate.  

There are also Worchester sauce (salsa inglesa), sweet chili sauce, Nutela, Lúcuma paste, peanut butter, mustards and catsups.

And front to back, left to right:

Raw peanuts

Wheat mote [2]

Oregano

Instant oatmeal

Goat-horn chili (ají cacho de cabra)

Cacao hulls

Chilean palm (Jubaea chilensis) fruit

Vegetarian “meat” (soy protein)

Garbanzo beans

Lentils

Orange lentils

Green beans

White beans

She also has:  quinoa, couscous, bulgur, oats, corn, barley, flax, gluten, dried cherries, dried blueberries, raisins, prunes, dry figs, dry peaches, black and yellow mustard seeds, shelled walnuts, almonds, merken, thyme, sage, chocolate covered orange peel, candied peanuts, anchovies, and of course, caraway seeds.  And much more.

 

It is all weighed to the gram, (by the young lady at right) sealed in plastic bags and priced fairly (and inexpensively, if you are accustomed to supermarket prices.)
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Susana Kuschnir Silva

Artesanos 801, Recoleta, Santiago

Tel. 735-2810 or 737-7821

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Click on map to enlarge








And if you find tomatillos or okra--bamiyah in Arabic, and something similar among Palestinian-Chileans—let me know.
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Okra

                                                                                    Tomatillos

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[1] Chile (Capsicum spp.) varieties are notoriously variable, and their names are even more so.  I have no idea if ají guninilla has an English name, but guindilla is Iberian Spanish for chili pepper, hence “Spanish Chili.”

[2] Wheat kernels, cooked in alkaline water, stripped of hulls and dried.