EXOTIC FOODS FIND THEIR WAY ONTO CAPE GIRARDEAU GROCERY SHELVES

Not in the mood for pot roast tonight? How about some squid, or maybe some nice cactus leaves?

A recent search for the exotic, odd and just plain trendy in Cape Girardeau yielded a dizzying variety of culinary delights.

Judy Lueders, a nutritionist for the University of Missouri Extension Service in Perry County and columnist for the Southeast Missourian, joined in the hunt.

Global Trading on Broadway offers a variety of delicacies for Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Indian and Korean cuisine, said Avelina Lichtenegger.

Lichtenegger, who is Filipino, opened the store in 1986 because she was tired of driving to Carbondale, Ill., or St. Louis to find the ingredients she needed.

"My husband said, if you have to go to Carbondale for your food, why don't you open a store?" Lichtenegger said. So she did.

It wasn't too hard to figure out what to stock, she said.

"I have a good Japanese friend, and she said, carry this," Lichtenegger said. "And you talk to the distributors and tell them, this is the ethnic breakdown, and they tell you what to stock."

It's also important to check out the competition, she said, "and you can see what products they move."

Many of Lichtenegger's customers are international students and staff at the university, she said. But rice, dried mushrooms and ingredients for curry are popular with other customers, she said.

Each culture's food has a different flavor, Lichtenegger said, and Asian foods' flavors tend to be on the spicy side.

"Thai food is characterized by being really hot, just like Indian food," she said. Japanese food is milder, and the Japanese eat more seafood -- including fish and seaweed.

Among the fixings available at Global Trading are dried and roasted seaweed (with and without chili peppers); dried radish strips; bonito (a fish food popular especially in Japan) in many forms, including dried, canned and frozen; mushrooms, spices, sauces, herbs, teas, quail eggs, canned squid and smoked eel.

Lichtenegger pointed out that Asian food is lower in fat than Western food, and relies more on fish, vegetables and noodles than meat.

"Asian food uses a lot of noodles," she said.

A variety of non-wheat flours and noodle products, including those made of soy, buckwheat and corn, are available. That could be helpful for people who are allergic to wheat, Lueders said.

And seaweed is surprisingly nutritious, she said.

"It's high in minerals, like calcium. It doesn't have a lot of vitamins, but it's a good source of minerals," she said. Some varieties are also high in protein.

If you like curry -- a mixture of spices used for seasoning rice and different meats and fish -- Lichtenegger stocks it all: sour curry sauce, chou chee curry paste, yellow sour curry paste and red sour curry paste.

Kim chee, a Korean delicacy of pickled cabbage and (lots of) garlic, is also available. "It's kind of like sour kraut," Lichtenegger said.

Coconut jam, papaya pickles, lychee fruit and lotus root are also available.

It helps to know what you are doing. You won't find recipes on the cans or boxes in Lichtenegger's store.

One of the intriguing items located was yanang leaves extract.

What is it, and what do you do with it?

"I don't know," Lichtenegger said.

At Schnucks Kingshighway store, more interesting foodstuffs were located, including kim chee (hot and mild), lychees, tofu, dried chilies and mushrooms, yucca root, cactus pads (or leaves) tomatillos, jicama (a root vegetable used in Mexican and Southwestern dishes and salads) and hummus.

In the meat department, intrepid searchers located pork maws among the chitterlings, gizzards and livers.

What's a pork maw?

"I don't know. I've never heard of it," Lueders said, and promised to start researching.

Pork maws are the stomach of the hog, and are usually used in soups, according to the University Extension Service's main office in Columbia. And they're very high in fat.

So how do the nice people at the grocery store decide it's time to start carrying, say, cactus pads?

"Usually we have a customer who will ask for it," said Bob Smith, the produce manager at Schnucks. "They'll see a recipe or a friend of theirs will serve it, and they'll come in and ask for it."

And of course there are fashions in food, just like in clothing.

The wide variety of chili peppers, including the lethal habanero now available, "got real popular over just the last year or so," Smith said. "Used to, you couldn't give the things away."

Flat-leafed parsley is another new item, he said. "I've had a couple of people ask for that, and the reason is, people say they saw it in a recipe in a magazine."

"I think people are getting to where they're experimenting a little more," Susan Break, manager of Schnucks deli and seafood department, said. "I think people are just getting kind of bummed out on having the same thing, and they don't want to go to a restaurant and pay a small fortune for something."

Squid is becoming more popular, she said. "It used to be an ethnic food," Break said. "Now it's not so ethnic any more."

Lueders said she doesn't get too many requests for information about exotic food, although someone did ask for recipes using plantains.

"I think people here are still eating a lot of the meat and potatoes," she said.

But remember the old adage: One man's meat is another man's poison.

Lichtenegger put it another way: "When I first got married, I tried to be a good wife and fix all the American food, roast beef and mashed potatoes. I couldn't take it."