So, I was looking for soy sauce the other day and my grocery store has created a whole new "ethnic" section. This section was near the entrance so I went there first to look for the soy sauce. It wasn't there. It was with the other condiments like BBQ sauce. Cool. Then I wanted oyster sauce and that wasn't near the soy and BBQ sauce, but back in the ethnic section...

So just wondering, where do you expect to find this sort of thing - ethnic and ethnic that's considered mainstream? (I also found tea in like five different places...)

Cooking is a hobby of mine, and as a result I really enjoy watching food related YouTube channels. Some of the ones I like are

• Alex French Guy Cooking - A fun channel of a creative french amateur cook. I like this channel because I have similar taste in food to him (check out his instant ramen series!), but his solutions to problems in the kitchen are seriously creative. To give an example, he builds a dough sheeter in his croissant series in order to get the perfect thickness of dough, and he makes a makeshift dehydrator in the ramen series. Stuff I would never do in the kitchen, but it's fun to watch.

• Bon Appetit - I totally did not expect Bon Appetit to have such a well put together web presence (for some reason I considered them an old fashioned publication). In any case, check out the "It's Alive with Brad" series. It starts out as a series about all things related to fermentation (beer, hot sauce, kombucha, sourdough, etc), but expands a bit in scope.

• Binging with Babish - Perhaps the most well known of recent food related YouTubers, Babish recreates meals from movies and TV. He also has a nice series on cooking tutorials. I don't watch him as much as I used to, but he's still a lot of fun.

• Townsends - A bit different than the rest, and not exlusively food related. Townsends is a historical enthusiast focusing on the colonial era, and he has a lot of videos recreating recipes and techniques from the time period.

EDIT:

Forgot to include

• Jun's Kitchen - Some seriously therapeutic cooking videos featuring sushi and cats.

I'll start: Hessian 'Tater soup. Maybe not very exciting, but I just love the stuff.

Start off with a diced onion and about 1 - 1.5 kg of peeled, sliced potatoes. Throw into a big pot on high heat with some oil and let it develop some color. Meanwhile, get peeling and chopping on this stuff - carrots, celery root, leek, parsley, parsley root. Amounts as desired, but I like to use a lot of parsley - root or leafs. If your taters get enough color, cover with water and add the rest of the veggies. All that in place, cook until soft. Blend. Add 200ml of sour cream and season with nutmeg, pepper and salt. Consistency should be thick, maybe slightly chunky.

When serving, fry up a few slices of old sausage to throw in there. This one is a traditional north hessian sausage, but any only lightly spiced and smoked, coarse ground, fatty hard sausage will do. Add a sprig of parsley if you feel like upping the presentation.