I may be partial to both Chinese cuisine and foodstuffs from Block 70 but it's only my second favorite location for food-shopping, the first being SuperVero, Greek food retail chain one of whose 6 stores in Belgrade is a supermarket in Vojislava Ilica Street, practically in my backyard.
The best place to go if you are hosting a dinner with lots of cold appetizers or a wine-tasting session as they carry a great selection of artisanal breads, wines, olive oil, olives, cheeses etc. The latter two are also sold in bulk.
This time I picked some canned fish I had not tried before, frozen artichoke hearts and okra (both are hard to find fresh around here or I just don't know where to look), olive oil (it came with a free bottle of dry white wine, yay) and was delirious to find eggplant paste as I have been looking for it ever since I tried it in Russia two years ago. It should be fairly easy to make at home as, judging from the list of ingredients, the paste is made from minced grilled eggplant "meat" with hardly anything else. Very tasty, very delicate, maybe even undersalted in comparison to its Russian equivalent which makes it a perfect "salad base" and that is exactly what the label says.
The first salad I put together with the ingredients fresh from SuperVero was one more go at the standard "lots-of-greens-with-some-protein" formula:
Herring in tomato paste, fresh cabbage and carrot, blanched cauliflower and broccoli, olives.
Seasoned with olive oil, sesame oil, lemon juice, white pepper and basil.
I remembered to take a picture only when I was halfway down the bowl.
The second salad married tofu and eggplant paste as well as fresh cabbage,carrot and beetroot.
Though minuscule in size, its star ingredient isso potent it overpowered all others companions.
Can you see them? Roasted cumin seeds!
Chop 'em up...
....add some fiery pickled Chinese peppers for seasoning...
... mix well and dig in!
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