The Great Shallot Hunt

I've been looking around the city all weekend for shallots. They sure are hard to find; or at least super expensive!

Shallots are used in a gazillion recipes by Mario and all the big celebrity chefs, and I've always wanted to try them instead of substituting them with yellow onions like I usually do. There's a recipe in Nigella Lawson's book, How to Eat, where she recommends that you just roast the shallots in the oven. Then you can squeeze out the yummy gooey stuff with your fork and eat 'em. Yum!

So first, I tried Garden of Eden. I don't normally shop at the Garden of Edenm, since I feel that its totally out of my price range. After hunting through the produce section, I find a basket of shallots for $1.99/lb. Hmm, seemed high to me (that's more expensive than Murray's free-range skinless chicken thighs at Fairway!), so I decided to continue searching.

I then tried the Commodities market on 1st Ave. between 10th and 11th St. Being an organic market, they of course only had organic shallots. How much were they? $3.99 a pound! Garden of Eden started to look pretty good. They carried the shallots in 5 lb. bags as well, so I asked if there was a discount if you bought a bag (similar to buying a bag of yellow onions or potatoes), but they said, "Nope, the 5 lb. bags are $20 each." Outrageous! Commodities also had a tea tasting while I was there; apparently there is some kind of tea which suppresses your hunger so you can lose weight. Um, at $7.99 a box, I decided, I'll just be fat.

I decided to keep looking. (I really wanted some affordable shallots.)

I went to the Whole Foods Market at the Time Warner Center. The shallots there were also organic and also $3.99 a pound. I guess Commodities wasn't that overpriced.

I then tried Fairway Market where the shallots were $3.49/lb. (non-organic) and $3.99/lb. (organic). I didn't see shallots at Zabar, and at FreshDirect (the food delivery service), the shallots were about $2.38/lb.

So tail between my legs, I guess I'm back to Garden of Eden! It pays to shop around!

[BTW, while I was at all of these different stores, I found that the leeks at Wholesome Foods are actually the cheapest around. Funny, huh?]