Russia, a place of vibrant culture,

mysterious beauty, and mayonnaise;

so much mayonnaise.

I'm Adina Steiman from Epicurious

and I've come to Net Cost Market in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn;

one of the chain of Russian supermarkets

across New York and Pennsylvania,

to learn more about the food of my family's heritage,

and there's no better way to explore it,

aside from booking a trip to Moscow,

than Net Cost's mile long double wide buffet.

It's time to get lost in the supermarket.

What I love about this is that the Russians

will literally pickle anything.

In addition to pickles, you also have whole pears

that they've pickled.

I don't know why they've pickled them.

Apples, pickled green tomatoes, pickled watermelon.

I've never had pickled pear before.

It's definitely very firm.

Wow, I expected it to just be tangy from vinegar,

but it's actually like a little garlicky.

It has like a sweet, sour note to it

that's really delicious.

Now we're getting into some serious carnivorous territory.

I'm looking for chicken cutlets.

Here, it says "cutlets baby".

I'm very charmed by that.

I'm going to try some "cutlets baby".

It's a good baby cutlet.

This is like busting out with chicken liver.

I don't know about any other supermarket

that has entire whole coils of blood sausage.

This is one of my favorite things.

It's actually called Herring in a Winter Coat.

In Russia, you wear a lot of layers,

so here, you have layers.

Herring, grated beets,

carrots, there's definitely a ton of mayonnaise in here,

pickles, probably some canned peas,

all in this kind of gorgeous stack.

These are two kinds of Kholodets

Which my grandmother sometimes makes,

but I have, so far in my life, avoided eating.

I'm going to take this really small piece.

This is little bits of chicken

with this delightfully firm layer

of gelatin on top.

(chuckles) It is good.

It is very flavorful, very garlicky.

I'm sure it's something that really grows on you,

and soon you just can't stop eating Kholodets.

If I want to graduate from merely tasting Russian food

to actually cooking it,

I need to break free of the buffet motherland.

I need to explore the ingredients themselves.

I need to venture further into the other aisles of Net Cost.

You can always tell how much one culture loves something

by how many options it provides of that thing

in its supermarket.

Russian people really love cured meat products.

It just keeps on going.

There's cured pork,

there's like all these loose sausages over here.

Over there, is like a whole other meat section.

Here, they have all of these house-smoked options.

Could I get a slice of the veal roll?

It has this delightful coil of crushed black pepper,

and I'm going to guess, garlic in there too.

Way more flavorful than your average smoked ham.

It's really good.

He looks so peaceful.

Wow, this is actually pretty heavy.

This is a frozen, whole pig.

Full grown beef tongue is large and yeah.

Cute quails all in a row.

I'm not going to pick up that rabbit,

but there's rabbit.

So, another thing that's very common

is to give gifts of chocolate.

This chocolate aisle isn't just here.

It continues like all the way down this aisle,

all boxed chocolates.

Historical themes here too.

1924, the Russian Troika.

Who could forget?

Now you can remember it while eating chocolate.

This pretty much looks like a normal produce aisle.

You have your berries, your citrus, your apples,

but I think the part of it that's most unique

is the root vegetable section.

A lot of times it'll be hard to find things

like celery root, black radish,

really enormous parsnips.

Over here, is barrels of food.

Two words, sour cream.

This is all sour cream.

Easily a dozen different varieties.

I like the boldness of this.

Amish Style high fat sour cream.

All these are like regular fat or high fat.

All that high fat sour cream is delicious

on this wide selection of frozen dumplings.

Frozen fruit section in an ordinary supermarket,

not super exciting, but I get very excited here,

because they have really unusual things

like frozen red currents, black currents too,

sea buckthorn is a really unusual tart citrusy berry

that's kind of trendy nowadays,

but it's impossible to find fresh or frozen.

Like I've literally never seen it anywhere

except at Net Cost.

Like a shot of vodka and a bite of pickled herring,

Net Cost is a one two punch of the familiar

and the strangely exotic.

Armed with leaking takeout boxes and way too much buckwheat,

I'm ready to do even more eating and cooking at home.

Just don't ask me to eat another bit of gelatinous chicken.