A box of bakso at OK Indo Food in Elmhurst.

OK Indo Food Store is one of my favorite ethnic grocers in Queens. What I like most about the little mom and pop shop run by Tante Santí Su and her family are the prepared foods that line the counter every weekend. The offerings range from an intense durian cheesecake to things like this box of bakso Surabaya ($7) that I found while still in the grips of the late winter/early spring cold from hell. “Everything’s already cooked, you just need to microwave it for a little bit,” Su’s son Chip said of the meatball soup as I peered at the plastic bag of broth in the plastic container.

Back home at C+M headquarters, I opened my bakso Surabaya kit to reveal the aforementioned bag of broth, two types of noodles, several blocks of tofu, and two types of bakso, as Indonesian meatballs are called. There were also two baggies filled with sweet sticky kecap manis, and fiery sambal, respectively.   I reheated the broth for the soup, which hails from Indonesia’s second-largest city, adding the fish and beef balls and tofu. Then I poured it over the two types of noodles, added the condiments, and dug in.

These past two weeks I seem to have been subsisting on chicken soup so it was nice to slurp down something with substantially more flavor. My only regret is not taking a photo of the finished product. In any case OK Indo’s box of bakso goes down as one of my favorite market finds.

OK Indo Food Store, 88-15 Justice Ave., Elmhurst, 718-606-0104