The New American Shopping Experience is here in Sydney

Despite the heavy rain and traffic jams caused by the huge crowds, my wife and I joined the thousands of shoppers to shop at Costco's first Sydney store yesterday. Our new American way of shopping experience started long before we arrived at the store. We were stuck in an one and a half kilometre traffic jam leading to the 14,000-square-metre warehouse store in Auburn; the second to be opened in Australia by the US chain that sells discounted products in bulk to customers who pay a $60 membership fee.
We had read in the papers that their first Melbourne store received a rapturous response from shoppers on their grand opening and we were sort of preparing ourselves for a big turnout at the first Sydney outlet when it opened its doors yesterday. But nothing could have prepared us to this entirely new shopping experience. It was beyond our expectation! Customers had arrived two hours earlier before the opening time at the Sydney store and quickly filled up the 800-capacity car park. When we finally inched our car to our destination, we had to park at the designated overflow car park opposite the store.

We were soon ushered to join the long queue of customers pushing oversized shopping trolleys towards the entrance of the store. Inside this well-lit warehouse, we were taken aback by the pallets stacked three high of variety of products ranging from TV sets to household goods and fresh produces.
Soon I was overwhelmed not by the special opening offers that the crowds were piling into their trolleys but the congestion at the checkouts told me it was time for me to get of there.

Unfortunately, I had to cut short my new shopping experience and decided to head home early and come back another time only if their prices are attractive enough to entice me to shop with them again.

Homemade Noodles with its Political Ingredients...

I sat down intending to enjoy my bowl of homemade noodles and was about to give myself a pat on my shoulder in front of my family for cooking this rustic noodles dish on a cold winter day. But I suddenly realised the credit should go to my late mother who had taught me how to make these noodles. I do not know from whom she had learnt how to make these noodles. If my memory serves me right, she started to incorporate it into our staple food during one of the campaigns where the Singapore government was encouraging its populace to eat more flour when there was a shortage of rice in the regions. I am pretty sure that many Singaporeans of my generation can still remember some of the numerous campaigns that were continuously churned up in the 60s and 70s. Whatever Parliament decided to do, a national conversation about the campaign would last until it was replaced by another new another campaign.
Although my late mother was not a politically savvy person, she had always been a staunch supporter of the People Action Party in her lifetime. She openly supported her Prime Minister and his political party to a fault. She would chide anyone in the family or her neighbours,who dared to be indifferent from her political conviction in her presence. To her, the PAP can do no wrong. Maybe she was right. My family and I still love these homemade noodles regardless of it political origin.

Homemade Noodles Recipe

2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup warm water
2 Tsp oil
2 cup flour (for dusting)

Combine 2 ½ cup of flour and salt and mix in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre of the flour and add water and oil a little at a time. Mix into soft dough with both hands and knead on a floured surface for about 15 minutes, or until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a bowl and cover with a cling wrap and set aside for about 1 hour to improve on its texture.
Roll out the dough on a floured surface with a rolling pin into 3mm thick sheets. Dust the rolled sheets with flour to prevent sticking. Using a sharp knife cut the floured sheets into strands and dust with plenty of flour. Do not worry if the stands are irregular in its size; that is the trademark of homemade noodles.
Fresh noodles can be used for most noodles recipes and will stay fresh for a week in the refrigerator and can also be frozen for future use.

Where have all the Toasted Salt and Sichuan Peppers (Huajiaoyan) gone?

It is regrettable that the traditional dip for Chinese style deep fried chicken is fast vanishing and has been replaced with sweet chilli sauce in most restaurants in the last couple of years. This dip commonly known as “Huajiaoyan” (Toasted Salt and Szechuan pepper) or simply called “Pepper and Salt “ is served with deep fried chicken and to eat it in the traditional fashion, pick a piece of the chicken with a pair of chopsticks and dip each piece into the huajiaoyan before eating. I am pretty sure you have tasted Sichuan peppercorns before. It has an array of aliases, such as pricky ash,fagara, sansho and huajiao. It makes an excellent dip for a variety of dishes especially crispy-fried chicken.

Although not botanically related to the black or white pepper, Sichuan pepper is certainly its culinary cousin. Unlike its cousin, Szechuan pepper lends to its own characteristic flavour which produces more of a numbing pungency that gives the tongue and lips a tingling effect than the spicy heat that lingers in the mouth which is normally akin to the after-effect of eating a chilly. Well, before it vanishes into the horizon and joins the forgotten list of traditional food, here is a recipe for keepsake.

Huajiaoyan (Toasted Salt and Sichuan Pepper)

4 tbsp salt.
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
½ tbsp black peppercorns.
Heat wok over moderate heat and pour in the Sichuan peppercorns and the black peppercorns. Stir about 1 minute or until the peppercorns release its fragrance. Pour the peppercorn into a mortar and grind them into a fine powder. Reheat the wok and pour in the salt. Stir until the salt just begins to turn golden brown. Pour it into a bowl to cool. Mix the ground peppercorns with the salt. Store in an air tight container and it will keep indefinitely if kept dry.

It’s a delightful sensual culinary world of chilli...

It has never ceased to amaze our friends from Hong Kong whenever we asked for a second helping of cut chillies or hot chilli sauce at the yum cha lunches together. “How can you enjoy the delicate taste of those dim sums when you have numbed your taste buds with chillies!” they exclaimed. Just as it is difficult for them to convince us to give up on the chilli with every mouthful of dim sum and enjoy the delightful morsel as it is presented, it is even more difficult for us to eat without chilli. Well, unless you are true blue Singaporean, the likelihood of you to understand this spiritual experience or otherwise is out of the window. There is simply nothing quite likes it – it’s a delightful sensual culinary world of chilli. This usually begins with a tingling wave when the chilli first comes into the contact with the tongue. It gradually gives way to a warm heat but soon passes into a numbing, almost anaesthetic feeling on the tongue. For those who are not accustomed to this eating habit, it can be a burning sensation but to many Singaporeans it is peculiarly addictive because it is purported to give them a spiritual lift to go with that sensual experience.
Buying chilli can be expensive, yet the plants are perfectly easy to grow even in the cool temperate regions of Sydney. You can grow plants from seed but it is easier to buy seedlings from the local nursery or Asian stores and it no time you’ll have all those wonderful chilli to harvest and eat. There are several different varieties of chillies, which lends their own characteristic flavour to their spiciness of their particular regions’ dish. The Thai and Korean cuisines usually demand mainly hot chillies, whereas we prefer the medium to hot chillies for the simple cut chilli to go with most Singaporean dishes such as kuih teow soup or beef noodle soup.

Would you like to have Chinese or English tea?

As a direct descendant from a less sophisticated early immigrant stock of Singapore for whom a cup of tea was a cup of tea, obviously without knowing Lu Yu, a Chinese writer at the time of Tang Dynasty in his “Classic of Tea” wrote tea was more than just a drink , it was a symbol and a ceremony. I didn’t know much about this all important drink until I started travelling in my early twenties to Eastern Asian countries. Like many Singaporeans from the same era, tea was either Chinese tea or English tea. We didn’t have a choice over the type of tea in the restaurants at that time, where tea was normally served freely on the house as a complimentary welcome drink and topped up endlessly throughout the meal. Imagine the faux pas written all over me when I committed a cardinal sin of not knowing what type of tea to order with my yum cha at a Hong Kong restaurant when I first visited many years ago. Even until today, it is difficult for me to taste the difference between the astringent pale yellow Dragon Well tea from Hangzhou to the Oolong (Black Dragon) tea that includes such brand as the Iron Goddess of Mercy from Jiangxi which when pressed into bars is said to be as hard as iron. The only exception is the tell-tale smell of the Jasmine tea which remains my favourite and fool-proof tea beverage when I am ordering in the Chinese restaurant.
The preparation and sipping of tea are part of the tea ceremony of a kimono clad Japanese who have given a quasi- religious elevation of this ancient ritual from China and the daily life of a manual worker in Hong Kong. But in Singapore tea drinking has never reach such esoteric heights. However, in modern Singapore, the Chinese tea comes with the Bak Kut Teh. It is served with the tea cups and tea pot immersed in a basin of hot water for hygienic purposes rather than ceremonial. After all, many of us come from the coolie stock and like tea should be left to brew and steep in our heritage.

Camellia is related to my mug of tea...

Cupping a warm mug of tea in my hands on a cold winter morning, I was out in the garden admiring the showy flowers of our seventy odd years old camellia tree that had bloomed for us at this time of the year. “These teh hwa are beautiful, aren’t they?” said my wife as she picked a dewy flower for display indoor. “Have you just given a new name for the camellia?” I asked as I raised my mug of tea for a sip, without realising that teh hwa (茶花tea flower) was a name given for camellia in her Hokkien dialect. Before she could reply, I answered my own question to myself, “silly of me, of course the tea plant is related to the Camellia family” and also realised that the mug of tea I was sipping came from the tea plant (Camellia sinensis which is the source of commercially grown tea).

We have yet to identify this magnificent evergreen flowering camellia of ours but we believe it belongs to the species Camellia japonica which is the remote ancestor of many of our garden varieties. Our camellia has flourished in our front garden almost without attention and grows into a three metres tree since we first lived here. We have another different camellia in the back garden. It produces many fragile, dainty flowers which have a sweet peaty fragrance. But the petals fall quickly to the ground and when fresh form an attractive carpet before turning unsightly with spent blooms on the ground. Therefore I would recommend choosing a variety that flower freely and hold well on the tree and do not fall. Camellias are long lived. Often, the older they are, the better they are. Thus they make excellent commemoration trees as house warming gift for friends and relatives.

Today is Rice Dumpling (Dragon Boat) Festival.

Although bak chung (rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves) is one of my favourite snacks which is available throughout the year in most Asian stores in Sydney, but I do not normally buy this traditional rice dumpling to eat except during the Dragon Boat festival which is celebrated today in many Asian countries like China, Hong Kong and South East Asian countries with a large Chinese community. Strange as it may seem, eating bak chung on any other day is likened to eating Christmas pudding at any other times of the year.
Growing up in Singapore as a child, I can vividly remember, each year, as the month of Fifth month of the Lunar calendar approaches, every traditional Chinese household became busier than usual , thrown into a frenzy activity in the kitchen by the bak chung making season. It was customary to exchange dumplings among friends, neighbours and relatives as early as one week before the festival. My mother would make it a point to have the dumplings on the day itself and also offered the dumplings to the dearly departed ancestors. This traditional culinary event falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar to commemorate a Chinese patriot and poet Qu Yuan who committed suicide by throwing himself into the Mi Luo River on the fifth day of the lunar month. The legend goes that when the villagers heard of the suicide, they immediately raced in their boat to search for him. Thus began the tradition of having dragon boat races until today. It is also told that when the poet’s body could not be found, the villagers started throwing dumplings into the river to divert the fish from eating the patriot. Another explanation is that the rice dumpling was thrown as an offering for Qu Yuan. Whatever the reason, eating bak chung have become an integral part of the Dragon boat festival just like Christmas pudding is to the Yuletide festival.

My wife and I have just finished wrapping three dozen of bak chung and they are now boiling in a big pot in the kitchen to be ready for afternoon tea and tonight’s dinner. For the recipe and how to wrap a bak chung, please click on my previous posting on the right hand side of this page.

P/S
Photos of today’s bak chung will be posted once they are cooked.