Fresh and Strange Longan Fruits

What? Never tried the longan fruits before? You dunno what you have been missing! The longan fruits are sweet and absolutely delicious! It is one of my favourite fruits. But the thing is... I have never seen a longan tree before.... :-) In fact I have been walking pass a longan tree day in and day out and I did not realised that it was a longan tree!

Yesterday, I was handed a bunch of longan fruits and I did not even realised what it was... LOL. The fruit's skin was green and the skin was hard and felt thick. The longans that I am used to seeing are brown in colour and the skin soft and easy to peel to get to the fruit inside.


Photo of a bunch of longan fruits I am used to seeing in the fruit market stalls (linked from Wikipedia).


The fresh longan fruits, which I did not even realised was longan.


The longan tree was very tall and the fruits was hard to reach.


A branch of longan fruits.


I packed some to let my colleagues try.

When I had finally gotten to taste the longan, it was not what I had expected. The skin of the fruit was thick and tough to peel. The meat of the fruit was fleshy, but lack the sweetness and juiciness usually associated with the longan fruit.

In any case, it was an experience to remember. Maybe the fruit had not yet ripen, hence the green skins... LOL. Maybe next year when longan is in season again, I will wait till the fruits is properly ripen :)

Two Mango Trees in Batu Gajah

A couple of weeks back, I took the family back to Ipoh for the weekend. Since my wife's parents have not been staying in their house in Batu Gajah (about a half hour drive from Ipoh), she told me to go there and pluck some mangoes before they all get rotten.

Everyone in the family loves mango, whether the mangoes are sweet, sour or even unripe, my wife will find a way to make them into something really tasty. The favourite being sliced mangoes in "rojak" sauce.

I took my eight years old son, Joel and we spent the afternoon plucking mangoes from two mango trees planted by my wife's grandma. She passed away a couple of years ago and everyone really misses her, including my kids, whom till today, always refer to Batu Gajah as "Tai-po" place.


Joel plucking mangoes.


In the end, we plucked about 30 mangoes.


Joel looking for mangoes.


Finally, he spotted some mangoes and managed to pluck one.

While I was plucking the mangoes with my eldest son, I remembered thinking that, we all get to enjoy these mangoes simply because Tai-po had planted them. At that moment, I asked myself, what will I leave behind for my children when the time comes for me to go? Will it be something as simple and as enjoyable as a mango tree, where every so often they will come by and enjoy the fruits? And perhaps tell stories to one another underneath the shade of the mango tree?

I have no answer for myself now, but I think I roughly know, where the spiders are.

Related Post:

• A Fruitful Day - June 17, 2007
  

Batu Gajah - Hakka Chee Cheong Fun

I want to write again about my trip to Batu Gajah on June 16th. I want to share with you a story about the Batu Gajah Hakka Chee Cheong Fun, which I discovered during that same trip.

The story began in 1970s, when I was still in primary school in a small little town in East Malaysia in Sarawak called Miri. I spent about 15 years there doing my kindergarten, primary and secondary schooling until Form 3.

My mom would buy us Chee Cheong Fun from the Miri wet market for breakfast. That was my first ever encounter with this delicacy. My sisters love it and we would fight to get more than our fair share each time.

My second encounter with Chee Cheong Fun was in a Dim Sum Restaurant in Vancouver, Canada. The texture of the Chee Cheong Fun was smooth and silky, unlike the ones I had when I was in Miri. There were fillings of prawns or minced meat enfolded inside, giving them their respective flavors. However, I could not help thinking about those Chee Cheong Fun I had back in Miri and found myself longing to go back during that time.

During this last trip to my wife's hometown, Batu Gajah, we were sitting in the living room when my wife's aunt shouted, startling all of us. In the Hakka dialect, she said, "The Chee Cheong Fun guy is here. Get your husband to go out and call the guy to stop so that he can try our Hakka Chee Cheong Fun."

She has just heard the Chee Cheong Fun seller riding pass on his motor bike blaring the horn at regular interval. So, my wife quickly got me up from watching TV and hurried me to go chase the Chee Cheong Fun guy on a motor bike, I dare say. What's wrong with her... how was I to chase a guy on motor bike, I thought to myself. Besides, I was watching a real good show on TV (which for the life of me, I could not recall the show's name now, senility???) and was not amused.

When I got out to the streets, the guy was no where to be seen. Of course, they would not let it go at that, "Go and find, go and find. Use my father's motor bike and go chase," my wife said.

Not wanting to cause a scene, I relented and rode the motor bike out in hope of finding that Chee Cheong Fun seller. And of course, like all normal married couple, my sweet wife directed the search.

Finally, we caught up with the seller in front of a house a few blocks away. Some lady (obviously) had flagged him down and she was buying some for her family.


The Chee Cheong Fun - There were the plain ones (almost sold out in the other compartment) and the ones with "dried" prawns embedded in the Chee Cheong Fun.


The seller packing 5 packets of the Hakka Chee Cheong Fun for us.


The man and the tools of his trade.


I ate a serving there.


I asked him how often he drives pass this neighbourhood and what time of the day. He pointed to the back of his motor bike and said, "The only way to be sure I come by is to call me by this number."

"Cool!" I thought. I will definitely do that whenever I get back to Batu Gajah.

Now, the reason in the beginning of this posting, I wrote about my Miri Chee Cheong Fun and Vancouver Dim Sum experience, was that this damn Hakka Chee Cheong Fun in Batu Gajah tasted exactly like those I had when I was a kid a lifetime ago!!!

Of course you know there is nothing like that first time experience.

Of course you know I had to benchmark all Chee Cheong Fun with the Miri ones!

Of course, the Batu Gajah Chee Cheong Fun brought back so many memories.

Of course, I will go to Batu Gajah for that Chee Cheong Fun! I am home!

(Btw, I was back in Miri in 1984. I searched for that Chee Cheong Fun in the wet market and was told that the seller had moved.)

A Fruitful Day

Went to Batu Gajah for the weekend. For those who are not familiar with Batu Gajah, it is a small town in Perak about 30 minutes away from Ipoh. To be exact, me and the family went to Kampung Bemban in Batu Gajah. Stayed with my in-laws in their typical Chinese kampung house with chickens running around and fruit trees everywhere.

The wife needed to see the family and do some family stuff. I was looking forward to this trip for a personal reason; my wife's aunt make a killer "bak chang". And its that time of the year... the "Bak Chang" Festival... :-)


Home made Hakka "Bak Chang". Yum yum... they are really da best... :-)

When we reached the house, the first thing I noticed was the Mango tree. It was filled with mangoes on the verge of being ripe!!! I quickly found a mango "harvester" and went to work.


I called it the mango "harvester" for the lack of a better name. It has a hook at the tip and a sack right below it. As you hooked the mango fruit, it drops into the sack. A great invention... I must say.


The "harvester" from another angle.

Btw, the mango tree was heavily guarded by red ants. I was fighting a losing battle with these fiery ants. Each time I hooked the mangoes into the sacks, tons of ants would crawled onto the harvester's pole towards me as I held it.

I swear some of them were conducting aerial attacks... I found myself crawling with ants... and these devils are fearsomely protective of their damn tree.

Of course, being an "ant bully" that I am, I persisted and was quite fruitful in the end, pun intended... :-) The following are the fruits of my labour... LOL... really getting carried away.


These mangoes did not make in into the sack and suffered a 15 feet drop. They had to be turned into rojak asap... yum yum.


The harvested mangoes waiting to be packed into plastic bags.


The mangoes with my weapon of mass destruction, as far as the ants are concerned... :-)


Btw, this was the 3rd harvest... I had previously bagged two bags already.


The mangoes, packed and sorted into 3 bags. 1 bag is about 60 mangoes... :-)


The Mango Tree after being stripped of its fruits.

Hard to believe that I harvested more than 150 mangoes from this tree. Btw, there are still more mangoes in the tree, which I could not reach with the "harvester".

I think in another month I will be back in Batu Gajah again... this time, it will be DURIAN!!! Yeah!.