Fruits and Veggies

Despite having had my fair share of food poisioning over the past month (we've been here nearly a month!) the food, as expected, has truly been one of the highlights of the move.  I think my favourite find thus far has got to be what is alternatively called water spinach, morning glory and kangkung or kangkong.

As far as I can gather it is technically a Vietnamese vegetable, but it's everywhere around Malaysia both in the supermarkets and restaurants.  Below is my favourite way of preparing it, but it can also be added to curries or stir-frys etc.

1. Blanch a bundle of kangkong in boiling water, just long enough for it to come back to the boil (this is really imporant, we skipped this step once and the stems ended up a bit on the crunchy side.)
2. Whilst boiling, toss a couple of crushed cloves of garlic into a hot wok with a splash of oil and brown them nicely.  Also, chop finely another couple cloves of garlic.
3. Drain the kangkong well and add to wok with chopping garlic.  
4. Stir-fry for a minute or two and add a good splash of fishsauce and mix to combine.
5. Devour. (I don't think a bit of chopped fresh chili would go amiss as a nice topping or even some crisp fried shallots . . .)

I'm sure this can be found outside of Southeast Asia fairly easily, especially in Asian supermarkets in bigger cities.  That being said, I would bet this was not available in Galesburg, Illinois when I was growing up and would be suprised if it was even available now. 

I still have a whole treasure trove of leafy Asian greens to work my way through and been enjoying the availablity of things like fresh kaffir lime leaves and curry leaves - no more dried leaves for me!  Herbs like holy basil and coriander have a completely different (better) taste to those in the UK and things like lemongrass and galangal don't cost an arm and a leg.  That being said, for every up there are a few downs and I'm sure at some point we will very much start to miss things like asparagus and proper English peas.  Tomatoes are a bit on the expensive side and mostly taste like those horrible Tesco Value Dutch greenhouse grown ones you get in the UK.  I'm holding out hope though as our local grocery stores seem to cater mostly to the Chinese and Malays, if I can find a good supermarket in Brickfields on Little India I may find that the Indians have horded all the good tomatoes for themselves.

It's the same story again for fruits - pineapple, starfruit, mangoes, bananas, papaya, limes and durien (YUCK) are widely available and incredibly cheap.  Strawberries appear to be widely imported from the US (Driscoll's) and raspberries I assume simply can't even survive the shipping process.  Lemons also don't do particularly well as it is a bit too damp for them and blueberries go the same way as the raspberries. 

Fruit and veg does also go off incredibly quickly due to the heat (and for not being genetically-modified I suspect) so it does mean a daily trip to the store, which is fine while I'm not working but I suspect we'll be eating out a lot more when I get a job.