Tasty Arrowhead Chips

After reading SmallKucing's recent mouth-watering post on making arrowhead chips, my itchy hands found itself purchasing a kilogram of the said tubers/corms that very evening and raring to have a go at it!

Arrowhead tubers/corms are produced from plants known as Broadleaf Arrowhead, Chinese Arrowhead Plant, Duck Potato or Wapato [Sagittaria latifolia]. A herbaceous perennial usually grown in shallow water around streams, ponds and ditches, its leaves are arrowhead shaped and produces delicate white flowers (here) and tubers/corms.

In Malaysia, arrowhead tubers (usually called 'Nga-ku' or 'Chi-ku') are imported from China about 1 month before the Lunar New Year (or usually referred to as Chinese New Year here) and is an important item in the celebration. Its usually eaten steamed together with preserved meats like chinese sausages and waxed duck drumstick. It is also delicious eaten deep fried like potato chips.

Washed & awaiting

Close-up view

Peeled

Sliced

Deep-frying

Resulting chips

Can you guess from the last picture, which were the 1st batch out from the hot frying pan?? :)

Nga-ku tastes slightly bitter and raw but once steamed, the bitterness is not that noticeable as it had absorbed the flavours of the various preserved meats steamed together.

Incidentally, I have a very similar looking plant growing in my bath-tub pond, I wonder if its related although mine has a much narrower shaped leaf. Perhaps I won't have to wait for my annual Nga-ku fix afterall!

Have a fabulous time counting-down to Year 2012 this weekend my friends!

Mystery In the Garden

It popped up one day, unplanned and unannounced.

growing from a narrow opening in pavement

Emerging from nooks and crannies it lodged itself in,

with little regard to the condition therein.

growing from un-official compost heap!

A true 'survivor' and intrepid traveller, it made the

journey from the Parent some fences away.

With vining green stems and shiny broad thick leaves, 

it grows into a low shrub or climbs up with help from fences.

Stems turn brown, woody and thick with age while light green
heart-shaped flower pods are borne in clusters or racemes.

Maturing pods open to reveal pinkish red buds, 
which in turn 'hides' curled-up white filaments.

 red petals unfurl proudly to reveal long white filaments,
leaving behind a spent maroon-tinged pod.

 The flowers wave and nod in the wind for weeks 
providing refuge and sustenance for insects and birds.



Until at last, it dries up, turns brown and wither away
- flowers, pods, stems and all.

"Do you know my name?"- it seems to be asking.
 "I think I look somewhat like Bleeding Heart when young,
but more like Fetterbush in growth habit".


With nary a berry nor seed to be seen with the naked eye,
its a wonder to discover seedlings growing all over unexpectedly.

 Yes indeed, there is a mystery going on in the garden.

Update: Thanks to Autumn Belle, it's been identified as a Red Bleeding Heart Vine (also known as Java Glory Vine, Heart Vine) [Clerodendrum x speciosum] :)

Post 10: Linggi House

My family made our way down to Linggi, a small town in Melaka (Malacca) to visit my parents in law recently.


They had moved there from Selangor just over a year ago and being a keen gardener, Dad had been busy planting up fruit trees, vegetables, flowering shrubs, tending to his precious orchids and 'waging war' with lallang (our version of tough weeds!) in the available space there. 


My 2 young children have christened it 'Linggi House' and loves it there cause they are able to run about, laugh, scream, fight & generally make a frightful din to their hearts content since the nearest neighbours are quite a distance away. My hubby and I have gotten immune to their "playtime noises" but my poor parents in law DO get taken aback often, haha.


For the adults, it is a welcomed respite from the hustle & bustle of city life and a chance to inhale clean & fresh air, enjoy a misty morning and actually view the beautiful starry night sky without the glare of street lights & obstructing buildings! 

I wanted to post the pictures of the various fruit trees, vegetables and flowers at Linggi House before I forget their names :) I am posting up the fruit trees first in 2 parts (you see, I'm getting crossed eyed looking for their scientific names!)

Pineapple (Local name: Nenas/Nanas)
[Ananas comosus]

(A versatile fruit! Can be eaten as is, juiced, made into jam & cooked. The leaves are processed into fibres & made into clothing in some cultures)

Passion Fruit (Local name: Markisa/Buah Susu)

[Passiflora edulis]

(While the fruits are a treat to eat, I'm actually more excited to see & admire its beautiful flowers! These were grown from seeds obtained from both yellow & purple skinned fruits. Green chain-link fences are used to provide support)

Mulberry (Local name: Mulberri/Bebesaran)

[Morus]

(I'm not sure which cultivar it falls under as the fruits are still maturing. Hmm, looking forward to using these in muffins :) Incidentally, in Persian language, mulberry is pronounced as 'toot', haha!)

Papaya (Local name: Betik)

[Papaya carica]

(In some cultures, papaya seeds are used as a substitute for black pepper! We usually eat papaya as is but it can be cooked & used in gravies, made into jam and boiled into soup. In chinese culture, it is believed that drinking soup made from boiling unripe green papaya with herbs will encourage lactating mums to produce more milk! :) )

 Ambarella, Golden Apple (Local Name: Buah Kedondong/Umbra)

 [Spondias dulcis]

(Fruit is crunchy, sourish and slightly tart. Normally, it is juiced but can be eaten raw and made into jam. I like to eat this raw as a fruit salad with sliced green mango, diced pineapple & cucumber drizzled over with a sticky dark brown sauce made from shrimp paste, water, brown sugar, salt & chillies! We call the salad 'Rojak' & really, just any kind of fruits & raw crunchy veggies can be added into the mix. Sorry, forgot to take a picture]

Now for some background information on Melaka (Malacca). Melaka is protected by the Straits of Malacca (a narrow natural waterway) in Southeast Asia and historically, was an important port of call and trading post. It attracted a lot of people from different countries to settle down in Melaka and naturally, lots of different cultures meeting & melting together meant that amongst others, wonderful architecture and tasty food were created. 

A blog I visit often, Smallkucing had recently posted about the various sites and tasty food to be found in Melaka. Well, from the comments received when I post a recipe/dish here, I think you will also enjoy Smallkucing's posts on other Malaysia delicacies there :D Have fun!!

Please have a blessed week/weekend ahead!

Post 9: Edible Lady's Fingers!

Despite the title, this post is not about manicures or cannibalism, haha! ;D

My sole Okra plant (usually called 'Lady's Fingers' in Malaysia and in our national Malay language as 'Bendi')(Scientific: Abelmoschus esculentus) has been fruiting regularly since early October.

Out of the 5 seedlings germinated, only 1 survived the destructive eating habits of both grasshoppers and snails, sigh. I planted it next to the corn stalks in free-draining soil added with garden compost. It is a hardy plant and does not need a lot of tender loving care.

Flower buds on top, seed pod ready to flower @ middle & pollinated pod maturing @ bottom

Bee: Yay, sweet honey!

It is about 4 feet high now and producing flower buds right at the top and also at 1 lower side-shoot.

The buds do not all flower together at once but rather one after another when they are ready.

But when it does flower, the light yellow petaled bloom is very pretty! I think the bee inside the flower thinks so too! :D

Unfortunately, the pretty blooms only  last a day at most and will wilt & fall off leaving the fertilised pod to carry on growing into a yummy edible Lady's Fingers!

Since only 1 mature okra can be harvested at any one time, the plant should be grown in a group to get more okra per harvest.

Maturing okra next to emerging seed pod

I'll wait a few more days to let the okra grow longer and will check that its tip is still soft & flexible before snipping it off its stem. Okra gets tough and woody fast and should be harvested before then.

Chopped okra reading for cooking

And my favourite way to cook okra? 

Usually as a vegetable stir-fry together with minced garlic, brinjal (eggplant), long beans, four-angle beans & strips of red chillies in soy sauce.

Stir-fried goodness!

Tried it recently in a sauce made with minced garlic, ginger slices, diced tomato, a bit salt and water and poured over cooked giant river prawns! 

'New' dish

How do you like to eat okra? Denise commented on my previous post that she loves okra soup! I have never tried okra like this!

Would LOVE to read your fave okra dishes :D

While writing this post, I found some interesting information on okra from Wikipedia and here. I never knew okra seeds may be used as a substitute for coffee, did you? 

Have a happy weekend (it is Friday afternoon here)!

Post 8: Colourful Wonders

With the ongoing monsoon rains over here, I had thought I won't be seeing many flowers in the garden until the arrival of warmer weather and was resigned to just looking at wet soaking or limp greenery for the next few months.

Thankfully, some plants have put forth flashes of colours in the garden to keep me cheerful, haha.

Desert Rose (Adenium): grown from seed

Okra/Lady's Finger/Gumbo/Bendi flower: only lasts for 1 day

Tropical water lily

Slipper Flower/RedBird Flower,Devil's Backbone (pedilanthus tithymaloides)

Purple Wishbone flower (Torenia): grown from wind-borne seeds

Heliconia parakeet with yellow & orange bracts(?)

I hope YOU are cheered too looking at them!

Post 7: Rainwater Harvesting

It has been raining cats & dogs recently in Shah Alam and the water level in my 3 rain barrels had hardly gone down much. Nowadays, instead of using the water on plants, I'm using it to wash my porch, car and err, also my dog! 

I have found that plants thrive when watered with rainwater and my fishes (and dog!) prefer it too. For sure the absence of minerals and chlorine is a reason.

I am using 3 blue plastic barrels that previously stored chemicals in powder form. 

Capacity-wise, the 2 shorter barrels fills 120 liters each and the taller barrel 160 liters.

It was quite difficult to find these barrels at our local hardware stores. At the end, the shorter barrels were sourced from a neighbour while the other from a friend working in a chemical factory. 

From the existing drainpipe, I had cut off the lower end and re-use the 'elbow' part as a spout.

Ideally, it is much better to actually connect the drainpipe into the barrel by cutting a hole in the cover and connecting a tap (spigot) at the side of the barrel to access the rainwater.

Since I am not crafty with drills and connecting bits and pieces of pipes, I left the barrels as-is and take the covers off when collecting rainwater and manually connect the drainpipe 'spout' onto the cut-off point.

I will wait for the barrels to fill-up and then re-position the 'spout' to drain directly into the bath-tub pond if so needed. 

 

With the current tropical thunderstorms and heavy rains, the barrels fill pretty fast.

These pictures were taken this evening all within 10 minutes. 

 

 

 

 

Notice the small trickle of water from the 'spout' in the 1st and 2nd pictures. 

 

Then the bigger gush of water from the 3rd picture and the "mini waterfall" in the last 2 pictures.

 

As I am typing this post, it is STILL raining heavily. Sigh....rainwater is good for plants but too much just may kill them.

All excess water is channeled into a make-shift washbasin placed under the drainpipe and thereafter into the main house drains.


These rain barrels have been in service for a mere 2 years and I hope they will last for a long time, haha.

For a look at a much more presentable rainwater harvesting system and cute rain barrels, please visit Myrtle Glen.

I apologise for the quality of the pictures in my blog as I am using the 3MP camera in my handphone/mobile to take pictures. It is handy and small enough to bring around with me in the garden, haha.

 

 

Till the next post, please have a great week ahead!

Post 6: Sweetcorn Part Deux

  
It was with much excitement that I finally harvested my sweetcorn last weekend.

A firm push downwards and a twist later, I was running into my kitchen gleefully in anticipation of my buttery corn on the cob!

And the results??? 

Welllll, anyone remember the saying "Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch?"

Sigh, only 3 corn kernels were successfully pollinated!! Wahhh, sob sob! I was SOOO deflated.

Although the kernels were plump and sweet, it just wasn't possible to imagine them as a complete corn on a cob!

Appearance-wise, my sweetcorn was more like a young/baby corn wherein the corn kernels are unpollinated and still in undeveloped stage.

But size-wise, it was on par with a store-bought 'normal' sweetcorn. 

So, should I consider this as an example of "the best of both worlds?". Haha

Reluctant to consign my sweetcorn into the compost heap, I cut it up and added it into my pot of boiling "ham choy" soup. 

[It is a type of soup made from boiling pickled sour mustard leaves, tomatoes, meat and bean curd together. The resulting soup is salty, sour-rish and a real thirst quencher! Yummy!]

And so, my buttery corn on the cob remains a distant dream this round. Next time, I'll make sure to hand-pollinate my stalks for better success! 

Post 5: Of Tassels, Silks, Ears & Suckers!

Aha, are you curious about the Title of this post?

It is actually the name of parts of a cornstalk ie. corn plant! I only knew this after surfing the net for information about sweetcorn, haha. The Net, done right, truly is an amazing place!

F1: Spent Tassels

F2: Cornstalks

Planted 5 corn kernels (seeds) in early August and within 2 days(!), 4 of them germinated. However, courtesy of the pesky grasshoppers (which by the way, are the bane of gardeners right on par with snails! Young leaves, stems and shoots are damaged overnight..grrr), only 2 plants survived.

They grew tall SO fast, it was amazing. They were adding height everyday and I used the bamboo stakes nearby to gauge growth.

F3: Young ear

F4:Drying silks & growing ear!

F5:Suckers & more suckers

The gist is, 'Tassels' are the male flowers with pollen and grow right at the top of the cornstalk. 'Silks' are the female flowers with filament-like strands to catch pollen and grow on lower parts of the stalk and an 'Ear' is the "fruit" that'll grow into a sweetcorn upon pollination.

Do you remember being taught counting "An ear of corn", "A Flock of Birds", "A Stalk of Flower" etc in school? No? Well, anyway it makes sense to me now, haha.

'Suckers' are like aerial roots that grow out from the stem towards the ground to anchor the cornstalk more firmly. Being slender plants, cornstalks are normally planted in a group to withstand wind. 

What really surprised me was finding out that each cornstalk normally produces only 1 ear of corn!! Further, all the corn kernels on the ear must be pollinated as well to complete the process. Wow! Isn't that complex? I'll never look at another sweetcorn the same way again after this, haha. 

 

I've just discovered this evening that there is another smaller ear growing inside F4. Not sure whether that'll be successful though because the tassels are all dried up. Maybe I'll be able to eat them as "baby corn/young corn" instead?

Oh yes, I'm anticipating that buttery corn-on-a-cob on my dinner table soon, haha.  

Post 4 : Bath-Tub Garden Pond/Pool

Having read & perused a number of gardening books, one of the main item on designing a garden is on creating a focal point. 

A focal point could be anything from a striking structural tree, a unique sculpture, a mass of flowering shrubs, a gazebo, a painted wall/mural and well, anything attractive that draws our eyes to it upon entering. 

Mine is a re-cycled 2'x5' bath-tub placed in the middle of the garden on 4 concrete blocks for stability and filled-up with rain-water harvested from my drain-pipes (more on this in future post!). 

Instant garden 'pond'!

It is planted with submerged pots of tropical water lily; kiambang air (errm, can't recollect the english name for this plant at the moment); a type of reed as well as floating water hyacinths. It's also home to a resident spider, 3 Goldfishes and a  Neon Tetra fish. Its guests have included a dozen tadpoles too, haha!

I consider it a part of the garden's hard landscape but it can actually be easily moved if so needed to as it is not cemented onto the ground.

Sun-kissed surface always looks magical!

2 of the current 4 fishy residents

Keeping the 'pond' clear of decaying leaves/stalks and fallen leaves is an easy job because its size is compact and since its right smack in the middle, I'm always keeping a look-out for yellowing leaves, floating debris and spur-of the moment-type cleaning sessions. When the bottom of the 'pond' looks too murky, I'll use a manual hand-held air pump to clear it and if I'm feeling really lazy, I'll wait for the next rain-storm to do the job by channelling the rain-water right into the pond!

I tend to just stand around the tub and look at it....its really therapeutic and when the purple blooms of the water hyacinths burst forth after a round of fertilising, that's when it's a truly lovely sight! Ahhh, if only the purple blooms are scented too, sigh.

I'll admit that neighbours and passers-by gave puzzled looks when they spotted the bath-tub in the middle of the garden while it was a work in progress (*snerk*- what? are they going to bath in the open?), but hey, I've learnt to just trust my visions and instincts for my garden and it's now the talking-point of our friends and guests!

So, just GET ON with that project you have in mind for your garden! :D