No Shortage Of Asian Groceries

One of the main concerns of many Malaysians who are about to move to Australia is the possibility of not being able to get their usual supply of groceries. Well, if anything, there are more varieties of Asian groceries here than back in Malaysia – at least this is the case in Melbourne.

Melbourne is truly cosmopolitan. Asians are everywhere and there are suburbs that are predominantly Asian. Box Hill, which is 5 minutes from my house, is a typically Chinese area. Then there are places such as Richmond, Footscray and Springvale occupied mostly by Vietnamese.

Since Box Hill is so near me I usually do my grocery shopping there. You can find virtually everything you need to do your usual Asian cooking here. And there’s more. Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese ingredients that you don’t normally see in KL are aplenty here. Very often, you can find things that are actually imported from Malaysia too!

You want to cook Assam fish or beef rendang? No problem. You can find tamarind, lemon grass, curry leaves, chili, onion, garlic, ginger, shallots and whatnot easily. If you’re lazy, ready-to-cook paste is also available. And you’ll be spoilt for choice.

In addition to spices, other dried ingredients are also easy to find. Herbal soup mix, ikan bilis, dried shrimp, salted fish, salted eggs, instant noodles and all the beans that we use for making desserts are also displayed prominently on the shelves of most Asian grocers.

And the greens – they are much bigger, plumper, juicier and tastier than their Malaysian cousins, courtesy of the temperate climate here, although I heard that the continued drought and water shortage may result in a drop of harvest and an increase in the prices of greens soon.

Well, remember how our parents used to say that we’d have to eat bread everyday if we moved abroad (ie to Western countries)? Those days are certainly gone, especially in Melbourne.

Nasi Lemak, Anyone?

Food and I - we go hand in hand. I go nuts when the buffet table is covered with an assortment of food. Trust me, I'll be one of those who makes at least 5 trips to the buffet table. And each trip features me with a HUGE pile of food on my plate and an equally HUGE grin on my face.

But strangely, I'm not all that fussy about food. Sure, if the food looks and tastes great, it's a plus. Still, if it's not, I don't hang myself over it. Which is fine because where I am now, I'm also the chef of the household and I'm not known for my culinary skills. So no gourmet stuff, just ordinary meals that get the family going.

And I didn't seem to miss any of the Malaysian hawker stuff like nasi lemak, mee goreng, char koay teow, asam laksa, roti canai, rojak buah, pasembor, etc, until 2 friends brought them up in separate ocassions.

During one of our recent chats, Nani, my partner in crime since our reporter days back at The Sun, talked about the nasi campur with the spicy crab and prawns that we used to gobble down during our lunch break. I hadn't thought about that for nearly 2 years until she brought the subject up. And that night, I had the strangest dream - me and Nani on a weird mission to find our favourite rice stall and no matter what we did, we just couldn't find it. Gosh, what a sick dream.

Then Sangeeta, another ex-colleague who has also migrated to Melbourne, tempted me with talks of how she got some nice nasi lemak bungkus not far from her house. I begged her to give me the address. Alas, I haven't checked the place out yet.

Well, Malaysian food isn't all that hard to find here. But more often than not, it tastes a bit weird, even though the chef is really Malaysian. You can even find nasi lemak in some of the Asian grocery shops but I have yet to be tempted to give it a try. The look of it is enough to make me cringe. Maybe I should learn to make my own nasi lemak. The roti canai sold in the grocery shops, however, isn't too bad.

All this talk about food is making me hungry. Thank goodness I still have lots of potato chips in the house ...