Page 11
Grandma's gardenOoi Chong Jin remembers
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Page 11
Grandma's gardenOoi Chong Jin remembers |
| Drumsticks MY, IT'S BEEN AGES SINCE we tasted drumsticks. At one time there were about 4 or 5 trees of this species in Ah Mah's house. The leaves are small somewhat tear-shaped (but bigger than tears) and Indians cooked the leaves for food. In 
Ah Mah's case we cooked the drumsticks in curry with small prawns.
The green skin of the drumstick is first peeled off using a sharp knife
or apple peeler. The drumstick must be of the right age, not too young
as there would not be much to eat nor too old as it would then be too
fibrous and not good for the palate. When ideally ripe the drumstick
has a diameter of about 3/4 inch at the middle of its length. The peeled
drumstick is then chopped into lengths of about 2 to 2 1/2 inches and
then put into the cooking pot. Unlike the chiku tree the drumstick
tree is smaller and shorter about 20 feet high at most and is not for
climbing because the branches are feeble and cannot carry any substantial
body weight On way to pluck the drumstick is to hit the stalk with a bamboo
pole. The stalk breaks and the fruit falls to the ground without any damage
being sustained.For some of the denizens of "Green Trees" the drumstick curry is a delicacy. In eating the cooked drumstick you have to scrape out the juicy seeds inside and eat them. You do not eat the whole cylinder which is too tough and fibrous and practically unchewable. I remember once when Chou Bah Koo's Mat Salleh guest was left alone to figure out how to eat the drumstick and he was caught chewing the unchewable. How embarrassing! How ungracious! Another recipe for cooking the drumstick which was taught to me by Jenny's cousin (Simeon) is to boil the peeled drumstick, scrape off the cooked soft seeds and add a little butter before serving whilst hot or warm.. Flame of the Forest 
The flame of the forest tree grew next to the tamarind (asam
ko) and it grew to a gigantic size almost tangling up the electric
and telephone wires so that Ah Mah had to have it chopped down by some
professional tree feller. This happened around 1963-1964. To save some
money (or what? I have forgotten) only the branches were chopped off
leaving the trunk standing up to a height of about 15 feet
. |
| This subsequently gave
me a special kind of pleasure. Lumberjacks seen on film in the cinema was
a source of some fascination to me in my youth and although we were not rich
I bought a lumberjack axe for about $15/- and proceeded to chop down
the tree trunk. All in it took me about 5 hours spread over a period of
2 weeks (if I could remember correctly) to chop through the trunk which
had a diameter of about 30 inches. To swing a lumberjack axe horizontally at about waist height forcefully against a tree trunk is one hell of a tough exertion and one can hardly do it for more than 3 minutes at a time without taking long breaks. Years afterwards , in the late 70's and early 80's, Chou Bah Koo also took up this exercise but, if I remember correctly, he used to take swings with a lumberjack axe (was it mine? If not what happened to mine? A lot of my childhood property had disappeared mysteriously when I came back to Kelawei after I graduated) against dead tree trunks lying on the ground. He had, I believe, purchased these trunks from somewhere just for the sake of his exercise. Swinging an axe vertically is much easier than swinging it horizontally. Well coming back to my own story, after I felled the said trunk it lay in the garden next to the tamarind tree. To cart it away was not on anybody's mind as this would have incurred additional costs. So it was left in the garden to rot away. What subsequently happened was an awesome display of the power and beauty of nature. The felled tree trunk did not rot away ignominiously. It gave life to a colony of mushrooms - dozens of forms and shapes and an incredible variety of colours and hues. Never had I witnessed such a wonder of nature. Could any of my fellow denizens of 86 Kelawei remember that incredible sight (if they had taken the time to rove around the compound as I did)?! Practically the whole tree trunk became covered with mushrooms and as the season progressed so did the colony of mushroom. From youth to adulthood and to old age the numbers sizes and colours of the mushrooms changed. I have been going into the hills of Penang and elsewhere with the Hash for the past 10 years and have seen quite a number of dead tree trunks but hardly any colony of mushroom even remotely like the mushroom symphony in Ah Mah's garden. Frangipani 
For many years and during my time there were three trees in Ah
Mah's garden. All bore white flowers. In the early days before the 60's
these trees were regularly visited by the magpies with their famous song
:"see-to-it". However the magpies gradually disappeared, the victims,
I guessed, of human progress. These frangipani must have been quite mature
by the time I arrived in Kelawei as a refugee because, as far as I could
remember, they did not add on any appreciable size throughout the years
I was there.We kids used to climb these trees quite often as the branches were quite well spread. I was more in the garden and in the sun than in the house so I was nick-named Or Bah(dark skinned kid, a child of the sun).The memorable experience about the frangipani was the cash one could derive from it. Several times a year an Indian florist would visit the premises to pluck the white flowers subject to a payment of 50 cents or one dollar, depending on the crop. Whichever lucky child happened to be in the garden when this Indian florist visited would welcome him and get paid the 50 cents |
| or one dollar. Years later when the visit of the Indian florist became less frequent and when the 50 cents or one dollar or two dollars did not mean so much to the grown up kids, Lau Hor picked up the dropped flowers, further dried them, packed them in plastic bags and sold them to some Chinese medicine shop. The Indians had used the freshly picked flowers as funeral wreaths to send off the dead whereas the Chinese used the dried flowers to preserve life. Jambu 
At one time or another there were a few jambu trees in Ah Mah's
compound, both the jambu ayer and jambu batu. There
were two varieties of jambu ayer: the green and the red. The trees
were quite easy and safe to climb like the chiku tree. Some people
wrap the growing fruit in old newspaper to prevent flies from laying their
eggs on the fruit but not in our case. I guess that in the garden were
so many kinds of fruits that we could offer to share some with the fruit
flies.In certain years, when the weather was not too wet, we were lucky to get jambu fruits which were free or, almost free, of worms (i.e. larvae of the flies). This was one of Ah Lee Ee's favourite fruit. The fruit (size: somewhat smaller than a tennis ball) was cut in halves or thirds or quarters and eaten raw or dipped in black soya sauce mixed with white sugar. The jambu ayer is also an ingredient of famous Penang rojak but we seldom made rojak out of our jambu. When the time is wrong and when the ripe fruit is infested with larvae the sight of larvae squirming inside the split fruit was disgusting and we threw away such fruit. Sometimes when a guy was lazy he would chew on the fruit without checking whether there were worms inside. I never heard of anyone getting sick from eating wormy jambus. The jambu batu or guava during the days of our youth was not well bred and normally had a hard core of small seeds. When you bite into this core of hard seeds some of the seeds may get into the cavities of your teeth and give you toothache. I did not enjoy the jambu batu because of this. It is somewhat regrettable that during my youth my parents did not have the time to teach me tooth hygiene and this resulted in my acquiring quite a number of amalgam teeth for the whole of my adult life. I guessed that because our Ah Kong (who passed away even before I was born) was a WOG (westernized oriental gentleman) our family did not believe in gold teeth. I do not now have a golden grin. Some of the real Chinamen I met in China when I went to visit Lau Hor in China in 1990 had gold teeth and golden grins. Seedless guava was introduced in the 80's (so I believe) and nowadays we can chew pleasurably on seedless guava. The current cost (in 1996) of seedless guava is about RM5/- per kilo. The hard-seed jambu batu which I am talking about grew to a height of more than 15 feet (and up to 30 feet). The tree is very tough and the branches do not easily break. Branches of the appropriate shape and thickness were the standard material for making catapults (or "lastic" as we used to call it). Another plant which provided material for making catapaults was the mangosteen. . |
Mango 
There was a mango (machang) tree next to the tamarind tree and
a smaller mango tree next to this machang tree. Every year the machang
tree fruited but the fruit which had a strong pungent fragrant smell
was not very popular with us and many of the fruits were left undisturbed
on the tree. However the fruit was sourish-sweet and quite nice to eat
when ripe. We normally plucked the fruits unripe, buried them in uncooked
rice for a few days, everyday checking whether the fruit was ripe and
peeling the skin off the ripe fruit (like peeling an apple) before eating.
When a fruit is ripe it is soft and fragrant As for the smaller mango tree I never managed to taste the fruit as the tree, during my time, did not bear any fruit The tree (trunk) harboured some white ants and the tree never added on in size. Year after year it remained of the same size carrying about the same number of leaves. Pineapple 
There were about three pineapple plants at/near the hedge bordering
Kelawei Lane. The plants bore fruit every year but there was nothing
special about these fruits and did not attract much attention even amongst
the younger inhabitants of "Green Trees". These were local pineapple,
not of the Bali variety. Once a while when I was caught up with the act
of catching fighting spiders amongst the shrubs forming the hedge of
the garden I got myself scratched by the sharp serrated leaves of the
pineapple.Pomelo , 
For many years a pomelo tree grew in the garden. This
tree was enclosed in an almost square space surrounded by chicken wire.
Within this enclosure ducks were bred. At one time or other up to a dozen
ducks lived here. Ducks like a wet environment and mixed with their droppings
this became the most foul smelling place within this ecosystem.Come Chinese New Year some of the ducks would be slaughtered to make Ah Mah's delicious kiam ch'ai ar. I guessed that this smelly and moist spot was specially picked by Ah Mah (or her agent) as the ideal place to grow this pomelo tree. The fruit borne by this tree was quite good and could even match some of the famous pomelos grown in Tambun (near Ipoh) in Perak. |
| Rambutan 
This was one of the more popular fruits in Ah Mah's matriarchy.
! remember three trees growing at the same time in the garden. First,
there was the tree next to "Green Trees" . This was the tallest of the
three trees and it bore red sweet-sour rambutans. The trunk grew vertically
up from the ground for about 12 feet before giving off branches. Thus,
for this first 12 feet one had to climb the tree by shinning up like climbing
a coconut tree. The flesh of the ripe fruit was soft and not "lekang" but
in the absence of the better sweet fruits from the other trees which ripened
at different times these fruits were, nevertheless, popular amongst the
children. The memorable experience regarding this
particular tree and the fruit borne by it was the annual jam-making
by Ah Mah. The peeled fruit was cooked in a brass pot until they became
soft and easy to separate from the seed. The flesh was then separated
from the skin, further cooked with sugar in measured amounts progressively
added in. The mixture was continually stirred over a fire until it turned
brownish red. At this stage it was ready for eating. Of course the children
could not wait for the jam to cool and be bottled up before testing it
against their eager taste buds. It is an interesting thought as to how
many people have ever tasted fresh warm jam. The warm sweet-sour jam spread
over traditional Indian white bread was a delightful gastronomical experience
to be remembered forever. The jam was cooled, bottled up and later distributed
to Ah Mah's knia soon. If Ah Mah did make a small
business out of the remaining jam I never knew about it.The other rambutan tree was the shorter one growing within the circular patch or field within the compound. In its youthful days this tree bore excellent, sweet and crunchy yellow-skinned fruits. However as the tree aged over a period of 30 years or so the fruit became smaller and often diseased. I remember one time when I was about nine years old or thereabouts when Ah Seong fooled around with me to pluck some ripe fruit off this tree. Sometimes one used a rambutan cutter to cut away the fruit especially those growing at the outer edges beyond the reach of one outstretched hands and fingers as one stood on the branches up on the tree. The cutter (used also for picking chikus) is affixed at the thinner end of a bamboo pole and the handle of the knife is tied to a thin rope. When the rope is pulled the knife edge is forced against an opposing edge and any thin branch or stalk caught in between would be cut off. The aim is to cut off branches or stalks carrying ripe rambutans. The danger in this picking process is that it is hard to fix the cutter to the end of the bamboo pole and sometimes when the rope is pulled or jerked the whole cutter is dislodged and may fall on ones head. Unfortunately this was what happened on this particular occasion. Another interesting aspect of our culture is that our initial response is to laugh at the victim - only afterwards would we think of helping him if help is needed. Whilst tugging at the rope tied to the knife handle the whole cutter came loose and landed on Ah Seong's head splitting part of his scalp. I can't remember whether I started to laugh at this unfortunate incident but what I remember vividly was Seong quickly coming up to me and saying, "Don't tell my mama, don't tell my mama". The thought of his mama |
| giving him a tongue lashing
or worse, a lashing on his bottom
drove away any thought of crying or any registration of physical pain in
his brain. Come to think of it this was not quite surprising: "Green Trees"
did breed or support quite a number of formidable women.. Another formidable
matriarch is, of course, our Ah Mah who ruled over "Green Trees"
for many years and who exploited its biological resources with her many
talents. Another matriarch to reckon with is "Tua Chee" who continues
to have a bellyful of fire whilst in her 80's. Star fruit 
As long as I could remember there was one star fruit tree
in Ah Mah's compound as indicated in the sketch plan. It is now obvious
to me that this tree was not the culmination of any determined effort
in plant breeding because the fruits of this tree were quite small and not
nice to the taste buds. Nowadays the commercial fruit farmers in Perak
&. Selangor are growing and selling "honey" star fruits which are
quite large by comparison with Ah Mah's starfruit. The commercial fruit
can weigh as much as 1/4 to 1/3 kg each and the fruit is as sweet as honey,
so it is claimed. Still, for the children, in rimes of want, when the other
fruits were not in season Ah Mah's star fruits gave us a reasonably inviting
alternative. Star fruits are normally wrapped in paper when they are
growing to prevent fruit flies from laying their eggs on the growing
fruits. However, our fruits were not excellent; nobody ever took the onerous
task of wrapping the growing fruit in old newspaper.When we bit our teeth in the fruit we had to be careful to avoid the spotted parts because under the spots are where the larvae of the fly have their home. The thing quite memorable about this starfruit tree is the caterpillars that used to sit on this tree. AH Mah's domain was not only home to various flora but also quite a good collection of fauna as well. The bark of the starfruit tree was dark coloured and was a favourite home of the black caterpillar which grew to about 3 to 4 inches in length. This black caterpillar metamorphosed into a large beautiful black butterfly with coloured patches/spots on its wings. What's the name of this species? However this caterpillar always gave me the creeps and I loved to hate it. Many a time when I climbed the star fruit tree (which grew to about 18 feet tall) I had the unfortunate experience of landing my hands on this caterpillar. The result was that the caterpillars stinging hair would poke into the flesh of my fingers or palm and I would have a hard time removing the tiny hair. This was done by rubbing the affected parts onto (the hair of) my head. If I remember correctly this trick was taught to me by Kandiah but nobody ever asked what happened to the caterpillar hair when rubbed onto ones head. What happened when we went to sleep and rested our heads on a pillow? However I am sad to say that my ordeal was hardly worth mentioning when compared to the caterpillar's ordeal whenever one was unfortunate enough to tangle with me. The fate of the unlucky caterpillar was death by fire. The boys (my cronies, the neighbourhood kids) would light up pieces of old newspaper rolled up like a cigar and burn the poor caterpillar. As if this was not enough I remember one night when I was about to drink from the tap next to the asam ko tree. Unknown to me a caterpillar of |
this species was probably having the same idea. Some sixth sense must have caused me to hesitate for a split second when I caught sight of the caterpillar crawling up the pipe next to where I wanted to put my hands and my mouth. It gave me such a fright and because the power was with me I am ashamed to say that I reacted with extreme vengeance on the little fellow whom I thought shouldn't have been there at all. Peaceful co-existence is not easy and absolute power corrupts absolutely. By this time I was much older and my weapon against the creepy crawly had become more sophisticated. I took one of Ah Mah's flit (insecticide dispenser) and pumped a jet of mist on the poor caterpillar whilst at the same time (I can't remember how I did it) holding a small candle flame in front of the jet mist. The jet mist turned into fierce jet of fire just like what we saw in the movies when the Americans fought the Japanese or Germans with flame throwers. However it was only later on that I learnt that the flame could burn right up into the container of the flit and explode in the face of the user. God does not punish the wicked, at least not immediately - otherwise I might not be here to tell you this story. There were many other species of butterflies in Ah Mah's compound. I remember another occasion when another caterpillar was burnt to death, this time not by me by some others of the other sex. This caterpillar was about 3 inches long, quite fat, by caterpillar standards and had a green smooth skin. There were black markings on the caterpillar's head which looked like large mournful eyes. Somehow I felt my sympathy going out to this little fellow and when he was burned I scolded the perpetrators and tried to rescue the little insect by pouring some ice cold water from Ah Ma's fridge onto the insect but to no avail. It is quite a wondrous thing watching butterflies fly. They often move about in pairs and they seem to beat their wings so effortlessly almost like floating in the air and flying with no apparent destination in mind and in so carefree a manner. It is hard to believe that in spite of being so innocuous in their behaviour butterflies actually fly about in pursuit of their living functions. Just remember we cannot enjoy the butterflies without putting up with the caterpillars! # (to be continued) Click here for Part One Go to the top |
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Ardchak awak
The Baling meeting (2)
The Bangkok communique |
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Editorial consultants: Mr and Mrs Lim Teong Beng Technical advisor: Tony Ooi Thanks to Robyn Choi for her assistance this issue Thanks to "The Penang Palate" for the
use of coconut scraper and kuay kapek mould illustrations |
If you have any photos of old Penang which you would like published please send them to 35 Halaman Batu Maung 11960 Batu Maung Penang and we shall return them to you after publication We have prepared an Index to The Penang File. If you are interested in having a copy please email us at thepenangfile@yahoo.co.uk giving your name, address as well as your email address ____________________ The Penang File Issue 40 |