Vegetables from the Cameron Highlands

My father is visiting us at the moment and while my husband is back at work the children are still on holidays so in between visits to the vet (the younger pets were spayed last week) we are taking trips to see the local sites.

The children acted as tour guides

Last week we had a hot morning with beautiful sunshine and we decided to drive up to our nearest Boh tea plantation Sungei Palas.  On the way back we stopped off at one of the many commercial garden and vegetable centres to pick up some strawberries which are grown in the Highlands.  While they are still a treat food for us they are much more affordable than many other places as they are locally grown.

It is fun to get out and about with them

Just as we arrived the heavens opened and as I did not fancy driving the steep, winding roads back to Ipoh in the torrential rain we decided to wait it out and take a walk around the centre instead of just picking up stuff from the shop.

Beautiful Gerberas are a treat buy

Touring the garden centre was, it turned out, every bit as fascinating as the Tea Plantation.  The strawberries are grown hydroponically and are elevated so that more plants can be fitted in to a smaller area.  This hydroponic system has the advantage of meaning the fruit is safer than when grown in local soil and while I still need to wash them (of course) before eating, I don’t need to disinfect them which does impact a little on the taste of soft fruits.  

Tending the plants is a full time job and each section
has a dedicated manager and picker.

While many growing centres offer a pick your own option on strawberries (or self plucking as it is called here), the one we usually visit did not.  This means that the plants and fruit are managed by experts and the quality is very high even if we do not have the fun of collecting them ourselves.

Strawberries are grown hydroponically

The  fruit are luscious, they are picked as soon as they are fresh and brought straight to the shop for sale.  The plants are for sale as well but I can’t see them lasting a long time in the heat of Ipoh.

Every spare bit of space is utilised

In addition to strawberries the centre grows beautiful lettuce, grapes and a whole range of other vegetables.  They also grow gerberas which really cheer up the home and I always pick up a bunch as a small treat.

The lettuce is tasty and clean

There is a small café attached to the shop which sells (mostly strawberry based) treats.  We settled down to a chocolate ‘steamboat’ or fondue.  It came with the usual strawberries, marshmallows and biscuits but also with tiny cherry tomatoes.  We were a little perplexed at this choice and almost did not give it a try but the combination was surprisingly tasty and one I would have again.  The tomatoes were perfectly ripe and very sweet and the chocolate quite dark so they complemented each other very well.

An unusual chocolate fondue.

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Tea from the Cameron Highlands

We have had a glut of visitors lately.  The other weekend two friends and colleagues from Astana, now based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, came to visit.  It was lovely to catch up and, in what I believe is the hallmark of true lifelong friends as opposed to posting acquaintances, we spent a lot of time talking about life as it is now.  That is not to say that we did not reminisce over shared memories, we would not be human if we did not do this, but we were interested and able to find common ground in our new, separate lives too.

Tea along the approach road to the Sungei Palas plantation

Picking with shears on the high slopes (where the machines can't reach)

We only had a day together so we decided to drive them up to the tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands.  We had tried to get to the plantation a few weeks before but been stymied by bank holiday traffic (note do not drive anywhere on a Malaysian Bank Holiday) so the sunny day of the visit looked like the perfect time to take them.  An added benefit was that the highlands can be difficult for visitors to access if they do not have their own transport so it was a place they were only likely to see with us.

Sungei Palas Plantation Village

There are a number of major tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands, they belong to the ‘Boh’ tea company, a common brand in Malaysia.  The most northerly plantation Sungei Palas is a short 2 hour drive from Ipoh taking in a spectacular mountain climb and the more northerly of the fruit farms and visitor attractions along the way.  The weather is noticeably cooler here compared with the lowlands, reminiscent of the English summer weather (ie it rains a lot but is pleasant when sunny).  As you move off the main road and down to the plantation itself the tea becomes the dominant crop on the mountainside.  The plantation is huge, stretching as far as the eye can see.

Visitor's centre and tea rooms

All you ever wanted to know about tea

As we drove down into the valley of the main part of the estate it was possible to see workers harvesting tea on the high, steep slopes that are inaccessible to the mechanised pickers.  The drive down to the visitors centre ran through the small village of estate workers’ huts complete with a prayer room and temple, playing fields, a school, community centre a café and small shop. It was just after lunch when we arrived so we went to the tearooms which are in a purpose built observatory platform giving a commanding view over the estate.  The rooms serve, not surprisingly, tea in many and various forms, pastries and cakes and is pretty good value for money. 

Factory weighbridge (and one of my favourite photos of
the two older children)

Sample testing

After a short break we took a walk around the information display.  The information provided was detailed and interesting, explaining the tea making process from start to finish and providing a lot of background and marketing information on the ‘Boh’ brand, our older kids (8&6) certainly managed to get a lot of information even though they did not read the full content of each poster.  We gave the gift shop (which sold packets of branded tea that are easily bought in our local supermarket) a miss.

Machinery as old as Granny and still going strong

Original brass cutting plate on display

 The real highlight of the visit, however, was a tour around the estate factory.  It was established in 1935 and much of the machinery in use is still original (in design at least if not in components), it was rather like walking into a living museum.  The guided tours were finished by the time we arrived but the factory is so small and the signage and information so detailed that it was not necessary to have a guide. 

Exploring the tea slopes

Once we had finished our brief tour we walked down through the plantations, enjoying a stroll amongst the tea and being out in the sun without the oppressive humidity that we get down in Ipoh at times.  The way back included an obligatory stop at a vegetable and fruit centre.  We will certainly be back (probably with more visitors in tow) and will also make an effort to drive down to the other, larger, plantation where the larger factory will offer a different insight on the tea making business.


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The delicacies we leave behind

Everybody on the expat circuit has some delicacies from home that they pine for.  After writing about shopping in Kazakh supermarkets I started thinking about what I cannot live without.  I think, because I have moved around all my life I am both lucky and unlucky in this regard.  Most countries I have lived in have left me with some absolute 'must have' item that I miss when I leave.  This gives me more to miss but also means that I am used to doing without a lot of the things I love.

Some things are more difficult to get than others.  My favorite food is a gammon roast - not easy to find in some places.   Pork Products can be difficult to source in the Middle East and expensive when you do find them, I did find gammon here in Astana but when I cooked it it turned out to be ordinary pork - quite pleasant but not what I was looking for.    But then you always miss what you cannot have: in Nigeria we could get a most amazing array of local fruits but we could not get apples.  Every time I came home for the holidays I would bring a bag of them with me.  My mother would slice and freeze these.  I don’t recall that we ever used these in baking or fruit salads but single slices would be taken from the freezer as a special treat on difficult days.

When I was very young my favourite treat, on visiting my relatives in Ireland, was to eat a Creme Egg.  This is a deliciously disgusting Easter confection popular in the UK and Ireland consisting of low cocoa chocolate and creamy fondant.  Even today I have to limit myself to just one as they are incredibly addictive.  I have found a recipe for homemade eggs but they are even more lethal than the processed version.  100% sugar!

Ontbijtkoek from the Netherlands, a real favourite with me but
I have to make my own if I want to eat it.

My current 'must haves' are the things I go and buy straight away as soon as I return to a certain country.  In the UK it is a gammon roast and Aussie Mega shampoo, in the Netherlands a Krokett and Ontbijtkoek with a trip to the pharmacy for some Henna Plus hair balm.  When I am in Turkey I stock up on Lokum, Apple Tea and Mavi jeans (to my mind the most comfortable jeans in the world).  I have not been back to Nigeria or Venezuela since we moved away but were I to return I would make a beeline for a can of Limca (a sour lemon fizzy drink which comes, originally, from India) and churros respectively.  My husband really misses red Leicester cheese (a typical English cheese that is excellent on sandwiches) and pickles/chutneys.  I sometimes make a batch at home to use on sandwiches although perhaps not as often as I should.  We were thinking about what we will miss when we leave Astana - my husband will miss the very tasty shashlik (grilled kabab style meat) and I will miss pelmeni, a ground meat dumpling wrapped in thin dough.

Many of my British friends love Marmite (I cannot stand the stuff and was almost ill the one and only time I ate it), this is difficult to buy outside of the UK, other items my British friends seem to miss are Cadbury's chocolate and biscuits such as Bourbons and Custard Creams.  Rather inexplicably plain black tea seems to be on the list, although it is easily found just about everywhere in the world.  My English relatives joke that I just cannot understand how important the right tea is, an English tea company even exploited this habit by using it as the joke in an advertising campaign they were running - quite funny but oh so true. My Dutch friends have similar difficulties finding delicacies from home. 

Good old fashioned English scones are another yummy delicacy we
have to make at home.

As the world becomes smaller and supply chains easier to manage it becomes easier for supermarkets to devote sections to expatriates.  Many British supermarkets have a Polish Section for Polish expatriates living and working in the UK who want a taste of home.  Most large British towns have an oriental supermarket and online retailers will ship anywhere in the world.  I have a catalogue that lists all sorts of delicacies that can be delivered anywhere in the world but this ends up being very expensive so we tend to live on what we can get in the local supermarkets without hankering too much for what we can't.  I do, however, stockpile a little, when I first arrived in Astana I could not find muscovado sugar, it is easy enough to make a substitute but when I found it in stock one day I bought four kilogrammes.  I have not seen it since so it was a good call.    

Every now and then, however, it is great to have a treat or to lift the spirits so I stuff the empty corners of my suitcases with treats and keep one or two packets of biscuits stashed away at the back of a cupboard.  We all need to feel a connection with home from time to time whether it is apples in Nigeria, custard creams in Astana or Ontbijtkoek (Breakfast Cake), Kroketten or  Hagelslag (Chocolate sprinkles for sandwiches) just about anywhere outside of the Netherlands.

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Click on the picture for more posts on the challenges of expat cooking.

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