No English? No Problem!

Monday, July 04, 2005

Here's an interesting situation that arose when I paid a visit to a friend of my parents, known here as Aunty Mok.

Glancing at the 1001 knick knacks she had around her house, [she makes my room look spotless] I noticed a basket with some small, round, chocolatey-brown things inside. I was curious as to what they were, cos they looked like some strange species of truffles to me [I donno why truffles popped to mind] so I finally asked Aunty Mok what they were.

"Oh, they're mandarin oranges!"

"What?" Total disbelief.

"Mandarin oranges, from New Year!" She took out one of the 'oranges' from the basket and held it out for me to look at. Even at closer range, it didn't look any more 'orangey', and in fact, resembled more a chocolate muffin.

"Erm, from which New Year is that?"

Turns out that if you leave the oranges alone, in about 6 months, they'll turn totally brown all over, if you're lucky enough that they didn't grow fungus instead. Then, you can peel off the skin, and leave it in boiling red bean soup. The soup is supposed to taste fantastic after that. Even when she peeled off a piece of the skin, I could smell a strong, tangy orange smell coming from it.

Hm. Would be an interesting science experiment for decomposition and then Home Econs.................. :p

2 comments:

Unknown said...

哈~ 別小看這些橘子皮!

Lots of Chinese desserts, including the all so famous 紅豆沙 served at wedding dinners, needs these dry skins to bring out that unique taste!

:)

Aki Tan said...

That I didn't know... :) But I'm not sure if I want to try out the same thing at home... I mean, what if they get fungi or something??