When first package arrived, I was excited and worried at the same time. I went to the post office to pick up the first package and was told they only have one package for me. I scratched my head, look at the note and mailing slip from Malaysia and there is no indication of 2nd package. For the next two weeks, I was eying on the mail box like eagle watching at its prey. Finally, on a Saturday, my door bell rang, and then I saw the box sitting in front of my door and the post man was on its way walking to his truck. The wait is overred, I got all my care packages from Malaysia!!!!
I was expecting the package to be in similar condition as the first box. But I was wrong, one of the side has its paper torn off a bit.
A closer look at the side, it looks like there is a crack but, it’s not big enough to tear the styrofoam box.
Upon unpacked, it looks like everything is in good shape without everything upside down.
So what is in this care package? Let’s go through the list:
Two bags of dried herbal tea. This is the kind of tea I grew up drinking, and it has cooling effect. It’s not bitter at all, and when sugar is added, you drink it just like any sweet ice tea, except it’s more flavorful and good for you, well, except the sugar part.
Next, we have 250g of dough softener, 250g of dough emulsifier, 250g of Ovallet (cake emulsifier), and 500g of Pastry margarine.
These are basically commercial pastry additive that, well, enhance the finish products. Dough softener makes finished bread stay soft longer so it doesn’t go stale the next day like home made bread. Its effect truely shine when added to rolls, making them soft like marshmallow when first come out from the oven, stay soft for a few days. I was told dough emulsifier makes steam bun dough stay soft even when it’s cooled. I never used it before so I bought a pack just to try it out.
Ovallet is the cake emulsifier that makes sponge cake rise tall without using the foam method which require you to beat the egg white to meringue then mix with the yolk, oil and flour. With the cake emulsifier, you can just dump all the ingredient in one bowl and beat the hell out of it since the emulsifier will work its magic so the cake batter doesn’t deflate quickl, hence have time to rise in the oven. Pastry margarine is the secret ingredient in commercial pastry, especially in the puff pastry department. It is easier to handle than butter, more flavorful than shortening (Crisco), and has special ingredient that make the pastry stay crispy longer. My baker sister recommended me to this margarine for Egg tarts so that the tart stay crispy for days while the custard provide its moisture to the tart.
By the way, for my American friends, 250g is about 9 oz, stupid American Imperial Unit……
Back to the care package, I also have 3 bags of dried sour plum, which has quite a few uses, from cooking to making fruit condiment. But one of the most common way of using it is to mix with Asian lime and sugar, adding a bit of “zing” to limeade. One of the bags get torn open and suffer from moisture problem, so I toss that out after taking the photo. The other two bags are as good as the day I bought them in March.
For salty snack, I wish I can eat this as often as I want, which is savory fried fritter. The fritter mix in the shipment are onion flavor, and shrimp flavor. You just mix the powder mix with water and a bit of oil, scoop into small size ball then drop into hot oil. A few minutes later, you get those crispy hot salty “shimpy” or (oniony) fritter, hmm hmm hmm!!! Oh come one, if you like hushpuppy, you know understand why I like this, because it’s 10 times better than hushpuppy!
Now, this will look foreign to a lot westerners, there would be scratching their head and asking why are we eating tree bark? First of all, these are not tree bark, well, some of them are shaving of tree trunk anyway. These are herbal mixed that Chinese medicine shop put together for various health supplement purpose. You don’t eat them, but you use them to infuse the soup you make. The soup can be sweet or savory, depend on the kind of mix. Most savory mix required you to steep with chicken, pigeon or beef because they’re a bit bitter, so the protein cut down the bitterness. As for health benefit, some warms your body up, some just help blood circulation and make you more alert. I don’t really care much for the health benefit because I don’t think there is a scientific proof of it, I get them just for their taste.
In the first package, I had the Tenom coffee in blue packaging. The blue packaging version has creamer added to the mix. This brown color packaging only has the coffee and sugar.
Ah, local product of my home state, the Sabah Tea. Is this tea any special then the Lipton brand in the US? Yes, especially when you add condense milk to the tea. By mixing the tea with condense milk, it becomes something like a Chai tea kind of drink, but not cinnamon or clove like Chai, but that unique aroma and sweetness from condense milk.
There was also three tubes of Malaysia unique fruit paste product, the durian paste cake stick and the coconut paste cake stick. They’re sweet, but not too sweet, and have that chewy caramel kind of texture, and offer that tropical fruit flavor that only South Each Asian would appreciate. As you’re reading this post, I have taken the last bite of the piece of the cake. It is really irresistible that once you open it, you just can’t help but finish the whole type in two days!
Next is the heavy weight food service quantity Chili Sauce. The Maggi brand is just like the Kraft brand in the US, almost everything they make is de-li-cious! The chili sauce is more popular then ketchup in Malaysia, drip your hot crispy french fries or spring roll in it, and you got yourself a treat! It’s not that hot, more of a sweet and a bit hot kind of sauce. In the US, four 10 fl oz (40 fl oz total) cost about US$13, I bought this 3.3 kb tub (116 oz) for US$4. So if you don’t count the shipping (which I will reveal later), it cost about 10 times more in the US.
Ah…. Nestum, adding it to your drink and it’s like adding mini marshmallow to your hot cocoa, it just transform the drink go something better! In the US, it’s impossible to get it, the closest I can find is the wheat version, which costUS$8 for 400g. I think I paid less than US$3 for 550g.
What on earth do you need a tub of margarine? When the margarine is as versatile and flavorful as the one in Asia! You can’t find Planta brand margarine in the US, but you can find the alternative, which is Blue Band Margarine and they taste very similar. Blue Band Margarine is imported product since it’s made in Indonesia. You have to pay US$1.75 for 250g of Blue Band Margarine, my 3.3kg (3300g) Planta cost me about US$7, so I paid about 8 times cheaper in the Malaysia. By the way, this margarine is the secret ingredient used in my Mexico/Polo Buns, so it’s very important for me to have it in stock. The margarine doesn’t require refrigeration, so it can travel on the sea for 3 months…….I know, talk about Hydrogenated fat, but in South East Asia, the climate is so hot, it’s common to use this kind of product, the key is……. moderate!!!! Trust me, you won’t find me spreading inches of this on my toast, or scoop big dollops of this on my bake potato!
In a clear plastic jar, I have a few bottle of secret ingredient, some of them are white powder form (do you want to carry it through the airport?) Some of them as in liquid or paste foam. Okay, back to the powder form, they are food grade ammonia powder and bread improver. Yes, ammonia does goes into baked good, you probably have been eating it all your life without knowing it, in the US, they’re more commonly referred to as Baking Ammonia. You know, if you make your own food, you know what goes into it and can choose to leave it out if you want! Bread improver is similar to lecithin, which is use to stabilize bread’s shelf life. For the liquid item, I have lemon paste/emulco, lychee and rose essense/extract.
Oh boy, the list just keep going. Here we have a couple Malaysia specialty seasoning, like the Maggi mushroom chicken stir fry seasoning, Rooster brand premium curry powder (my favorite curry powder), dried curry (”Rendant”) paste, A1 red curry paste, and Laksa paste. I never really tried some of these, so I just buy them because I was craving for them and I had room in the shipping box.
Hmm…. white greasy paste, another margarine? Yes, it’s a special kind of margarine for cake icing, called “Krimwell”, taking the syllabus of “Cream well”, got it? Cream icing really well?! My sister’s special icing call for this margarine, so I have to have a small tub to try out since Crisco doesn’t work the same. This margarine suppose to behave like Crisco in making icing, but it doesn’t have that after taste film coat your tongue kind of feel.
Moving to healthier stuff, I have two jars of fruit salad paste and condiment, also call “Rojak” sauce. Rojak is a fat free salad that consist of cucumber, green mango, green papaya, pineapple, jicama, ground toasted coconut and many more fruit of choice. The sauce is sweet and spicy, I later found recipe about how to make this sauce, which consist if special ingredient like shrimp paste and shrimp sauce. Oh, come on, it’s not gross, it’s just like anchovies in your Caesar Salad!
Aside from food, I also got some baking and pastry supply. The mooncake mold is a bit bulky to carry in my suitcase to go on plane, so I just put it into the care package. I already have two mookcake mold which I have been using for the past 8 years, I could really use a different pattern mold.
Other baking supply are different shape cutters for different cookies. There is also a special tool for waffle flower cone holder which is the way icing flower is make in Asia.
After I empty the box, I then realize how bad the damage was, the styrofoam box actually fell apart at the bottom, I think it was the heavy can of chili sauce and margarine. Thank goodness for the plastic string/rope that my sister tied to the package, it held the whole package together long enough until I receive it.
So, here is a million dollar question, well, not really a million dollar, but it feels like it: How much it cost me to ship the package from Malaysia to me in the midwest USA? It cost RM$300, which is about US$100 for 45kg/100lb of goods. If the US dollar was stronger, it actually could bring the cost down a lot lower. Is it worth it? I think so, mainly because I get a lot of stuffs that I couldn’t find in the US, or very very hard to get, and it saves a lot trouble of carry through airplane. Are they illegal? Well, if they sell it in Malaysia, I don’t think there is nothing wrong with it, after all, Malaysia is more strict then US when come to drugs regulartion. In Malaysia, drug dealers get death penalty for selling drugs!
