Only mad dogs and Englishmen would be walking in the scorching hot sun in the middle of Buntong, Perak searching for a taugeh farm. Well one English lass and four mad Malaysians more like it.
Now I've eaten taugeh all my life- can't really avoid it being an Ipoh girl. I love how it's fat and crunchy, just blanched in hot water with soy sauce and sesame oil drizzled on top. It's a small brand of made-in-Ipoh-happiness. Yet I never once wondered where they plant all the sprouts. It can't be undulating green fields like paddy. I figured it be cottage-sized, behind someone's house in large plastic barrels.
A lucrative cottage industry
I was not far from the truth. "No, go away! Find someone else," a painfully skinny man in shorts shooed us off his property. We were resorting into peeking at people's backyards because one thing I did not anticipate about beansprout cultivating was the secrecy.
We had Ipoh free paper Echo in our hands because one of the journalists managed to get access to one of these sprout farmers. Even then, they are a surly lot, not impressed by the press and want to be left alone. Is growing the best beansprouts a trade secret? Restaurant owners are also reluctant to disclose their suppliers, maybe because they are afraid that someone else might steal them away?
When we inquired at the sleepy Buntong market, each Auntie and grinning Uncle pointed us in a different direction. It's always, "go there, turn right pass a kopitiam and then walk straight." There were countless kopitiams for a suburb this tiny. Soon in the sweltering noon sun, we were seeing mirages of blue plastic barrels on the horizon, only to discover it's a rubbish heap.
Finally after walking past a group of chilling out Chinese dudes for the fourth time, we hit jackpot. One of them had a friend who worked a beanpsrout joint and offered to lead us there.
This is day 4- almost ready for harvest!
We came to a house that's turned into a warehouse. There were barrels of taugeh in all kinds of sprouting stages. In the middle was a large water container full of the fat, crunchy stuff, being sorted and cleaned.
The man there who identified himself as Ah Keong grinned. "How come it's so hard to find us? We had people from Hong Kong and Taiwan come visit." Evidently they don't advertise in the English papers. He took us on a brisk tour.
"This one," he points to a barrel where seedlings are resting under a green netting, "about one day old..." and then so forth until the barrels where sprouts were bursting out, is five days old. Wow. This is lucrative. 5-6 days and you are ready to harvest! And you don't need land, just barrels. Probably the biggest cost is water. Sprouts need to be watered every 3 hours. And here lies the secret of Ipoh's fabulous taugeh. Water from the limestone hills that brings with it calcium and minerals. It makes them strong, plump and hardy.
Fat, plump and ready to crunch!
There are also different grades of sprouts. The best ones are in a special barrel and they are fat as any I've ever seen. The ones currently being sorted are slightly lower grade so they will go into noodle dishes. "This one, we feed to the animals," Ah Keong shows a basket with lesser sprouts. Even then, they look way better than some that I've eaten in KL. I don't see any goats around. I wondered if they feed their domestic pets taugeh. Imagine that, a dog with a taste for beansprouts!
All in all, a rather educational afternoon. And now I can say that my Ipoh taugeh knowledge is complete. Of course it's the eating that I excel at. Rolled in springrolls... fried with char kuey teow or just on its own with a dash of good soy sauce.
These are a few of my favourite things...
Note: Alas! Though they were okay with a small tour and photographs, the owner later refused to be filmed. Too bad else the whole world can see Ipoh taugeh in all it's glory. This Ipoh girl would just have to console herself with a huge plate of Ngah Choi Kai. Check out the
Ipoh Echo article here.
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