On Paus

I wish, wish wish I could have this now.

And since there are NO decent ones in Perth, I shall stare at a picture of a decent looking one on my blog and imagine eating it.

Me and paus go way back in time. We established a relationship when I was less than ten years old, and I remember grandad bringing some huge-looking ones from Kuching whenever he came to visit. (Grandma's instructions, actually) He would bring us to pasar malam (night market) and I remember feeling very tiny and vulnerable standing in front of a huge, neatly stacked tower of aluminium steamers as the fat foochow man in a tattered white singlet with a toothpick in his mouth looked on. Back then, I was too young to understand the language they were speaking, so grandad did all the ordering and paying. I remember being handed a black plastic bag with steam coming up from the openings at the top.

Somewhat like this, except the steamers were aluminium and double the size.

I loved pau, especially meat ones, and we used to 'fight' over who got the ones with the egg in it. Of course, Big Brother somehow always managed to convince us he deserved it but as I got older I discovered anyone could have it.

One day, when I was old enough to comprehend, grandad and dad mentioned that people who made good tasting paus would make them while standing up, and smack each blob of dough onto the dirty pavement, pick it up, knead it and smack it into the pavement again before filling it up. Therefore, they said, it was best not to eat the pau skin. For a while I took their advice, but then the naughty monkey in me decided to go against it one day- and since then, I was in love with pau skin. at that young age, it looked white to me so I assumed there was no dirt.

Mom then went on to tell me that the coloured dots on the paus (used to identify the different fillings) were actually marks from highlighters and permanent marker pens. Again, for a while I heeded her advice to pinch out the coloured dots before consuming the pau, but it didn't feel complete. So once again, the monkey in me got really bored and decided to try otherwise. So, there was once, when no one was looking and all the paus with the different coloured dots were neatly arranged on the table, the monkey pinched off all the coloured dots and ate them. A few hours and a plateful of un-identifiable white paus later, no one was happy as they didn't happen to get the pau they wanted, or they had to tear it in half just to find out what was inside.

Then I moved to Perth, the pau-less land. Where paus can only be found in Oriental shop freezers, or in some dim sum places, but the taste, goodness me, is no where near the foochow paus back home.

Thank you Foochow pau for all the memories, the nutrition, and the pleasant textures- I will not take you for granted anymore.

There. The craving is gone :)