Time after time, I find reasons to believe Melbourne is most definitely the BEST. CITY. IN. THE. WORLD. One of them being that I could find every single ingredient to cook chap chye at our favourite Asian grocer shop at Richmond. Tau cheo - check. Dried lily flowers - check. Belacan - check. Dried black fungus- check. Dried mushrooms - don't insult them...different sizes, different prices. Check.
I can't recall which recipe I used from the internet (just google chap chye and you'll get a few dozen, but I didn't want to end up buying things I was only going to use once (like tung hoon and dried beancurd skin) so I did compromise on the variety of ingredients used. I usually study the recipes and combine them together, so I don't think it will be possible to repeat what I did, since I didn't even take down notes.
Soaked them and then tied them
Soaked them and then sliced them
Soaked them and then pounded them
I chopped up about half a cabbage for this
I fried the pounded shrimp first with some garlic and tau cheo
Then added streaky pork
Then I threw in the cabbage
And then I threw in everything else. I didn't have time to get fresh prawns so I just had to make do without.
It tasted pretty good, and was even better the next day after soaking in the flavours overnight.
You can even get belacan cubes and limau perut leaves in Melbourne. So I made some sambal belacan, praying that my angmoh neighbours wouldn't complain about the putrid smell of the belacan cubes roasting in the oven. It was perfect with the chap chye :)
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