Salted Fish and Such

The fish monger decided to be nice to me this morning to retrieve his high quality piece of Chinese salted fish (mui hiong ham yue in Cantonese) he kept hidden under his table from other customers. 80 grams (this is a little over 2 liang, 1 liang¹ goes for about RM4.80) of this delicious stuff set me back for slightly over RM10, can be used for only one meal and will be the most expensive ingredient in the entire recipe.

Salted fish has its status raised from the days where a poor man who can’t afford meat or chicken will gobble his whole bowl of rice or porridge with a small piece worth less than a few cents (neighbours smelling salted fish cooking usually made snide remarks, it’s not something they will ever eat) to the present time when I have to spend the cost of two meals to get what I need to go with my chicken.

It’s not just because of the inflation rate.

I blame the Singaporeans and Hong Kong dwellers who don’t have much good produce, resort to buying ours with higher prices to lure traders, thus we now no longer have the best humongous prawns, fragrant mangoes and salted fish² in abundance.

I had to make sure I had that tiny cube wrapped up safely in my bag before I proceeded with the rest of my shopping.

¹ The unstandardized traditional Chinese weight measurement method is still popular with our local wet markets. 1 jin (800 grams) is 16 liang instead of 10 liang, so at least I get more for what I pay.
² That huge block of salted fish the monger kept hidden is worth more than RM180. Studies have proven that salted fish (especially the Chinese variety from certain parts of China) is carcinogenic when consumed in high quantities.