Food shopping at Chinatown

The Chinatown here has nothing on the one in Syd but you gotta make do with what you have. It's one street really, and has a few grocers with the rest being Chinese restaurants or bakeries. There are some side streets off this main street but I haven't found them worth exploring much, yet.

I've also glimpsed those Wing Yip mega stores whilst driving through some outer suburbs and I assume they stock everything you'll ever need under the one (huge, fake & gaudy pagoda) roof - haven't been to visit myself due to these being out in the boondocks.

I tend to go to Chinatown once every few months to stock up on the essentials and my flatmate J also goes quite regularly to get her Korean groceries and Kim chi fix. Sunday lunchtime seems to be a good day to go; the place was relatively deserted and you could shop in peace without fighting for space with grannies or tourists. I try my best to negotiate around the millions of bottles and jars on display, most of which thankfully seem to have some English wording or explanations. But all in all, it seems you can't fully escape the E numbers or sometimes even MSG - yummy!

This is my haul:
* Peanut oil - for stir frying
* Rice paper - to create those ad-hoc rice paper rolls. Mussssttt eatttt betterrrr
* Roasted cashews - for those stir fries and general munching
* Ready made pastes - small sachets of bihun and sayur goreng pastes. Complete with 'permitted flavouring', yummy :P
* Instant noodles - Prawn flava, for those days I just can't be fucked cooking anything
* Tempura batter flour - looks interesting and if it doesn't work out, I'll check out what's available at the Japan Centre
* Frozen har gau 40pcs - I have the requisite bamboo steamer basket and this is an easy peasy lunch or dinner. I will create my own batch one day!!
* Fried shallots - I put these on top of everything!!

So that's it! Some staples to fill my shrinking, allocated kitchen space. I wanted to buy some fresh veges/herbs but didn't think I could use it up quickly enough to justify the purchase. Sometimes I waste so much that much food planning is required when buying veges or herbs. I'm trying to freeze those that can take it and tend to Tesco the rest - urgh.