Chinese Arrowhead

Have you seen this in the hypermarket before (or whichever place you buy your groceries)?

chinese arrowheads

Chinese arrowhead or sengkuang cina or chi gu (ciku) or nga gu (ngaku) can be found in our marketplace about a month before Chinese New Year as that is the time they are harvested. I heard they are imported all the way from China.

Last Chinese New Year, my maid kept on asking me to buy her ciku (the way she pronounced it) as she loves it. I told her what I know ciku is a fruit and she can just pluck it from the ciku tree I have in front of my house.

yummy ciku! 

This year she asked for it again but this time, she explained that chi gu looks like onion and is only available during the month before Chinese New Year. That was when I started noticing Chinese Arrowheads being sold in most of the hypermarkets and I saw many Chinese bought boxes of them. But I still did not buy them yet. Until a few weeks ago, she followed me to the local market and showed me the Chinese Arrowheads and said "haaaa! inilah ciku! tapi saya tak suka ini. Ini besar. Saya suka yang kecil-kecil". A few days after that, I saw them in Carrefour again and decided to buy some for her.

When I gave the bag to her, she was smiling to her ears and could not stop from thanking me the whole night. The next day, when I came back from work, she proudly showed me a jar of the arrowhead chips she made. Both my son and hubby love the chips. I love it too! So, last Monday when I saw the arrowhead selling at a cheap price I bought some more. And yesterday I came home to jars of the arrowhead chips.

one of the jars

How did she do it? First, she skinned the arrowheads. Then, she sliced them (use the slicer function at your grater).

in case some of u don't know what is a slicer and a grater, the slicer is the one with the long hole 

Lastly, put the sliced arrowheads in the hot oil slice by slice (so they won't stick together). She said, you can also soak them in water with some sugar and salt then dry it before you fry them. I told her not to do that as the chips already has slight salty taste and is already good on their own.

Give it a try before they are out or you have to wait another year before you can see them again. I am sure you will love it :)