Salted egg flavoured chips, croissants filled with salted egg sauce and ice creams made with the rich sauce have been taking off in Singapore for some time and the rich, duck yolk flavour is a favourite in Malaysia, Indonesia and China and multiple other countries. It's been an addition to congee and fried noodles (add a duck egg into your fried char kway teow at Penang Hawker in Campsie).
When we saw this packet at Toko H20, the Indonesian supermarket on Castlereagh St in the CBD, we put it into our basket thinking it would be fun to try. At the checkout, there was a pause when this item hit the counter.
"Are you sure you want these - they're $5 each".
"Hmmmm". Pause. "OK. Why not."
"Really? You want them?"
"Yep, I have no idea what they'll be like but I'm keen to try them!"
This of course, is prime B-Kyu thinking. We often have no idea what stuff is, what it will taste like, but we're happy to give it a go. We did think twice about forking out $5 for a packet of instant noodles though, but curiosity has gotten us far and we hoped it wouldn't fail us now.
Inside the pack is noodles and the expected sachets of powder. Sauce, egg powder, chilli powder.
Simple cooking directions. These aren't a soupy style of noodle, drain off the cooking water before mixing in the flavours. Our tip is to keep a little bit of the water and add in at the end if you want a more saucy end result.
Curly noodles, cooked and ready to go. There's vegetable oil, some stabilizer and a little dye in them.
Throw in the next sachets. Sauce is a mix of vegetable oil, sugar, water, salt, salted egg and salted egg synthetic flavouring, mixed with turmeric, garlic, onion and pepper. No surprises in the fact there's preservatives and additives here, including msg.
Once mixed together, there is a very strong salt flavour in the whole bowl. The sauce ends up mixing in with the salted egg powder but the real rich creaminess of a gooey duck egg sauce is missing. But this is instant noodles, and even at a premium price that level of texture and flavour just isn't going to happen. We didn't add an extra egg, thinking there was enough eggy flavour already. We liked it, we gobbled it.
We'll probably stick to regular Indo Mei and the five sachets of joy in the future, even a pimped up version like Kusuka.
We picked this packet up at Toko H20 at 303 Castlereagh St, Sydney for $5. Some reports are this has sold out already, but they might get it in again. Pick up some of their ready-made meals at the counter instead, far better value for money.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment joy - please keep your musings happy - if you want to complain about a restaurant please do it on a restaurant review site (or your own blog) - we're all about celebrating cultural diversity and the great eats that come along with it :-)
Our ethics: We pay for all our own meals and travel (though sometimes Mum shouts us).