No good…

I have yet to try quite a few of the instant pastes from my cousins here and here…and also from my friend but my missus went and brought home this one…

…that somebody gave to my sister-in-law and she passed it to my missus to let us have a go at it. I was torn between using the one by Khadijah or this one – I reckoned they would be more or less the same thing but seeing that this one’s from a company in Singapore…

…though a product of Malaysia (they probably have their factory here as overheads and labour would be a whole lot cheaper considering our dwindling ringgit), I settled for this one in the end.

The packaging sure looked very nice and they claimed to be 100% natural plus all that jazz…

…and it sure was easy to use…

However, when I opened the pouch inside the packet, I did not like the smell, not at all. It was like the canned sambal ikan bilis (anchovies) and that put me off right away. Nonetheless, since I had already opened it, I just went on and used it to cook some prawns…

…with some Thai basil leaves and serai (lemon grass) added.

Sad to say, it was not nice, to say the least…

– the taste was somewhat peculiar, not like anything that I had had before and I actually thought the canned sambal ikan bilis or prawns that I do not fancy at all, would taste much better. I don’t know if it was my fault and the extra ingredients I threw in had adversely affected the overall taste but it was too late to cry over spilt milk – what had been done had been done.

Left with no other choice, we just ate the prawns – of course, being what they were, they tasted all right and the next morning, I took the leftovers, rinsed them and threw them into my fried bihun…

…using the Dollee sambal with shrimps which I thought had that canned smell as well but it was not as strong. Between the two bottles that I got from my friend, I like the other one, the Crispy Prawn Chili,  a whole lot better and it was extra spicy too, just the way I love it! Thankfully, it turned out really nice and I sure would want to use the sambal again should I be frying any more bihun in the days to come.