Any better…

No, I know for sure that this…

…can never be better than this – the nyonya mee siam but then again, I guess they are two different things altogether. I got both from my friend from Singapore and the other day, I decided to fry some bihun using the above.

I have tried something from this same company before but I do recall the packet being very small. Well, my Bintangor friend, now staying and teaching in Banting, Selangor, tried the paste and was praising it to the skies but no, I was not impressed at all.

This would be something like what I had here…

*Archive photo*

– fried mee siam and though I quite enjoy it, I would much sooner go for the nyonya version. So, what’s stopping me, you may ask? Well, for one thing, I do not have all the ingredients to make sure it comes as close as possible to the real thing and another reason, of course, was that the last time I did it, I thought it was a whole lot of work…so I guess I will just wait till some special occasion when I would take out that very precious box of the ready-to-cook sauce and use. After all, it is almost RM20.00 a box here – the price alone does make it special, don’t you think? And that does not include all the ingredients, all those prawns and all.

So where did I go wrong the first time around? Well, my friend had udang galah (freshwater prawns) in hers and needless to say, one can never go wrong with those crustaceans. They are cheaper in Bintangor and everytime she went home, the parents would buy kilos and kilos for her to enjoy so you would see prawns all the time in the photos that she would share on Facebook. Humphhhh!!! Show off! Hehehehehe!!!!

On my part, I just used it and fried the bihun the same way I would fry much anything else, rice or noodles…but this time around, I noticed that they had some specific instructions at the back of the packet…

…so I followed those…as far as I could. I did Step 1 and 2 though I did add a stalk of serai (lemon grass) to it for added fragrance.

Then came Step 3. Add the eggs so soon? I always add the eggs last, never mind whether I am frying noodles or rice…so, I left the eggs till the end and instead, I added the prawns. I would have added them in Step 1 or here so that the sweetness would go into the sauce or the oil and subsequently, onto the bihun. Unfortunately, I was using these cheap tiny frozen shrimps…

…that I found in the freezer – RM5.00 for a packet at the supermarket and they were completely tasteless! I’ve seen these being used at the stalls for the mee goreng or the char kway teow or whatever – I guess at the prices they are going for, one can’t possibly expect them to use the regular ones, not even the very small ones.

I did not have any chives in the fridge so I had to do without those but I did add a bit of very thinly-sliced Thai basil and once it was done, I dished everything out and served…

So was it any good? Any better than the previous time?

Yes, it was nice, more or less like my tom yam bihun, but a bit mild and that was probably because I used too much bihun. They never stated how much, not that I noticed, just “serves 1-2” and I used three pieces of the bihun, this brand…

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I’ll make sure I’ll cook just two with the remaining packet that I have in the pantry.