The people of the celebrated instant Sibu kampua mee had their humble beginning here at this coffee shop, the first of many to come. Since then, they have grown by leaps and bounds, coming out with all kinds of varieties over the years. Of course, there have been no shortage of competitors crawling out of the woodworks – I wonder how many of them have survived and are doing all right.
I saw one made in Sarikei that claims to be “Nature sun dry” [SIC]. Well, the aforementioned pioneer was doing that too when they started but I saw somebody complaining about creepy crawlies in the noodles when he took it out to cook and that is why they no longer do that and all their noodles are machine dried now. I guess that is the problem when you dry the noodles outdoors. In my younger days, when I threw the mee kua (mee sanggul) into the hot boiling water, all the insects (boll weevils) would float up in the water and I had to use a sieve to scoop them out and get rid of them.
Well, there are other brands here in Sibu too and the other day, my missus came home with this one…
…that declares itself to be 100% preservative free. I think this goes across the board – all of them do not contain preservatives so they have a short shelf life of around 3-4 months only. She cooked a pack to try but because of the difference in the texture of the noodles, one would have to cook it longer or it would be rather hard.
A day or two later, I decided to give it a try myself and I rummaged inside the plastic pack for these – the noodles and the sachets…
They are loosely and separately packed – you do not get them altogether in one nice tray. However, there are 3 sachets and the extra one contains fried shallots…
I remember the Kitchen Food people also had that when they first started, crispy/crusty and dry…not wet and soggy like this one but for reasons unknown, they chose to discontinue that. I vaguely remember them selling that separately – I don’t think they do that anymore.
Taking my missus’ advice, I boiled the noodles a while longer so that it will not be on the hard side and once done, I tossed it with all the contents in the sachets. There was some stewed pork belly and eggs that my missus cooked so I took those and served the noodles with them…
…garnished with some chopped spring onion from my garden.
As I was cooking the noodles, I thought the smell was something like mee kua (mee sanggul) which would have to be cooked longer as well and when I sat down to eat, I thought it tasted a little bit like that too, not quite like kampua mee. The taste was different from the ones we are more familiar with but then again, the noodles at each kampua mee stall may be different from the ones right next door and the onus is on each individual to pick the one he or she likes the most.
My missus felt this was nicer but I beg to differ. All in all, I would say that it…
…was nice, just that I would not say there was anything that would make it stand out above the rest. My missus did say also, however, that it is cheaper so that may be a consideration to buy this one to cook and eat at home
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 