Sauce…

Are you one of those who simply MUST have a sauce for everything even if it is just soy sauce or chili sauce straight from the bottle? I’m not talking about those dishes that go together with a special sauce, part and parcel of the recipe so to speak but I do know of people who must have a sauce and will dip everything in it and eat.

Personally, I am not bothered unless whatever I am eating is so bland, so tasteless or tastes so bad and when it comes to Sibu kampua noodles or Kuching kolo mee, some, present company included, would insist on it being white. I do not really mind it being red with the addition of char siew sauce but that would taste a little different, a bit sweet and not so authentic anymore, being a modification of the original recipe.

Likewise, there are some people who will only eat kampua noodles with dark soy sauce but I am not fond of it as it will drown out the taste and fragrance of the lard and fried shallots and in the end, all you can taste is the dark soy sauce. My missus, for one (and I’m sure there are many like her), would drown the noodles with a whole lot of chili sauce, not me.

Anyway, the other morning, I felt like having kampua noodles for breakfast and we only had the one with dark soy sauce…

…in the house. The ladies will only buy this as they prefer it to the original (with light soy sauce) and since that was no other choice, I just had to take a packet…

…to cook. As they say, beggars can’t be choosers.

For a change, I pan-grilled a couple of slices of bacon till nice and crispy and I emptied the contents of the sachets into the pan, one with the fragrant shallot oil (lard) and the other with the dark soy sauce. I boiled the noodles till soft/cooked, drained them well and tossed them with everything in the pan. I was thinking that perhaps I would be able to detect the fragrance of the oil from the bacon in the noodles but no, it was all drowned out by the dark soy sauce. Incidentally, whatever brand they use, this one is a bit on the sweet side, not quite like the tao eyew/kicap that I am more familiar with but it was all right. I guess when you are up so early in the morning, so hungry you would be able to eat a horse, most anything and everything will be all right. LOL!!!

I also prepared two half-cooked eggs and served them by the side…

…with a sprinkling of dark soy sauce and pepper.

That, of course, can be anytime better than what one can get outside and I guess everybody knows by now that I am not quite ready to go out to eat here, there and everywhere just yet. My girl’s school, being located in one of those not-so-safe zones, is one of the 8 that have yet to reopen. It seems that they go by zones nowadays and will impose a lockdown at a specific zone when the cases go beyond a certain number. The daily totals are, by no means, low and I doubt Sibu will ever be green again…so it is best for me, and everybody else, to just #staysafe #staywell and #stayhome.