Hot soup…

If I am not wrong, “kampua” in Foochow means dry (kang) and plate (puang) so if we put the two together, it means dry plate. I guess that was why everytime I ordered kampua, therng (kampua, soup), the seller would always correct me and say “ching thong mian” (clear soup noodles, in Foochow). Ah well, I stand corrected…and anyway, as long as I could get the message across and was served what I wanted, it did not matter all that much what I called it.

I saw this video clip on The Kitchen Food – Sibu Instant Kampua – 厨艺食品 Facebook page where they were showing how to cook this noodle dish in hot and refreshing clear soup but from what I could understand with my limited command of Mandarin, I did not think they would do it like that at the stalls in the coffee shops.

That was why I decided to do it myself the way I would see them doing usually and came out with this…

That sure looks good, don’t you think?

I took a chunk of pork bone and boiled it, leaving it to simmer for a while to get the bone stock broth. In the video clip, they cooked the kampua mee the usual way and added plain water and it was done. Plain water? That is quite unheard of, I must say!

While the stock broth was simmering, I took a packet of The Kitchen Food – Sibu Instant Kampua, the original…

…with the light soy sauce. I jolly well couldn’t use the dark soy sauce version as the soup would turn a ghastly black in colour.

I emptied the contents of the two sachets inside…

…into a bowl and poured in the lovely bone stock broth. It was a shade darker due to the colour of the light soy sauce but it was definitely a whole lot nicer than…plain water! *frowns*

If you click the aforementioned link, you would see that they added one third of chopped spring onions and a third each of some brown stuff – my guess is those would be fried shallots and fried garlic. No, I did not bother about the shallots – I am quite sure there would be enough of its flavour in the shallot oil (lard) and no, usually, no fried garlic is added to Sibu kampua mee, unlike Kuching kolo mee with the exception of maybe, an isolated few, trying to be different.

I boiled the noodles till cooked/soft and added them to the soup…

I placed a few pieces of char siew (barbecued pork) on top unlike what they did in the video. They fried two slices of luncheon meat and served their noodles with those!!! Of course, it is up to us what we would like to have with the noodles at home but no, you will not get luncheon meat with your ching thong mian anywhere outside.

Lastly, I sprinkled some chopped spring onions from my garden and sat down to enjoy what I had cooked. Yes, it was very nice – not quite like my favourites outside, here…

…and here…

…but it came pretty close.

That was a delightful change from having it dry – I wouldn’t mind going for it once in a while, that’s for sure.

THE KITCHEN FOOD – Sibu instant kampua retail shop (2.304979, 111.847438) is located at Lorong Pahlawan 7A, off Jalan Pahlawan,  to the right of the branch of the UOB Bank there.