Miles apart…

My sister bought me a bottle of this Taiwanese version of Bovril…

…in October last year in view of the fact that Bovril was always out of stock around that time and everyone had difficulty getting hold of a bottle. Somebody was selling this online and she managed to buy a bottle for me – if I am not wrong, it was not cheap at all, around that same price as a bottle of Bovril.

I had just bought and opened a brand new bottle at the time so I put this one away in the pantry. I finished that bottle a while ago and that day, when my missus said she would be cooking plain porridge for dinner, I quickly took it out to open and give it a try…

Much to my disappointment, it was miles apart from the real thing, as different as night and day or as we say in Hokkien, char th’nee, char tay!

It did not smell of Bovril or for that matter, beef in any way despite the claim that it was real beef and it tasted completely different.

Marmite…

…and Vegemite…

…are both different from Bovril and I don’t mind those with porridge or whatever. Frankly, I thought this Baoril was completely out. The porridge I had that evening would probably taste nicer with soy sauce even! No wonder at the time, I did google to see what I could find about this product and I stumbled upon an ad from a supermarket in Miri – they were selling it at HALF the price per bottle!

So it wasn’t like anything that I know of at all. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if it would be good for anything at all – I wouldn’t take the risk of using it to cook some dish and end up throwing everything away but perhaps, I can try to cook a bowl of noodles with it the same way I used to cook Bovril mee before. If it is not going to be any good, I guess I would have no choice but to just throw it away.

That evening, we had the porridge with the ngor hiang (meat rolls)…

…that my missus made for Chinese New Year and there were still a few in the freezer.

She tried this okra omelette…

…but because the vegetable does not have a strong taste of its own, it did not stand out at all unlike when we cooked bitter gourd or long beans like this. Perhaps if she had added some slices of lap cheong (Chinese sausage) or a handful of shrimps, they would have saved the day.