Lying around…

I guess everybody knows that I can’t stand seeing things lying around and will get them out of the way at the earliest opportunity.

Well, sometime ago, my missus bought 3 packets of these Korean noodles…

…(probably it was on special offer, about to expire) or at least, that was what I thought at the time.

All the shops and supermarkets are flooded with these but upon closer scrutiny, it turned out to be a Vietnamese product…

…manufactured using Korean technology…

…but don’t ask me what that is – I don’t know!

I had instant noodles made in Korea once a long long time ago. A student of mine – I had not retired yet then – told me that it was very nice and I simply must buy to try. Well, that was what I did – I remember it was around RM2.00 a packet and I assumed it was made in Korea. There was nothing I could decipher on the packet as everything was in some glyphs that I could not make head or tail of. It was very nice and yes, as what my student specifically pointed out, I could boil the noodles for as long as I liked and it will not be overcooked and turn soft and soggy. It tasted great too but at that price, I never bothered going back for more.

My missus ate one of the three that she bought and never touched the remaining two. Maybe it did not tickle her fancy so she just stopped at one. One of them was kim chi flavoured, thank you very much so I went for the spicy beef flavour, not that I had any choice. I was wondering why Vietnam would produce these pseudo-authentic Korean noodles when the country is world famous for their phở. I sure would prefer that to any Korean noodles with the exception of their mee sua in ginseng chicken soup and their traditional wine – I had that when I was there many years ago and it was so good on the freezing cold winter days.

I boiled the noodles separately…

– that is what people are saying we should do when cooking instant noodles. Then I boiled some more water and added the contents of the two sachets…

…into it, one containing the seasoning, the other some dried spring onions and carrot and whatever else and I also added some own-made fish balls for added sweetness and taste.

Once ready, I poured the soup into the bowl…

…along with the fish balls and garnishing and I also added some fresh spring onions, finely-chopped and daun sup (Chinese celery/parsley) from my garden and to go with it, I had my not-so-successful miserable-looking poached egg…

It was not really spicy nor could I detect any taste of beef in the soup but on the whole, I thought it was all right, not too bad and I particularly liked how there was no salt and msg-overload unlike many of the other brands, local and otherwise, so much so that everytime I would just use half the packet of seasoning and throw away the rest.

So that got rid of one of two and now, there is only one left. Ah well! We’ll just have to wait and see what happens to it eventually.