Tuesday, August 18, 2009

My favourite food is fishball noddles.Not any kind of noodles,but mee pok.Mee pok is actually a thick and yellow kind of Chinese noodles and is of Teochew origin.It is eaten in Chaoshan (China, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.It is often made with fishballs,minced meat and have various ingredients such sliced fish cakes,dumplings,meat balls,lettuce and beansprouts.

My kind of noodles?It has a very 'wet' taste,and slides down the throat very easily.Eaten alone,(which nobody does,I assure you)it tastes like flour.So,the cook preparing it has to use their own sauce to make the noodles taste either heavenly,or absolutely insulting to the patron.So,the chef's expertise in making sauces and cooking the noodles to the right tenderness is actually very hard.

For example,most normal hawkers just toss the noodles into the soup stock,and thus make the cooking fast and easy.But,the soup stock adds flavour in to the noodles and thus is able to makes the noodles taste nicer or makes it taste worse,depending on the flavour of the soup.So,although it looks easy,many hawkers cannot make out a good bowl of noodles.

Some of the best noodles I've ever eaten are found in Bukit Batok.The noodles there have a faint smokyness behind it,enhancing the taste of the noodles.The chilli is also self-made,and has a fiery spiciness that goes well with the soft,muted noodles. Also,the fishballs are springy and goes well with soya sauce,chilli or even eaten by itself!That is the charm of fishball noodles:All of its ingredients must be good to makes the dish good,and the ingredients are often split up,but it's always the combined taste that counts!