Asian snack food tasting
The idea for an Asian snack food tasting session came out of a Twitter convo with Thanh, Adrian and others. It was one of those ideas that sounded fantastic – a group of us getting together for lunch and tasting dried cuttlefish and dried mangoes.
Thanh organised a lunch meet up at Old Town Kopitiam Mamak, where Alastair and I met up with him, Lingy and I-Hua, all prepared with our bags of cuttlefish and mango. Thanks for organising, Thanh!
We had lunch (perhaps I’ll blog it later) and then we pulled out our bags of snacks. Look at our selection of dried cuttlefish / fish snacks!
We started off with a pack that I’ve seen often. The slogan on the front of the packet says “Chewing gum of the Orientals”. Ummm thanks!? (I don’t like the term Orientals to describe Asian people… I am not a rug, thank you very much. I laughed when I purchased this packet, but if someone said to my face, I wouldn’t be impressed.)
The brand for this one was Ken Ken. The cuttlefish didn’t have any added flavouring or spices, and… well it was pretty foul. Tastewise, it was very pungent and fishy, and had a rather bitter edge. None of us were fans. Best selected quality? I think not!
Next up was another packet from Ken Ken that came with a sachet of sweetish chilli sauce. I think we were supposed to dip bits of the cuttlefish into the sauce? Like the previous packet, the cuttlefish itself didn’t have any added flavour and the chilli sauce wasn’t very appetising either. The sauce wasn’t enough to drown out the bitter fishiness and it was all pretty awful. Another fail.
The third packet was XO Red cuttlefish. This turned out to be sugar coated – argh. I’m not a big fan of sugar coated cuttlefish – it is such a strange combination.; This was coated with large sugar crystals and was sweet and fishy, a combination that I don’t think works well together! But even though I’m not a big fan, after the previous two packs that we had tried, I actually thought it wasn’t that bad. Not bad, but not great either – I certainly won’t be rushing out to get some more!
Next up was another packet of plain Ken Ken cuttlefish. It had a very chewy texture, and like the other non flavoured versions was awful and boring at the same time. Thanh noted that he liked the very chewy texture, but I couldn’t get over the taste.
The fifth packet was white fish snacks – not cuttlefish, but it fit with the general theme! This one had a subtle, fishy flavour with a papery texture. I’m a big fan of these ones, though I normally buy ones that have a spicy flavour added. I find that with these fish snacks, the more you eat, the nicer they get. It seems that as you chew it (some might find this a bit gross… warning…), the saliva brings out the flavour. I did warn you it sounded a bit gross.
Up next was a bag I think was called Hokka. And – hooray! We finally had a bag of cuttlefish that was good! This version had the most flavour of them all – a little sweet, a little spicy, and fishy. It also had a good texture, being chewy but not too chewy.
The seventh packet was another bag of sugared cuttlefish. It had lots of sugar crystals, and like the XO red version it was that strange mix of sweet and fishy. Not really a combination I’m keen on myself, but Thanh and I were outvoted on this – the other three said that they liked it. Guess there’s no accounting for taste!
Next up was something that looked particularly exciting! We had flattened discs of cuttlefish flavoured with satay (I think) and threaded on sticks. It looked pretty good… but… this received an immediate thumbs down (and even spitting out from the boys). It was sweet and had candy, caramel tones along with the fish flavour. Ugh. It also had a very offputting texture that was somewhat paste like.
Well, almost at the end of the fishy snacks. The last one was sandwiched codfish jerky – inside the strips of fish jerky was black sesame. This one completely confused my taste buds. I grew up eating sweet black sesame soup as a child, which is delicious – all dark and nutty and yum. So imagine black sesame soup, with the addition of fish… yes, it sounds disgusting, and yes, it pretty much was. I disliked this one the most.
After all the dried fish snack eating, we moved on to the dried fruit.
I had brought along a bag of Philippines brand mango (purchased from Costco). I LOVE this stuff, as evidenced by the fact that I had already eaten most of the bag! I was pleased to see that the tasting panel agreed with me. The dried mango tastes like real mango, it’s sweet but it’s not like candy. It had a very soft texture and isn’t as dry and hard as other brands can be. It was a winner!
Next up, we ate some dried pineapple. It came in round slices, which looked great, but the fruit was incredibly sweet, tasting like candy. It didn’t really taste like it was made from real pineapple.
Dried papaya was up next. Papaya had a big hurdle to cross for me, as I despise real papaya. I wasn’t enamoured of the dried version either – like the pineapple it was very sweet, with no particular papaya flavour. It also had an offputting mealy texture. Bleurgh! Eating this reminded me how much I hate papaya.
We then moved on to dried jackfruit. It was also rather sweet, but at least tastewise it had a resemblance to jackfruit with a bit of tartness.
Slices of pickled mango ended our fruit tasting. It was okay, but it was a bit dull. It needed more oomph – more spiciness, more sourness – just more. But at least it was palatable… with the snacks we had eaten already, palatable = good. We had very low standards by the end of the tasting!
We ended with a Dragon Pearl biscuit each. This was one of those Asian style cookies that seem sweet when you start eating them, but turn out to be savoury. The flaky biscuit had an onion filling, which was quite dominating. I-Hua and I liked them, but no one else seemed to!
That ended our snack tasting. I couldn’t believe that while we all love dried cuttlefish, we somehow managed to buy packets of the most disgusting versions ever. While it hasn’t taken away my love for dried cuttlefish, I will be selecting my purchases much more carefully from now on!
penny aka jeroxie
September 29, 2010 @ 4:52 pm
Ok…I am such a dried cuttlefish freak. I love them all!
Agnes
October 4, 2010 @ 4:07 am
I thought I was a cuttlefish freak too – apparently not!
Celeste @ Berrytravels
September 29, 2010 @ 6:09 pm
Haha, I grew up with quite a number of these! I ADORE the white fish snacks. I could eat packs and packs and PACKS of them without tiring.
The satay-ed cuttlefish, that particular brand sucks at them. There’s better varieties of them out there. The sugared cuttlefish is yummmmmmy. I love the fishy and spicy and sugary taste all together. It’s so so so addictive!
And the first pack, Ken Ken cuttlefish. I ate so much of it growing up! It was cheap, pretty tasty (to a primary kid) and was going to the tune of 20 cents per pack. YUM.
Agnes
October 4, 2010 @ 4:09 am
Ah, we obviously needed you there to eat the ones we didn’t like! 😉
Hannah
September 29, 2010 @ 8:09 pm
I am so very in love with this post. Snack food tasting is pretyt much my favourite thing to do while travelling, and in fact this cuttlefish array brought back the happy memory of teh first time I tried a tiny-dried-fish-and-alond snack in Hiroshima. Amazing!
I jsut think there should’ve been some crazy chocolates of sweets involved here… but maybe you’re saving that for my visit? 😛
Agnes
October 4, 2010 @ 4:10 am
BFF, of course I’m saving the crazy chocolates for your visit! 😀
Hannah
October 4, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
I super need to find a weekend that suits my brother and book some flights already! 🙂
almostalwaysravenous
September 29, 2010 @ 10:54 pm
How funny how you ended up with “very low standards at the end”, seems like quite a lot of ken ken =P.
haha we have the same dragon pearl at home, and mum loves them. I also find the onion element too overwhelming. Though that reminds me of the bean paste flaky pastry moon cakes from chaoshan, China. YUMMM! I think my cholesterol probably went up 3 points after that short trip. LOL
Agnes
October 4, 2010 @ 4:11 am
Yes there was rather a lot of Ken Ken! Now I know to steer clear of that brand. 😉 Oh and I like those flakey pastry type cakes – delicious! Why is all the good stuff so bad for you?
Conor @ HoldtheBeef
September 30, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
Wow, that’s a lot of cuttlefish fail.
I LOVE dried mango. Last time I was in Japan I went through so many packets of dried mango and papaya
Agnes
October 4, 2010 @ 4:12 am
How good is dried mango? I’m so lucky I can buy huge bags from Costco, because I eat so much of it 😀
msihua
October 3, 2010 @ 4:35 pm
Tee Hee Hee… I didn’t realise that you put it up.. I’m just going to link it back here since you took all the notes =))))
Agnes
October 4, 2010 @ 4:14 am
I should have passed the notes around. 🙂 And I like your idea of doing chips next time – hah!
Lingy
October 12, 2010 @ 10:43 pm
The mango was definitely the winner! A good reason why I love Costco.
Hah, I don’t mind the Dragon Pearl biscuits, though I’ve had better ones. It could have tasted better if toasted in the oven for a bit. Also, it goes off very quickly and best kept in fridge…
Thanh
October 13, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
It was nice to meet up, and trying cuttlefish and mangoes seemed like such a good idea. But boy, did we pick badly. Yuck to most of them. But that Costco dried mango is definitely two thumbs up. Great write up Anges. I’m just going to post up a few pics and link to you, as you’ve done all the hard work already. Haha.
Maria@TheGourmetChallenge
October 16, 2010 @ 10:00 am
Overall the whole experience sounds awful. Packet after packet of terrible dried cuttlefish. At least there were a few winners
Kat (Spatula, Spoon and Saturday)
October 29, 2010 @ 10:40 pm
Oh dear. Well, despite being Asian myself, I actually wouldn’t touch most of these! Anything dried, pickled, processed stuff that I’m not familiar with I just can’t bring myself to try…
Someone needs to tie me down and actually force me to try some of this stuff.
Jacquie
June 3, 2014 @ 11:21 am
Have you tried the 7D dried mangoes? They are really delicious.