Koka Noodles – Curry Flavour (Chinese Market – Birmingham Indoor Market) [By @SpectreUK]

The six chillis on the front of this polystyrene cup of noodles were the first thing to catch my eye in the Chinese Market I frequent in search of imported goodies from far off places. Okay, I know that sounded a bit dodgy, but I assure you that I’m there just for food! These Koka Noodles were manufactured in Singapore, which is certainly far away enough from Birmingham, England. The only thing I know about Singapore is that it has an amazing zoo. Oh, and a large amount of British troops surrendered there to the massed ranks of the Japanese army in the Second World War. So that’s two things I know about Singapore, I guess. I’ve always wanted to go to the zoo there and I’m sure I’ll make it someday, with Cinabar in tow both gazing in awe at the wonderful and exotic animals there. The second piece of knowledge made these noodles particularly fitting to munch on during lunch on the 10th November. I know we’ve fought in just about every country in the world and lost brave soldiers and also many people at home during the Second World War through bombing raids that were also fighting to keep this country standing. Yet when after the few moments silence we traditionally have on the Sunday before the 11th November, the origin of these noodles struck a chord in me for the brave men who suffered such hardship in the Far East after their surrender. It may have had something to do with the Commando comic I had been reading that day too, which had British prisoners of war building a road under their Japanese guard’s watchful gaze.

Anyway, I digress, back to the noodles... On peeling back the lid I noticed two sachets set on top of the hard clump of stringy noodles, and the obligatory plastic fork, which I dumped in the cutlery draw in favour of a metal one. One sachet had lots of bits of food in it. I popped it open to find lots of shredded pieces of carrots, some peas, and sweet corn. The other sachet was labelled “curry”, which had brownish powder inside it. There was the usual type of cooking instructions on the top of the pot; add freshly boiled water, stir, blah, blah... So I ignored them, dumped in all the satchets, boiled the kettle and readied my metal fork for stirring. I filled the plastic pot up to the mark and stirred well, but the sauce was still very watery for a good while. The noodles started to soak up some of the liquid and I used a piece of bread to soak up some more. The concoction certainly smelt very nice, I noted the pieces of chives mixed in with the stringy noodles, sweet corn, shredded carrot and few peas. The brown curry powder stirred in well, but was bubbly to start with, which I’ve not seen in a pot noodle before. Tasting the soaked bread there was a decent chilli spice to the curry sauce. Not the hottest pot noodle I’ve tasted though, as that honour still goes to Nong Shim Hot and Spicy. Yet this curry noodle pot was definitely the best “curry” flavoured pot noodle I’ve ever tasted. It was very tasty, and not at all sweet or slightly synthetic as regular pot noodle curry flavours can be. This curry sauce had a decent spice that made my nose sweat a little and it actually tasted like curry. It certainly felt healthy with all the bits of vegetables bobbing around amongst the stringy noodles. I would have this Koka Noodles Curry Flavour again, particularly over any of the British curry pot noodles.

Information on the label;
70g pot of noodles
Ingredients: Noodles: wheat flour, edible palm oil, salt. Flavour: salt, curry powder, flavour enhancers (e numbers), sugar, spices, tapioca starch, flavourings, chives, hydrolysed vegetable protein, and caramel.

By Spectre