This is a paste used as a base to prepare the typical Malaysian dish Mee Udang, which is a prawn and/or meat and veggies soup. The main flavouring ingredients are soy bean oil, dried shrimp paste, galangal, chilly and garlic among others.
This is a simple but flavour-packed fast dish. The soup is wonderful on its own without any add-on. However, if you prepare the full dish, you'll get a kind of instant noodles dish mostly made out of fresh ingredients. I think it is also great to use with leftover cooked meat.
It tastes authentic to me. It has a clean fishy flavour with the galangal adding the counterbalancing citrusy astringent flavour and the garlic and chilly the spicy punch. I didn't find this hot at all, not even medium hot. On the other hand this paste is really oily,, and it is soya bean oil, so nothing for people with delicate stomachs. You can remove a bit of it with a spoon when resting though.
Preparation: Bring 1.5 litres of water to boil and add the whole paste packet in. Stir and let it boil for about ten minutes. On the side add to a bowl your precooked instant noodles, cooked prawn and/or meat, some veggies. Pour the soup into the bowl and voila.
Great value for money and the sachet does not need refrigeration