grey prawns

Home-Made Hokkien Mee

Home-Made Hokkien Mee

Sometimes I see the food court stall with the title “home-made..” worded nicely before whatever it was that they were selling and I would usually think to myself, “is it clean?” LOL. I know how I cook at home, and it is definitely not Michelin world class standard kitchen. My kitchen; my rules.

But if you are selling something and you have a shop front, just say it like it is, you made it at the shop. Wouldn’t that be less ambiguous and clearer for me the customer? Okay okay. I will stop ranting.

Back to my wicked home-made Hokkien Mee. I don’t mean to brag, but it is really not bad. Of course, I am no puritan chef, I am home cook. I cook what makes sense to me and whatever resources I could get my hands on.

So for Hokkien Mee, the key ingredient is the stock. If you got the stock wrong, you may as well go out and eat. So what goes into the stock, it is no nonsense chicken stock my friend. Let’s not kid ourselves here. How can we cook Hokkien Mee without chicken stock?! You have to be a master chef.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s begin.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 packet Green Lip Mussels (wash and scrub the shells off of any beards or debris)
6 Medium Grey Prawns (leave them whole, no need to peel)
1 large or a few Squids (wash clean and sliced)
250 grams Pork Ribs (blanched and remove scum)
50 grams Lean Pork (sliced thinly)
1 packet Egg Noodles
1 packet White Bee Hoon
A few sprigs of Spring Onions (wash and chop off both ends)
1 packet Chicken Stock (chicken broth)
Half a teaspoon powdered Chicken Stock

Method:

1. Prepare the broth (or stock) for the Hokkien Mee by boiling all the seafood and pork ribs. In a pot, pour about a litre of water, turn up the heat, and start boiling the packet of green lip mussels. The broth is to be used for the stock. The mussel meat can be used for ingredients later or discarded. I usually keep them as ingredients.

2. Boil the squid next for about 30 seconds in high heat, in that same stock. Then quickly take the squid pieces out and run them over cold water to stop them from cooking further. Squid tends to harden if you cook them too long. The key is to cook quickly or cook them long long.

3. Next drop the prawns whole (with shells) into the broth and cook them until they curl into the shape of a letter C. “C” stands for cooked. If it curls into the shape of an “O”, then it means “Overcooked”. The prawns will sweeten the broth further. Once the prawns are cooked, de-shell the prawns and drop the shells back into the broth to continue cooking.

4. Next boil the pork ribs and lean pork. Take out the lean pork slices and reserve aside. You may continue boiling the pork ribs with the prawn shells.

5. This is where you add a packet of that chicken broth and by doing so essentially changes the whole dynamics of the soup stock. Now it should be very tasty.

6. The actual cooking of the Hokkien Mee is actually assembly. Ladle the broth into a wok, turn up the heat, drop the noodles/bee hoon into the wok and stir. Then add the cooked ingredients in to cook and a few sprigs of the spring onions. This is where you add the powdered chicken stock to complete the taste. It really does taste like bona fide Hokkien Mee.

I usually reserve the excess stock so that I can cook Hokkien Mee on demand. Easy.

Bon Appetit!

Green Lip Mussels

Lean Pork Slices

Medium Grey Prawns

Squid

Salted Egg Cereal Prawns

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Salted Egg Cereal Prawns

Got a day off today and I went to the supermarket and saw some really nice grey prawns. They were of reasonable size and I thought it would be perfect if I made Salted Egg Cereal Prawns.

My wife wanted me to make her favourite Garlic Tomato Prawns for dinner but I decided that I would try out something different and technically a little more demanding. I always like a little challenge in my cooking.

So I turned on my favourite techno house music and started preparing for dinner. I purposely kept the prawns cold in the fridge until it was time to cook because I saw on tv some tempura chef mentioned that the prawns need to be chilled just before deep frying them. Besides that, everything else is standard in my opinion.

Recipe

Ingredients

12 Grey Prawns (refrigerate the prawns until just before cooking)
1 packet of crispy Cereal (I bought the A1 brand at NTUC and it’s very convenient to use, you may also consider the classic Quaker Oatmeal if you like that.)
4 Salted Eggs
3 sprigs of Curry Leaves (in reality there is a lot of wastage, NTUC doesn’t sell 3 sprigs of curry leaves)
30 grams of Unsalted Butter
4 tbsp Corn Starch
2 Eggs (chicken eggs)
1 tsp Chicken Stock powder
A sprinkle of White Pepper powder
Olive Oil (for deep frying)

Method

1. Take the prawns out of the fridge and de-shell them leaving only the heads and tail (as the saying goes in hokkien, woo-tau-woo-buay lit. in mandarin 有头有尾). By now you would have cracked the two eggs into a bowl with the chicken stock and white pepper and given it a good mix.

2. In another plate, the corn starch is spread out and ready to go. Heat the oil in the wok and get it ready for deep frying. Using a pair of chopsticks, pick up the prawns dip in egg batter, then in corn starch coating and then into the hot oil.

3. You generally want to give the prawns a good fry of about 15 seconds. So you got to moderate an assembly line. 1st prawn goes in, then you prepare the next prawn, turn the prawn in the wok when you place the next prawn in and the third prawn is being dipped in batter.

4. Once the prawns have had 15 seconds of oil. Drop them into a strainer. Once all the prawns are cooked, turn off the fire and dip them into the hot oil all at once. Then strain them again.

5. Prepare the salted eggs (it would be good to cook them way before you even take the prawns out of the fridge). Salted Eggs are not cooked and are raw. So you got to factor that into your cooking time. Extract the yolks and you can use the whites for porridge.

6. In a clean wok, melt the butter. Be careful not to burn the butter. Add the salted egg yolks to cook. Using your frying paddle to mesh the yolks into the butter. This forms your sauce. Add the curry leaves at this point and the packet of crispy Cereal flakes. You can use whatever cereal flake you like, it doesn’t really matter.

7. Moderate the heat and stir quickly so that the butter doesn’t become clumpy. Immediately add the prawns into the wok and stir vigorously to coat the prawns with the cereal flakes.

8. Once prawns are all more or less coated with the cereal flakes. You may serve immediately.

Bon Appetit!

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