Hokkien Prawn Mee Soup

This is another favorite in the T household. I make this one dish meal about twice a month. This is another easy peasy dish; no fuss and you get everything in one bowl!

A commonfare back home, I used to eat it almost once a week and when I left the country, boy, did I miss it so! You never know what you truly have till you don't have! My fave was this one at Beach Road. I had it when I came back for a visit the first year I was out of Singapore. It was this good old ORIGINAL Kopi Tiam style coffe shop by the road and it was a real dark, kind of dodgy looking place. I can still remember thinking what the heck I was doing there when I can get Prawn Mee almost anywhere...some place with air condition would be good! In any case, when the nooddles came to our table, I was kinda surprised to see what's in it. Most of the time you get a few slices of pork and scanty pieces of prawns. But lo and behold, the bowl contained more than that, not only they had used whole tiger prawns but also pig's tail as well! And when I tasted the soup, I will never forget it, it has a clean taste of pork and seafood broth and despite the pig's tail being in there, it was not at all oily. I love it! I could had been greedy and ordered a second bowl just for the sake, but I didn't. Some things are best left at the minimal, overdosing it kinda spoils the whole effect! :)

After having that, I was determined to find out the best way to replicate this delicacy. Over the years I learnt from a some great friends who had generously taught me their family recipes and from there I'd diversified. I had re-adjusted and "created" a recipe that I like. So far, I'd no complaints, other than for people who are allergic to prawns! Yah..that would be a problem! I think the main "ingredient" for this dish is to get the freshest ingredient possible. If you're going to make a broth out of it, bet as well make it a good one!

Hokkien Prawn Mee Soup
Ingredients
-1 lb fresh medium-sized (at the very least)prawns/shrimps with heads intact
-1-1.5 lb pork ribs, washed and trim most fat off
-Fresh Bean Sprouts, rinsed and tailed if wish
-Water convulous/Kang Kong, cut and rinsed thoroughly
-Fried Onions
-Oil
-Dark Soya Sauce
-Salt, Sugar and Pepper
-Hokkien Mee/Yellow Noodle, homemade or pre-packed

Method
-Rinsed the prawns, and peeled the shells and head and leave it aside.
-Heat 4 TBSP of oil in a stewing pot, once hot enough, add all the prawns' heads and shells into it and fried till fragrant. Crushed the heads and shells with a potato masher (most effective I found) as you fry.
-Add water into the pot once the prawn remnants are red and cooked. Amount of water depends of how much you need for 4-6 servings.
-Add in the ribs and bring it to a boil and then put it to simmer for about 2 hrs or till ribs are tender.
-In that duration, cook the peeled prawns in the same broth and leave it aside once done.
-Once the ribs are done, add some dark soya sauce for a darker colored soup and add some salt and sugar for taste.

Putting them together
-Blanched some sprouts in the same broth, leave it aside.
-Blanched some water convulous in the same broth and again, set aside.
-If you're using pre-packed noodles, blanched them quickly in plain boiling water to rid of excess oil. Set aside into individual bowls.
-Placed some sprouts, water convulous and prawns on top of the noodles.
-Add boiling soup stock into the noodle bowl and some ribs to accompany that.
-To serve, add fried onions and dashes of white pepper as toppings.
- Ready to eat! :)

Note: I chose ribs instead of sliced pork loin coz I felt it was easier and have more flavor. Personally I used homemade noodles since it was a lot more convienent for me to make it.

Lasagna

Years back during a Christmas party I had the best Lasagna I ever tasted, better than some of these so-called "authentic" italian restaurant. Nope, not kidding. It was so good that I went back for thirds and so did EVERYONE! So it was gone within minutes! However the taste of that wonderful pasta casserole lingered in my mind AND tongue for years to come. Since then I'd tried to search high and low for a lasagna recipe that remotely fit in that delicious wonder that I had at that party. The stupid thing of all was that I didn't even ask for the recipe from the host, who incidentally make one of the best lasagna around. Now what was I thinking! I think it was all that alcohol that I had that night that made me all tongue tied!!! Till this every day I am STILL kicking myself.

Although I've yet find that mysterious lasagna recipe, I had tried out many others and had fine-tuned my lasagna. Of course, throughout my experimentation I'd made (unfortunately) many a disasterous lasagna but on the bright side, I discovered a good many keepers.

Not so very long ago, I found a new passion to make my own pasta/noodles and I frequently used my pasta maker (so often that it's now squeaking....probably from fatique). However the thought of making my own lasagna sheets never ever occurred to me?? How odd. I had always used the store bought dried sheets and somehow never found them to be very appetizing. These sheets were always thick (too thick in my opinion) and tend to be soggy after all the cooking (probably overcooking?). Well, in any case, when I read THIS recipe I decided that I would make my own pasta sheets since it did call for FRESH lasagna sheets! I didn't want to buy them coz it can get real costly and really, I'm already making my own pasta....(no brainer!)



I used the recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners. It takes a fresh look in making simple lasagna and I'm really curious how the creme fraiche white sauce would taste in this recipe! Not only that but it also uses roasted squash in one of the layers, now, tell me that doesn't sound fascinating enough.

So I went about making lasagna sheets but thing is, I didn't know how thick the fresh lasagna sheets are supposed to be... I decided to just follow my instincts instead. The pasta recipe I had barely yielded enough sheets for one lasagna recipe so I added a little more flour and egg to make a little extra (hey, you can always freeze the unused portion for something else!). The fresh lasagna sheets (they were made solely with flour and eggs)were a delight and I loved the texture of it. It was so smooth and the smell....YUMMY! I already had some homemade ragu sauce and used that for the "red" sauce in the lasagna. Of course, I had to make do with some other substitute ingredients coz I didn't have everything needed for that particular recipe. But it was all good! The final result was a beatiful tasting and textured lasagna. Everything came together wonderfully and even though it was a little more work in making this lasagna, this is definitely a keeper for me in my journey for the one and only lasagna! :)

Mee Rebus

Small Note : Decided that it was time to change my blog a little....wanted to keep it clean and simple. So for those who frequents this site, it's still the same....;)

Over the weekend and feeling a little "courageous", I decided to give this Mee Rebus recipe a shot. I had experimented with a couple of other Mee Rebus recipes in the past and they all turned out, erm, gross! Yes, GROSS!

But I was convinced by this particular version coz it was just plain simple and easy to follow through. Most of them asked for so many gazillion steps and instructions to follow that by the time the food is all done, I've totally lost all my appetite for it! AND if it was good, it'd have been well worth it however it was disappointing to say the least......

And since I'd a craving for it (I didn't get a chance to eat it when I was back home last month), I said to myself, "why not"........................

The above picture is all the blended spices at its raw stages. You would need to fry (as instructed) till fragrant and add into the prawn broth with the mashed sweet potatoes. It's that easy. Having the most important of this dish done, the rest is just mise en place. Of course, being a "perfectionist" ( I think the technical term here is "anal"), I HAD to make the yellow noodles from scratch (I can't find this particular noodle here, it's Hokkien Mee rather than Chow Mein). It wasn't difficult but just to eat a regular hawker fare (IF I'm back home), I would have to go through all the hassle just to get to it. It's funny and ironic!



The overall result was definitely good. In fact it was THAT good that my husband claimed that it's even better than some of the local versions he had in the past *flattery* I thought it was good too sooooooo it was lucky that I had made ENOUGH paste (AND stored in the freezer) that whenever we want, I would just have to whip it out from the freezer and mix it with more broth! :)

Laksa Lemak

Made some Laksa last weekend. It was a really cold weekend and something soupy and spicy sounds seriously appealing! Made the paste myself, and simply put in whatever "seafoody" ingredients you want in the spicy seafood broth. I used prawns, sliced fried fish cake and some fish balls made in shapes of tofu, interesting huh...hehe.. I also added some fried tofu skins and of course, most importantly, laksa leaves as garnish and in the soup stock. Laksa Leaves is sometimes called Vietnamese Mint and it's a herb; finely chopped them and used them as such in this dish. This herb gives this dish its unique flavor and fragrance. It has a very distinct taste which is tough to explain, the best I can say it's that it gives a refreshing and "clean" flavor to any dish. To complete this superb one dish meal, add some spicy sambal on side to make it even spicier......Yyyyuuuuuuummmmyyyyy! And if anyone's interested in the recipe, you can always drop me a note...I'm just too lazy to post the entire recipe on this post.

On another note, I recieved some cookbooks for Valentine's!!! WHOOOO HOOOOO!!! Those were books on my wish list and I'm finally recieving them!!! Bad thing is that they haven't arrive, good thing is, they have been shipped and will be here in a few more days.....CAN'T WAIT!! Will blog on those wonderful books in a later post....ohhh...I'm getting the goosebumpbs thinking about them!!!