Saturday, March 27, 2010

Jade: Bitemynoodles

* Oh yay! 100th post!!

I was a fussy fussy eater as a child. I would pick and prod and push everything around on the plate until someone mercifully took it away. Explains why I never really reached my full growth potential:( When we lived in Miri though, there was one particular dish I would always finish, which is saying a lot because back then, food in Miri was frankly, crap. It was tomato noodles, not unlike the tomato kuay tiaw we get in Sibu. The chef was this old man with like 20 daughters [or at least that's what it seemed like at the time] and one of them was always pregnant. Her noodles tasted the best after the dad's. Perhaps it was the pregnancy hormones...alas she never stayed un-pregnant long enough for me to test that hypothesis. I have been searching for that taste ever since..but whenever I ask for it in Sibu, all I get are blank stares....which frustrates me to no end. It really isn't that complicated: use egg noodles instead of rice noodles.the end. Sigh, goes to show..if you want something done properly, do it yourself.

Tomato noodles [Thanks to the pictures on suituapui ;) Not quite 'old man in Miri' yet..maybe I need to get pregnant to grasp the true essence of the dish..but god, did it hit the spot.]

150g egg noodles
3 cloves garlic, minced
Bacon, diced [ use pork or chicken or fish, I used bacon because I wanted to render some of the fat]
Prawns
Pak Choy roughly chopped [ mustard greens would be even more authentic]

Kicap Manis
Splosh of dark soy for colour
About half a cup chicken stock or water [ depending how much gravy you want, if you want a thicker gravy, get yourself some cornstarch slurry]
Ketchup
sugar and fish sauce to taste

1. Heat up some oil and render some bacon fat. You don't have to, I just couldn't bear to throw the fat away.

2. Throw in half the chopped garlic, fry till fragrant and add the noodles
3. Add kicap manis and dark soy, stir till noodles are evenly coated and leave it. This way they get a little charred at the bottom. It's near impossible to replicate that whole 'wok hei' thing you get in the shops, especially on an electric hob, so this is probably the next best thing
4. Dish up the noodles and set aside
5. In the same pan, fry the garlic and bacon till fragrant, add stock, and stir in abt 1-2 tbsp of ketchup, tasting as u go along. The idea is to have a really subtle tomatoey sweetness..the last thing anyone wants is to taste nothing but ketchup
6. Add the seafood and veg, and season to taste, aiming to get a balance of sweet and savoury and the tiniest whisper of a tang.
7. Pour gravy over noodles, top with some pickled chilli and SLURP, as loud as you can ;)

1 comment:

  1. If I bite the noodles, my teeth will fall off cos the computer screen is so hard!

    ReplyDelete