Prawn Noodles

We had this Prawn Noodle for dinner tonight. This is Sydney and Hubby's favourite noodle. This noodle usually cost quite a lot when eaten in a restaurant as large fresh water prawns are expensive. Since I have some leftover large prawns from Chinese New Year (CNY), I decided to give this a try. Surprisingly my first attempt turn out to be quite tasty.

You may wonder how I keep my prawns fresh for such a long since CNY is was month ago. Well the trick is to submerge the prawns in fresh water and freeze them until cooking time.

To prepare this dish, you need a good chicken stock. As I do not have chicken stock, I used Maggie Chicken Concentrate stock from the bottle. I dilute 1 tbsp of chicken concentrate to 2 cups of water to get 2 cups of chicken stock. Honestly, I prefer this to chicken granules as this gives a more natural flavour.

Here is my recipe for this prawn noodle.

Ingredients

2 rolls of fresh egg noodles (wanton mee), unroll and deep fry in oil for a few minutes till lightly brown and crispy.

2 large prawns, sliced into halves

1 small bunch of spring onions, cut into 1 inch length

1/2 inch ginger, sliced

2 tbsp cooking oil

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tbsp corn flour mixed with 2 tbsp of water

Sauce Ingredients

2 cups chicken stock

1/2 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tbsp oyster sauce

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp pepper

Mix sauce ingredients together

1. Heat cooking oil in a wok and saute ginger and the white stem of the green onions.

2. Add in prawn and fry till the prawns turn pink.

3. Pour in sauce ingredients together with spring onions and bring to boil.

4. Add in corn flour mixture and when the gravy thickens turn off the fire and stir in the eggs.

5. Pour gravy over the noodle and serve immediately.

Nasi Lemak (Coconut Cream Rice)

Nasi Lemak is a one dish meal that is eaten by many Malaysians. Primarily this is eaten for breakfast, but this is served through out the day by many restaurants here.

I must admit that when it comes to nasi lemak I am really hopeless. My last attempt ended with a pot rice with floating coconut cream. By right it should coconut cream infused rice. Since then I have given up trying.

Recently, we had a DeepaRaya (short for Deepavali and Hari Raya) celebration in the office and one of my colleagues cooked a pot of heavenly tasting nasi lemak. From her explanation, the process doesn't seem so difficult. Therefore, I brace myself for another attempt of nasi lemak. Though the outcome is not as good as my colleague's but I am quite happy with it.

Ingredients for Nasi Lemak
4 cups of rice
200 ml of coconut milk (I used the Ayam Brand coconut milk as shown below)
1 tsp salt
4-5 screw pine leaves (pandan leaves)
4 slices of ginger
water


1. Wash rice and place it together with ginger, screw pine leaves and salt in electric rice pot.
2. Pour 50ml of coconut milk on to rice and top up with enough water (as per manufacturer's instruction).
3. Set rice to cook.
4. Once all the liquid is fully absorb, stir in the remaining coconut milk.
5. Leave rice to continue cooking until the cooking cycle is completed.
6. Fluff rice with a pair of chopstick before serving.

No nasi lemak is complete without Sambal Ikan Bilis (anchovies). Here is a recipe I learnt from another colleague who cooks fantastic tasting sambal.

Ingredients
100g dried chillies,
2 medium size bombay onions, blended
1 medium size bombay onions, sliced
1/2 square inch belacan (shrimp paste)
2 tbsp tamarind pulp diluted with 1/4 cup water, strained
2 tsp salt or to taste
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup cooking oil
1/4 cup of fried ikan bilis (anchovies)

1. Cut dried chillies into 2 cm length and boil them in a pot of water for 15 minutes.
2. Drained chillies and blend.
3. Heat oil and fry blended onions until lightly brown.
4. Add in blended chillies, sliced bombay onions and shrimp paste, fry till oil floated to the top of chilli mixture.
5. Add in fried anchovies, tamarind juice, sugar and salt.
6. Bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

Besides Sambal Ikan Bilis, I serve my nasi lemak with Spicy Fried Chicken, hard boiled eggs, fried peanuts, fried anchovies and sliced cucumber.

Fried Hokkien Mee Hoon (Fried Vermicelli)

After church this morning, we headed straight to the shopping malls as most of the malls are on sale. Though when we left church it was almost lunch time, we weren't hungry as we had a substantial brunch after the service. I must say that we certainly are fortunate to have so many ladies in church who are fabulous cooks. Each week they will take turn to prepare breakfast for the congregation.

By the time we had lunch it was almost 3.oo in the afternoon. Since we were all tired by the time we reach home and not that hungry, I decided to prepare a light meal for dinner. Hubby requested for Fried Hokkien Mee Hoon. The one thing I learnt about frying tasty mee hoon is, you must allow the gravy to be absorbed by the mee hoon. By cooking it this way, you not only get tasty mee hoon but the mee hoon will retain its long strand without breaking up too much.

Ingredients

200g mee hoon, soaked for 10 minutes

100g prawns (without shell)

120g pork belly, sliced

a bunch of choy sum

6 shallot, sliced

60ml cooking oil

Sauce Ingredients

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

1/4 tsp salt

a dash of pepper

1/2 cup water

Garnishing

Omelette made with 2 eggs, shredded

1. Heat oil in a wok and fry shallot until light brown. Remove and set aside.

2. Fry pork belly till lightly brown.

3. Add in fried shallot and prawn and stir fry for 1 minute.

4. Stir in vegetable then pile mee hoon on top of vegetable.

5. Pour in sauce ingredients; do not stir, cover and turn the heat down to minimum.

6. Allow mee hoon to slowly soak in the gravy for approximately 5 minutes.

7. Give mee hoon a good stir, cover and continue to cook on minimum heat for further 5 to 10 minutes until mee hoon is cooked.

8. Serve garnish with shredded egg omelette.

Vegetarian Pasta

Though most of the time Hubby, Sydney and I will have dinner together, there are times like tonight that hubby can't join us for dinner due to work commitment. Since there are only two of us, I decided to make a one dish pasta meal. As this is a last minute decision, I only had what's left in my fridge to rely on.

I usually use spaghetti for this dish but this time round I substituted it with Angel Hair pasta. Reason being, Angel Hair pasta cook much faster. It only required to be boiled for 2 minutes (quicker than instant Maggi noodle). This brings back memories of how my mom used to comment that I always look for the shortest way possible to get things done. Her rational is lazy people will find quick way out. But in this modern day, this is called process improvement and I like to think that back then I was already practising process improvement *wink*.

Ingredients
150g Angel Hair pasta
1 capsicum, roasted, skin removed and sliced
5 fresh brown mushrooms, sliced
1 tbsp chopped local celery
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
dried chilli flakes to taste (I replace with ground paprika)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
salt to taste
grated Parmesan cheese

1. Boil pasta according to instruction provided on packaging.
2. Heat olive oil and fry garlic for 1 minute.
3. Stir in mushroom, capsicum and celery.
4. Add in pasta and some of the leftover water used to boil pasta.
5. Add salt and ground pepper and stir fry for 2 minutes.
6. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese.