As I am in my Hokkien culinary mood, I am making a lot of Hokkien dishes nowadays. This is a family recipe, so it may differ from those you find at foodstalls. But it also means that mine is more traditional.
I am not sure if this dish also exists in China. But it is definitely a Hokkien style dish because of the use of prawn stock. The other prawn noodles dish which uses more of less the same ingredients but is in soup form is the Prawn Noodles Soup, which is also a quintessential Hokkien dish.
Hope you will enjoy this recipe!
Serving: 2 persons
Ingredients:
- 400g fresh Fujian “oil noodles” (油面)
- 400g fresh thick rice noodles, known as “chor bee hoon” (粗米粉)
- 4 eggs
- 1l water
- 5 pork ribs
- Vegetable oil
- 2 tbs Oyster sauce
- 2 tps Dark soy sauce
- Salt and pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 16 fresh and raw prawns with heads on
- 3 squids, de-inked, beheaded, emptied; cut into rings
- 250g pork filet, cut in 5x1cm strips
- 5 spring onions, cut into 10cm sections
- 100g beansprouts
Dip sauce:
- Sambal chili
- 1 calamansi or lime
Steps:
- First you need to prepare your prawn stock. Take the heads and shell of your prawns, set them aside in a bowl. De-vein your prawns and set aside. Marinate the prawn heads and shell with a dash of salt and pepper. Heat up your wok on low heat with 3 tablespoonful of oil. When the oil is steaming, stir-fry your minced garlic and prawn heads and shell. When the prawn heads and shell are reddish and crispy, add in your oyster and dark soy sauces. Give it a stir so that it has a slight burnt smell. Very quickly, pour the water into the wok, cover and bring to boil. Once the content is boiling, transfer to a pot and add in your pork ribs. Boil the content on very low heat for 2 hours. When ready, sieve away the content so that you only have a dark black prawn stock that is left. Try the stock to make sure it is salty enough.
- Heat up your wok on high heat. Add in 5 tbs vegetable oil. Beat your eggs and add into your wok to make an omelette. When the omelette is cooked cut it up in loose pieces with your spatula, add in your fresh oil noodles and rice noodles. Keep stirring to prevent them sticking to the wok.
- When the noodles are mixed evenly, with one hand use a ladle to shower your noodles with prawn stock, the other hand is holding the spatula which is constantly stirring the noodles to mix in the stock. Keeping doing that until the stock covers 75 percent of the noodles. Now add in your prawns, squid rings and pork strips. Cover the meat with the noodles to make sure they get cooked. Cover the wok to let it simmer for 1 minute.
- Stir the noodles with a spatula and then cover to simmer again. If the stock dries up too fast add in more stock. Keep doing that until the noodles are ready. The idea is to create a gooey, sticky dish where the noodles are definitely not al dente.
- When the noodles are finally ready, add in your bean sprouts and spring onions. Give it a stir as these do not have to be completely cooked. Serve on a plate with some sambal chili by the side and add a dash of pepper. Before eating, squeeze a slice of calamansi or lime over the noodles for that extra umph!
Note:
You can only achieve the gooey texture with fresh oil noodles and rice noodles. Unicurd exports these from Singapore to Rotterdam, such as this importer, so try to enquire at your local Asian supermarket. Otherwise, you can buy the dry ones online from Prima Taste. They do not only sell oil noodles and thick rice noodles, but all kinds of noodles you find in Singapore in dried form.
If you have pork stock at hand you can omit the part of adding pork ribs. Just replace one litre of water by one litre of pork stock.