Home-Made Singapore Fried Hokkien Prawn Noodles

I had huge cravings for Singapore Hokkien Prawn Mee one day, and decided that I had to make my own since it was so difficult finding the Singapore version in Melbourne. I put together my own recipe after trawling through various internet recipes, and was pretty pleased with the outcome. 

All the recipes highlighted the importance of the stock. I used chicken frames and pork bones boiled with an onion.

The prawn stock was made by frying prawn heads and shells, adding water, and then extracting the liquid. I threw that all in for additional boiling, and also boiled a slab of belly pork and cuttlefish in the stock, and added some palm sugar. 

The prawns, cuttlefish and belly pork pieces were sliced up and put to one side.

Prior to boiling the belly pork, I sliced off the skin and deep-fried it to get a semblance of lard. This appeared to be a less guilt-inducing option compared to using the fat directly. 

First, I scrambled two eggs and then added stock, before adding the bee hoon to soak in the stock flavours. 

After 5 to 10 minutes, I added the yellow Hokkien noodles and the pork skin bits, and left the pan to simmer further.

After that, I added the prawns, cuttlefish and pork belly strips and fried it for a minute or two more. 

The final product was pretty amazing, tasting exactly like what we get at the hawker centres although with considerably less lard. My one mistake was to use cuttlefish instead of squid, but it was more to do with the visuals rather than the flavour. I even made sambal belacan to go with the noodles, and this was perhaps one of my proudest culinary moments. 

Another view - the stock had settled below the noodles, which were super moist and tasty. Surprisingly they weren't too soggy, which was my main concern. I daresay I did well :)

Eating in Tangkak, Malacca and Johor Bahru

We recently made a trip up to Malacca with some university friends, and a large part of the weekend focused on food, with the itinerary planned around breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner with the time in between spent waiting for food to be digested so we could move on to our next meal. 

First stop was for beef noodles at Restoran Kuang Fei in Tangkak, although I would have been quite happy to have made it the second stop after Yong Peng :P. We first went there in Dec 2011 after a trip to Malacca, and found it to be really good quality. 

I started off with the first bowl of kuey teow having a mixture of various beef parts, including tripe and fatty brisket. The soup was brilliant, with an amazing beef stock flavour. This was a pretty small bowl, so....

I went for a second bowl of bee hoon with fresh sliced beef.  On the whole, I think the version with various beef parts was better, because the lean beef was rather hard.

The cooking area out in front. The beef noodle shop is located along a whole street of cookie shops. We went to Hua Bee to pick up some tau sa pia.

Next stop- Malacca. We headed straight for the Restoran Sin Yin Hoe oyster omelette for a tea time snack, and were most relieved to find the cook still frying away.

Heaven on a plate, with tiny plump juicy oysters on top.

Another shot of the oysters

We shared 2 large plates among the 7 of us - there was more food waiting to be eaten.

We headed to Jonker St for chendol after that.

Best chendol in Malacca, in our opinion, just opposite the Aik Cheong stall.

We tried the assam laksa but it was disappointing.

The chendol, however, was as good as we remembered. It was all about the gula melaka - I wish they had a liquid version. We bought some from the stall to bring home.

Chock full of beans

We went back to the hotel and waited until it was time to head out for dinner. One of our friends had heard that Amy's Heritage Nyonya Cuisine was reputable, so we went to check them out. When we got there, they said they were out of fish and squid, which was a good sign because it meant that it was popular (or a bad sign because they had really bad planning...we chose to believe the former!) 

We started with kueh pie ti - this was very yummy. It appeared that the shells were made manually since they were all shaped differently. The filling was delicious. 

We shared a hee peow soup - this was pretty tasty as well. No MSG, the shopowner declared to us.

 A pretty good bowl of soup.

These were some of the other things we ordered....

The udang masak nanas was one of the best I've ever eaten, except for what my dad used to cook. Super lemak and tasty, and excellent with white rice. The prawns were large and fresh. 

The ayam buah keluak was reasonable, considering there was no pork used. It was probably one of the better ones eaten in a restaurant. Nothing can compare to my dad's buah keluak. Except maybe my grandma's version.

Lady's fingers with a spicy salad/chutney mix. This was pleasant.

Can't go too far wrong with sambal kangkong.

The sambal udang petai was really tasty too, but too much udang and too little petai!

And at the end of the day, including drinks and dessert, the bill for 7 people came up to RM 222. We were absolutely flabbergasted. I still feel overwhelmed thinking about the amazing value for money and good quality food there. 

We were even talking about it during breakfast the next morning. We were recommended Donald and Lily, which was near our hotel.

Empty at 10.30am, packed shoulder-to-shoulder at 12.00pm.

We shared a plate of fruit and taukwa rojak - this was interesting but the sauce was not what we were expecting. It was like a combination of tomato and chilli sauce.

We tried various things - the mee siam was slightly less nutty than what we were used to in Sg.

And their curry laksa was really good.

Lemak, spicy, and tasty.

More like a dry mee siam version.

We tried the mee rebus too. Wasn't too impressed. I thought the gravy wasn't think enough.

But to each his own, I guess.

We stopped by Hua Mui, a Hainanese coffeeshop in Johor Bahru, for tea at 3pm on the way back to Singapore after leaving Melaka around 12 noon. Seriously old school, and we were very pleased with the find. It's located right at the junction of Jalan Trus and Jalan Dhoby in the old downtown part of the city.

We had to sit upstairs since the 1st floor was full. They use a pulley to bring up drinks and food from the 1st floor kitchen.

Kopi and bandung.

Kaya buns and butter buns. These were very very nice, with the buns slightly crisp on the outside and very soft and fluffy on the inside.

French toast-  didn't quite enjoy this as much.

But their chicken chop was brilliant - crispy skin, firm and juicy meat and really yummy gravy. Just steer clear of the fake green peas.

Addresses:

Tangkak Beef Noodles 东甲牛腩面

20 Jalan Solok, Tangkak, Johor

Amy Heritage Nyonya Cuisine

75, Jalan Melaka Raya 24, Taman Melaka Raya, Malaysia

Tel: +60 (06) 286 8819

Open Tuesday to Sunday 11.30am-2.30pm and 6pm-10pm (closed Mondays)

Donald and Lily's

No. 16 (Ground Floor),

Jalan KSB 1,

Taman Kota Shahbandar,

75200 Melaka.

Restoran Hua Mui 华美茶餐室

Address: 131 Jalan Trus 

80000 Johor Bahru

River South (Hoe Nam) Prawn Noodles

We chanced upon this stall looking for breakfast in the area, and seeing that it was packed, decided to join in the fun - after all, Singaporeans vote with their feet when it comes to food. This stall looked like it had been around for some time, judging from the number of media articles on display. Anticipation was running high.

We ordered what we felt was a standard serve of prawn and pork rib dry noodles - the best way to judge a stall, since you get to try both the mixing sauce for the noodles, as well as the soup.

This was a pretty damn good bowl of prawn mee - the soup was extremely sweet and tasty (although not as good as Wah Kee though), and the servings of ribs and prawns were very decent. The ribs were boiled long enough to be almost fall off the bone tender, and the prawns were fresh.

Their noodles were decent - no complaints there, and I loved the fact that there was a lot of pork lard oil. No lard, no taste.

They also have fish cake, which we tried. This was nice and bouncy, and it appeared that every other table had ordered it as well.

31 Tai Thong Crescent, Singapore 347859 

Some reviews say they are closed every alternate Monday - they were closed on 17 Dec 2012 for sure!