Hokkien Prawn Noodles

While my dear Silkrose went to look for good food, I cooked good food (that’s a lot of oo’s in the sentence – if I feed an Ood… oh bugger that). I made Hokkien Prawn Mee, Penang style.

And here are the recipe and instructions (+pictures). What you need:

1. fresh tiger prawns, shell included.
2. pork ribs (no replacement possible for pork, the taste would be very different and horrible)
3. Hokkien noodles
4. shallots
5. various spices – 1 handful of peppercorns, 1 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, 10-12 dried chilli, a bunch of cloves, 2 tablespoons brown sugar (not raw sugar)

How to cook?

1. Shell and devein the prawns. Keep the shells. Put the prawns in the fridge. Wash the shells thoroughly if you have an allergy to shellfish. Washing it will prevent allergies since you wash off the allergens too.
   
2. Cut the ribs
   
3. Stir-fry the ribs with grounded dried chilli (or if you’re like me who has a housemate who cannot eat hot foods, just the chilli seeds would do). Fry it till its golden brown. Use peanut oil (or half a tablespoon of peanut butter + your normal canola oil)
   
4. Fry the shells of the prawns (you DID keep them, right?). Fry them till they’re a nice golden color, and shiny, and crisp. You know you’re there when you can shatter the shells very easily.
   
5. Put the fried pork ribs, the shells into a pot. Add all the spices in as well, except the sugar. Add any extra dried chilli if you want your soup hot. Add water to cover the the ribs and shells. Boil for 4-6 hours (I boiled mine for 6.5 hrs). Add water when needed, or don’t add if you want a thicker prawn stock.
6. After 6.5 hrs of low boiling, you’re ready to serve it! Turn up the heat, add the prawns. At this point, the soup will be relatively bland prawn stock. You need to add the brown sugar and soy sauce to taste.
7. Prepare the Hokkien noodles by boiling them. Sieve and serve. (I boiled them in water + sea salt)

Final result:

Here’s the prawn noodles, served with fried shallots and a  boiled egg. My recipe serves 5-6.

Some thoughts:

• Fresh prawns here is expensive. I bought 13 prawns for $11.50.
• Shelling and deveining prawns is an utterly gross job. If karma were true, some poor sod must have did something real bad (like cooking Hokkien mee) to come back the next life as a prawn.
• I would recommend you keeping the prawn heads, and frying them together with the shells when you cook them, as the prawn head is where most of the flavor come from
• I personally didn’t keep the prawn heads because I cannot stomach the fact that they are looking at me with accusing eyes shouting “why are you boiling my head! why!! why!!!”.
• A communications error happened when I was at the butcher. I wanted half a rib strip, but instead I got 2. Also, I asked for them to cut the ribs, but all I got was a full strip. Hilarity.
• Also, Hokkien noodles from Coles and from a Vietnamnese shop are different things. They look the same, but cook differently. The Hokkien noodles that I got is from a Vietnamnese grocer, and it expands when boiled, into udon size.
• Prawns should be added last or else they lose their succulence.
• The reason for such long hours in boiling is to get the flavor out from the pork and prawn shells.
• A person who is allergic to seafood is able to eat this without getting any reaction. Wash your prawn shells.
• Total spent: $23.60. For 6 people. Not bad
• Liss, this is how you actually cook Hokkien noodles. When you come back, I’ll cook you a vegetarian version (haha, I do have a vegetarian recipe too, but tastes completely different), and you make me okonomiyaki. Deal?