Saturday, November 12, 2011

福州炒煮面在曼谷!Foochow braised stir-fried noodle in Bangkok!

福州炒煮面 in Bangkok
Inspired by my friends, namely Fang Ting, who's always trying to create authentic Singaporean dishes in faraway Sweden, and Xinyi, who's a Singaporean trying to perfect her knowledge of Thai cuisine in Bangkok, I have courageously attempted to re-create dishes from my hometown as well.

That said, there is a clear difference between them and myself (resulting in a completely different cuisine), though born and (mostly) bred in Singapore, I am not Singaporean. I am from Sarawak, but it's complicated too. My mom comes from Sibu, my dad comes from Sarikei, but let's just agree that I am from Kuching, since all my folks are staying there now.

Taste of home is a tricky definition for me too because of my slightly complex background, but I shall stick with Foochow cuisine, which is what my mum cooks and what I scour the streets in Kuching/Sibu to hunt down whenever I visit.

福州炒煮面,which I will loosely translate as Foochow Braised Stir-fried Noodles, is my Dad's absolute favourite. It is basically a thick noodle dish that is fragrantly stir-fried before it's braised in nice stock to give a thick, dark dollop of sumptuous, soya-saucy goodness. Last Saturday, I figured I had enough ingredients to do a reasonable trial, so I took the plunge, even though I had no experience making it at all.

From my understanding of the dish, its crux lies in choosing the right thick yellow noodle and stir-frying it to perfection in a lot of garlic, a lot of Chinese wine and finally dark soy. The smell in my small apartment during the stir-frying process was absolutely divine, and my nose told me that I was on the right track. The stock was made with top-class pork sirloin, prawn heads/shells (pre-stirfried to bring out the fragrance) and chinese cabbage. The final step was simply to marry the noodles and stock and bring to a boil.

Not bad, not bad at all
Though I did not spend the effort to make lard (which will obviously improve the dish) nor have enough green leafy vegetables, I can shamelessly say that this first trial has achieved at least 70% of what I deem as the perfect product.

Home-made 福州炒煮面 to warm our hearts during a disastrous time in Bangkok - shiok!

2 comments:

  1. wow wow wow! This definitely looks like what I order from zi char stores in Singapore! hehe and just realized that your recent posts are all about food! Great to have good food to take all the flooding stuffs off your mind!

    Ft

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  2. Hey FT

    Actually this would taste slightly different from the ones in Singapore, because Foochows use a lot of rice wine in this dish, but both versions are good!

    Anyway, when there are flood fears, and a very slow business due to the same reason, there's nothing much I can blog about aside of the floods, food and drink!

    I am already writing my next blogpost, which is shamelessly, about food again. But well, it will be in a very different context, stay tuned!

    Hope all is well in Sweden.

    ReplyDelete

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