Mee Jawa

Mee Jawa or Jawa Mee??. whichever way you call it, it's a tomato based noodle dish. The recipe normally calls for a soup base made with sweet potatoes, crush peanuts. My mum learnt to make this dish from a Eurasian lady in the neighbourhood and her soup does not use peanutt and this is my favourite. I have to say that my mum does not cook very much, she's very much a baked beans, spam and fried egg kind of cook. So this is my attempt to replicate the dish, I have asked my mum before for the recipe but because it's been years since she made it and when she did it was not often, the ingredients change each time she answers me!

Anyway, I think I might have cracked it. After making stock from chicken bones, I will try ribs next time, in goes the tomato purée and some spices. I omitted the chilli paste this round as the little one and other kids were having lunch with us. This dish made up of the soup with boiled egg noodles with various accompaniments. One of the must have accompaniment is fritters, the one I like is just plain fritters with no prawns. I remembered seeing a recipe for it in one of my cookbooks so I got to try make another thing new.

Lastly, one other thing I tried new was instead frying the tau kua (firm tofu or bean curd) I baked it in the oven with great success. So bye bye to frying tau kua, no tau kua is going to get the chance to spit hot oil at me ever again!

The must have garnishes

 

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Koay teow th'ng

There is no easy way to spell this dish and the only way is what makes sense to me phonetically. This is basically flat rice noodles in tasty broth. I can't remember what it was now but something put this noodle soup dish in my mind and won't let me enjoy other food until I have satisfied the craving for this. It's a shame that it was an impromptu dish this time as I would have loved to have some fish balls and fish cakes in it. Instead what I made was rather authentic i.e. the soup base was made from duck stock instead or the 'cheat' chicken stock. It turned out to be quite tasty and more importantly close to the taste in my mind so craving satisfied!

 

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Pickled green chillies

Pickled green chillies are a great accompaniment of most noodle dishes...my favourites to have them with are Char Hor Fun, Hokkien Char and or course Wanton mee. Quick and simple to make, scald, add vinegar, sugar and salt and leave it to do its magic in the fridge overnight...yumm!

Just made

 

After a night in the fridge

 

Curry mee (curry laksa)

This is curry mee made from scratch. I invited some friends over for lunch and offered to make curry laksa for them, thinking I had some ready made curry mee paste (I always do). I woke up in the morning to find the cupboard bare! No curry paste! Panic! I had 3 options, make something else, wait till the Chinese shop is open and get more paste ( risky option by the time I get there it will be close to noon and no guarantee there will be paste available), last option make the paste from scratch. First option sounded like the easiest but I had my heart set on eating curry mee. So after a quick flip through my hawker food recipe book, I convinced myself that I could do it and so I did! The homemade paste was great, it took a lot of effort so paste is still much easier. The lunch went well, I gave myself a pat on the back and made a note to go buy more paste!

 

Bee hoon soup

Bee Hoon soup is one of my go to comfort food when I'm feeling a little under the weather. My version is super simple with just 3 main ingredients, bee hoon, choi sum and pork mince... ala the ones you get at the hawker stall referred to in my family as "cook bowl by bowl" or rather we say it in Hokkien "jit uah jit uah chu" ..hahaha, still it's a little taste of home to perk me up when I'm feeling down.

 

Cooking club 2 - Penang Food

Our cooking club had its second session yesterday and it was Penang food...yay! We had a great lunch with Roti Jala and Chicken Curry, Fried Rice, Char Koay Teow, Murtabak. For dessert, we had Seri Muka, Rojak and Chendol.

Penang Char Koay Teow

The dried KT, pict is upside
down, sorry!

We can't have Penang food without Char Koay Teow right? So off to the shop to get some koay teow and luck would have it, no fresh koay teow was available so the dried version will have to do. Since I've not used the dried version before, it was a matter of closing both eyes and pointing randomly at the shelf! Lucky for me, the brand I bought was good enough. It did require some rinsing under the tap with cold water to remove the excess starch.

My contribution - fried koay teow

Murtabak

My other contribution was Murtabak and this was my challenge as I had yet to make roti dough that I was happy with. I decided to go for Kuali's recipe this time and kneaded the life out of the dough. I was on a mission to ensure that I get real stretchy dough this time round. I think I might have found the ideal recipe as I made a few roti kosong with some of the dough and it did produce flaky roti.

Contribution #2 - Murtabak

Indian Mee Goreng

Indian fried noodles ...where to start, in Penang there are numerous stalls selling mee goreng, some are mobile and some are not but you need to know which are the good ones! This fried noodles dish requires quite a lot of preparation as you need to prepare the base chilly sauce as well as all the accompanying garnishes separately. However, all the preparation is done, it only takes about 5 minutes to fry up the dish and just a little more time than that to devour the whole plate of noodles! But it is worth the effort!

Bee Hoon Soup

Bee hoon th'ng or rice noodle soup makes a quick and light meal. This is a simple version with a light chicken stock for the soup base. Add some sliced fish cake and 'chai sim' (flowering chinese cabbage), garnish with finely sliced spring onions and fried chopped garlic and the dish is done! Of course, serve with sliced cili padi with light soya sauce!

Char Bee Hoon (Fried Vermicelli)

First of all, I say bee hoon and not mee hoon because I'm hokkien and stuck in my ways. So Char Bee Hoon, let me count the ways --> 50 sen bee hoon or poor man's char bee hoon, bee hoon lam th'ng from Tanjung Bunga market, mee hoon goreng (red sambal variety), mee hoon goreng malaysian thai style, mee hoon goreng indian style and on and on and on....but the best ever fried bee hoon is the one from my primary school canteen with the curry mee sauce poured over, whoever was the genius that started it??

Below 'leftover' char bee hoon, made with left over pork ribs!

Hokkien Char

Hokkien Char or Hokkien style fried noodles like its counterpart the Sar Hor Fun is a popular supper dish though available for lunch or dinner. In the good old days when I was a kid, I remember watching my Ah Kong (grandfather) dissappearing into the night with only the glow of his torchlight (the long metal type that takes the huge batteries??) visible to buy this very supper.

Char Mee (Fried Egg Noodles)

Char mee in the style of Char Koay Teow, this time I was trying to make my own egg noodles with my brand new pasta maker. The noodles was easy to make and now I will no longer end up with a large amount of ready made noodles which I would have to keep eating for the next few days!

Curry Mee

Curry mee or as the KL-ites wrongly call it Curry Laksa! Yummy mix of rice noodles with egg noodles in spicy coconut soup. The accompanying garnishes vary depending on which part of the country you come from, the Penang version (of the best one) is very distinct with it's congealed pig's blood (tuu huid), cockles and mint leaves... my version sans the pig's blood and cockles (I should be so lucky)

Penang Hokkien Mee

Hokkien Mee is one of the must dos everytime I go home to Penang. Now the thing with people from Penang is that they will have their own personal favourite stall for each particular dish. For me, hokkien mee must come from the lady who runs the stall with her husband (husband sells Kooy Teow Th`ng) in the Tanjung Bunga market. There is also a kopitiam (coffeeshop) opposite the market which sells hokkien mee as well, my mum has since defected to the hokkien mee in the kopitiam but I'm stil loyal to the stall in the market.

My cheat's version of the hokkien mee made with ready-made paste for the soup below:


Unfortunately, all you see is the 'liau' as the bowl is too deep!

Char Hor Fun (Cantonese style fried noodles)

Char Hor Fun to me is a very much a dinner dish. According to hearsay, in my mother's time, it is considered a 'good' gesture if the young comes courting with a packet of char hor fun for the parents of his intended, usually given during supper time. I think it is just an excuse to go visit his sweetheart after dark!!

My version of Char Hor Fun below, if you notice, it is lacking a few ingredients such as the fish cakes... this dish was created before I discovered that the chinese shop here does sell ready made ones... will update the photo the next time I make this dish!

Char Koay Teow

Mention Penang hawker food and Char Koay Teow (Fried Rice Noodles) will surely be mentioned. There was a lady who makes the best char koay teow in one of the coffee shops in Pulau Tikus. Sadly, she doesn't operate the koay teow stall there anymore. Below is my attempt to recreate this hawker favourite, mine at least!