Mee Hoon Kway - making use of leftover roast dinner

We had roast chicken dinner today. To accompany the chook, we had a platter filled with roasted veggies -- Jerusalem artichokes (courtesy of my friend), parsnips, potatoes, carrots and onions. Some steamed brocolli and peas made up the rest, and of course some gravy.

The leftover carcass -- with scent of five-spice, garlic, sesame and lemon -- will make a perfect stock. I skimmed whatever leftover meat there was from the chicken (enough for either a small pie or a chicken sandwich perhaps?) and put the bones to boil for 10 minutes. Tomorrow, I will make a simple flat noodle dish which mom used to make and which most Chinese homes would have made, one version or another. In Singapore this noodle dish is called pan mian.

When we were school kids, mom used to allow us to spend some time at her sister's place. At my aunt's we had really nice food. For supper, (round 9pm at night) we may get lucky and have fried kway teow (rice noodles). And other times, my cousin sister would dish up mee hoon kuay for us kids.

Mee hoon kuay is a sort of flat Chinese noodle made from wheat flour. It is exceedingly easy to make and a perfect comfort food during winter. You can make it in less than half an hour if you are efficient. If you don't have chicken or pork stock, you can fry a bit of dried shrimps until they are nice and crispy and add four to six cups of water to it, to make a quick stock -- seasoned with salt, pepper and sugar. If you like the scent of garlic, add a pip of garlic to it.

The noodle or dough is really simple to make.

1. Measure about 1 cup (this is enough to feed two people) or 2 cups of all-purpose flour. Add about 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and half a teaspoon of salt to the flour.

2. Add enough water to make a soft dough. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes. If you have a longer lead time, let it sit for about half an hour.

3. Dust dough with a bit of flour, and start pinching the flour into little pieces of flat bits, and drop it into your stock (the stock should be simmering). Stir occassionally to prevent these little bits of noodle from sticking to each other.

4. Add heaps of green leafy veggies half way before you finish pinching the rest of the dough. Finish off the rest of your dough, and voila, you have a nice noodle dish. Garnish with fried shallots or spring onion/coriander for more flavours. Eat this dish with a little sliced red chilly soaked in soy or fish sauce.

5. As with most noodles -- you can add whatever you want to the stock -- ie, pieces of pork or chicken. The best stock for this noodle is ikan bilis (little white bait-like fish which is found in Asian grocers) stock. Check my previous blog on a variation of this noodle soup using a very thin Chinese wheat flour noodle.