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Monday 22 July 2013

Prawn Noodles


Inspired by the mention of prawn noodles by some cyber friends, *SAHM_TAN and **Funz, I decided to try it out two nights ago. 

*SAHM_TAN's husband's secret ingredient!

The lowdown on hubby's prawn soup base for the noodles. 

Very simple. Pork ribs, chicken bones, prawn shells and prawn head. Plus the usual condiments. He didn't fry the prawn shells and head.

**Funz'Prawn Noodles Recipe 

(Ok. Again I cannot give you qty but I can give you method.) 

Ingredients 

Prawns (usually glass or white prawns) 
Raw Fish Cake 
Chicken bone or pork bones or both 
Garlic 
Kang Kong 
Bean Sprout 
Noodles, beehoon 

In a large pot, put the bones to boil for stock. 

In another pot, boil the fish cake until cooked. Do not discard the water used for cooking, add that to the stock 

Clean the prawns, do not deshell. Boil the prawns and add the water used for cooking the prawns into the stock. 

Once the prawns have cooled, remove the shell. Do not discard the shells. Heat up a wok, fry the prawn shells until fragrant, no oil needed. 

Add the fried shells into the stock. Throw in a few crushed garlic and bring to a boil, then let it simmer for another 20-30 mins. 

Strain out the stock, add a bit of black soya sauce for colour and salt to taste. 

To really extract the sweetness of the prawns, if I am in the mood for this step, I will blend the shells after frying them before adding into the stock. I know that a lot of people recommend adding a bit of rock sugar but I find that when you use enough prawns, there is no need to add rock sugar. And the sweetness from the prawns is different from the kind of sweetness you get from sugar. 

The rest of the steps you know lah. Pre-cook all the vege, slice the fish cake. Blanch the noodles and beehoon. When serving, put everything into a bowl, pour the soup over, serve with a topping of fried shallots and pepper. If you like some meat, you can boil some pork belly and slice them up and add to the ingredients.

We normally do volume processing (because i cook every day) for our purchases (fresh produce/seafood), so this time when we bought our prawns I reminded myself to keep the prawn shells. I forgot that I was supposed to fry them first (if based on Funz recipe) so I followed SAHM_TAN's hubby's recipe except I washed the shells first. That was the only difference. :rotflmao:Later on, I recall one of my aunts in the catering and canteen business have once shared that she too used prawn stock for her stir fry bee hoon noodles. :idea:
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I suppose it was ok and so I boiled the stock with almost 3/4 of the pot filled with prawn shells. The shells turned a nice pink sun-kissed colour and emitted such sweet aroma of sweet stock. Yes, Funz was spot on. If more prawn shells were used to make stock, please do not add rock sugar. The sweetness from the prawn shells itself had distinct unmistakable sweetness. 

Drained and re-drained to remove any sandy grains or shells and collected the prawn stock in another clean pot.

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In another pot, I boiled chicken bones for the chicken stock (following Funz recipe) to add on to the prawn stock to make the soup for the Prawn Noodles.

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I kept half of the stock for my baby boys' ABC soup (shared by TheAnswer), which they had for yesterday's lunch and dinner. Kill two birds with one stone. :please:

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For the Prawn Noodles dinner, I did a light stir fry for the bee hoon for the girls especially fussy DD2 who does not like prawn (I assume she won't even touch the soup if I said it was prawn soup), so the girls (and my boys too) could choose to have the bee hoon plain (without the soup). This saves from having me cook an entire few other meals to cater to everyone's fancy but yet, still get them to eat dinner together with what's served at the table. Again, kill two birds with one stone. Hee. (Sorry, the shadow from the cooker hood is causing the lower part of the stir fry noodles to be of a different shade. :oops:)

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Then, for the soup... I added in Yong Tau Hoo & some really big bouncy fishballs (super nice and chewy too!) that hubs bought to complement the prawn soup. 

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I separated the soup from the stir fry but placed them side by side on the dining table, so that anyone can add on soup (or not!) to their noodles. Because it was not forcefully put together as a prawn noodle meal to get the children to try eating, DD1 did try some soup with her noodles. She said it was surprisingly quite nice and sweet. As i expected, DD2 was too chicken to try anything new. :P

For dessert, we had lopes bought from the bazaar at Causeway Point - 3pcs for $2. 

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Verdict : Success! Yes, the prawn noodles were a success. Because we like our dishes spicy, we ate the noodles with chilli padis in sweet soy sauce. :drool: We usually have our bee hoon noodles with beef stew/broth which is savoury, the sweetness of the prawn noodles soup was something new. While all complimented that it was nice, they still preferred beef to prawn. But all in all, the recipe was a success. 

Thank you to my cyber friends, Funz :please:... and SAHM_TAN - please thank your hubby for sharing his secret ingredient! .... hope it wasn't that hard for you to get it out of him. :evil: :lol:

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