Fried Mee Hoon or Chow Mien for PPN 100!!

Firstly, congratulations to my dear friend Ruth over at Once Upon a Feast who celebrates her 100th Presto Pasta Nights this Friday. Hooray!!!



What I'm bringing to this 100th Feast of Pasta is a very Malaysian noodle dish that The Lovely Wife made for my son's birthday back in November last year. See? Keeping old posts sometimes has its benefits!!



Now whats a lovely dish without a good story to go with it right?

Chow Mien is the generic Chinese name for any fried noodles. I've known this for a long time. How long I've known this has a point - it really does!

Now have you noticed that in a lot of American movies, every time they order Chinese, they will order Chicken Chowww Meeean? I changed the spelling to how I would hear it pronounced. Oddly enough though, I never knew they were talking about Fried Noodles with Chicken and I always wondered what this exotic Chinese dish was that we could never get in Malaysia.

One day, the Lovely Wife and I were watching some movie on telly and the lady in the movie asked the man to make sure he got some Chicken Chowwww Meeean for takeaway. The Lovely Wife remarked that she would love to try this Chicken Chowww Meeean and suddenly I felt like I had been hit by a bolt of lightning and bells started going of in my head. Quick as a flash I realised it was Chicken Chow Mien!

Without blinking an eye, I raised my eyebrows at her and replied rather haughtily (with a 'don't you know anything' look) - "Noodles with chicken! Chow Mien! You know, Fried Noodles" - as if I had known all along. The Lovely Wife felt rather sheepish and so I confessed that "Yes, I only just realised it, I too wondered what it was for many years." See, I'm really not that bad a person....

So anyway, this lovely Fried Mee Hoon (Mee Hoon is thin noodles or vermicelli) was made by The Lovely Wife and this is what she does:

Ingredients:
1 packet Mee Hoon (sorry, dont know the weight or size)
6 dried chillies
5 cloves garlic - chopped
1 chicken breast - cut into strips
10 dried taufoo (bean curd) - cut into strips
2 firm taufoo - cubed
1/2 cabbage - cut into strips
2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1/2 Tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
3 Eggs

Method
Blend the chillies with a little oil to form a paste. Fry this paste with the garlic until fragrant. Add in the chicken and cook well. Add in the taufoo and allow to simmer. Throw in the cabbage and mix well and then add in the Soy Sauces. Stir in the noodles until well coated. Add more sauce to taste if required.

Whisk the eggs together until smooth and then fry like an omellete. Cut the egg into strips and sprinkle over the noodles.



These noodles go really well with Birds Eye chillies in a little soy sauce - that is a typical Malaysian 'additive' to fried noodles and fried rice!



This dish is so versatile that you can use prawns, beef or any other meat as an ingredient. Throwing in some beansprouts or other vegetables would also go really well!