Prawn Noodle Soup/Hae Mee/Xia Mian

Prawn Noodle Soup

Curiosity got the cat - this time, me.

I was trying to add in a new link to my blog when blogger invited me to update my blog model. I didn't listen to my inner voice telling me to ignore it. Click click and I found myself with this new page where I had to reorganise my links and where I couldn't find some of the non-blogger links like the foodlie blogroll etc anymore. To make it worse, somehow the blog doesn't look quite the same now. And the paragraphing has gone absolutely mad. I nearly fainted when I saw what happened to most of my older posts. It'll take ages if ever I should bother to do something about it.

But after nearly changing the colour of my blog to green, I've decided not to touch anything anymore for the moment (but you'll see that it wouldn't last - I'm very itchy backside).

I'm once again not finishing with the vacuuming (the vacuum cleaner has been left on the 1st floor since the day before), but spent the whole morning preparing myself a Prawn Noodle Soup. Sigh, such a long time since I last cooked the dish. Have been hoarding quite a bit of prawn shells for a few weeks (think of the cholesterol) and was running out of storage space in the freezer.

Mmmm...the heavenly smell in the kitchen. I just love prawns. And I have worked hard to make sure that my prawn shells and heads were nicely caramelised to give that nice natural light orange-brown colour to the soup. After that, one will have to decide if one wants to eat the Prawn Mee the way it is or add in dark soy sauce to have a darker soup.

I didn't use pig's tail and pork fat/lard as these are luxury items over here. And I do have a minimum of consciousness for my health.

The Stock :

3 litres of Water

1 Kg lean Pork Ribs

Ginger

Garlic

Shallots

3-4 cups minimum of Prawn Heads and Shells

20 large juicy whole Prawns (peeled)

1 Star Anis

1 Cinnamon Stick

A few Cloves

1 Tbsp Peppercorns

1 Tbsp Palm Sugar

Salt to taste

2 Tbsp Light Soy Sauce

2 Tsp Dark Soy Sauce

I cooked the stock in my pasta pot. First blanche the pork ribs and clean them. Return them to the pot with a new batch of water, the ginger, bashed garlic and whole spices. In a separate pan, heat up some vegetable oil and brown the shallots. Remove and set aside. Add more oil to the pan and when it's very hot, add in all the prawn heads and shells. You have to be patient and allow them to become caramelised and very fragrant. This will provide the colour and flavour to the soup. Add everything to the pork stock, the palm sugar and sauces (but not the salt yet) and let it simmer for a few hours.

Prawns have since lost their caramel colour to the stock

With the pasta pot, it was easy straining the stock. Just add salt to taste and serve it with noodles (yellow, rice vermicelli, rice sticks etc), pork, kangkong (didn't have any and couldn't find spinach either as replacement), bean sprouts, fresh chilli and crispy fried shallots. Of course, one does not forget the big juicy prawns that one would have cooked briefly in the stock before serving with the noodles and the soup.

The mothers usually go to the park with the children after school on Fridays. I had to decline the invitation to join them this afternoon as I was really eager to return home to my Hae Mee. Besides, the gardener would be here to discuss the purchase of a lawnmower (more like a tractor). And more opportunity for me to kill the big pots of plants that we intend to place around the house.