Thursday, 15 July 2010

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Homemade Singaporean-Chinese Mee-Pok (Modern Version)/Singaporeaner-kinesisk Nudler/新加坡中式面条[Xīn jiā pō zhōng shì miàn tiáo]


Ingredients:
- 2 cups wholewheat flour
- 3 eggs beaten
- 1 TBS olive oil
- 1 - 2 pinch salt (if you intend to eat it dry, use 1 pinch; if you intend to use it in soup, use 2 pinch salt)
- 5 TBS water

Directions:
1. Beat eggs with salt and olive oil.

2. Mix with flour until you get a stiff dough.

3. Knead well using hand or handmixer (10-15 minutes), and add a tablespoon of water at a time.

4. Flour your table top, tear off a portion of the dough (can divide into approx. 5-6 smaller doughs in total)and roll it out with a rolling pin until very very thin. As you roll, flour it, so that it won't stick to the surface.

5. Fold 3-4 folds (and as you fold, flour it) and then cut it into noodle strips with knife or scissors, and then unfold it.

6. Boil a small pot of water and boil the noodles for 2 minutes until cooked.

7. Drain and serve :-)

Storage:
Pasta can last a long time (1-2 weeks) if kept in a cool dry place or the fridge. You can freeze them in the freezer up to 2 months in ready-to use portions.

Tips:
1. You can serve it with sesame oil, oyster sauce and chilli oil, as shown in this picture.

2. You can add it to soup and you have yourself a bowl of Chinese noodle soup :-)

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Additional Comments:
After making home-made jam, I can't believe that I have now proceedws to making home-made Chinese noodles!!! Before J came along, I haven't been as productive as until now. Motherhood is doing me good. Things I never had an interest before, nor found the time to do, I actually manages to do it, after I became a mother!

Another factor that drives me, I guess, is being away from home and missing food from home... I miss Singapore SO MUCH, I have resorted to making the noodles myself. It is also a determined heart of steel to share my heritage with J, so that when he is older, he will get a taste of Singapore.

This is a very nutritious noodles, as it is made of whole wheat and eggs. However, it is probably not the healthiest way to eat it, as I have eaten this mee-pok with oyster sauce and chilli oil. But I have decided to indulge myself :-)

The difference between making Italian pasta and Chinese noodles, I have researched over the internet, is the time one uses to knead the dough and the thickness one makes the noodles. Both types of noodles share the same ingredients. Chinese noodles are smooth and slip down your throat, unlike Italian noodles, which are chewy. Thus, one has to knead longer to "work" the gluten and roll hard to achieve the thinness in Chinese noodles. All of which takes longer time. But I much prefer the Chinese noodles - I am forever a true blue Singaporean!!! However, if I run short of time, I don't mind making do with Italian pasta noodles instead.

Whole wheat mee-pok is not in the most traditional sense, Chinese noodles. It does break easily, unlike Chinese noodles made with normal wheat flour. If you want it to taste as smooth as possible and for the noodles to be as long and flowy as possible, when you hold them with your chop-sticks and slur them down your throat, you would need to replace the whole wheat flour with normal wheat flour.

J tried this "mee-pok" plain today for the first time, but without those seasoning of course, and he made me soooo happy, because he ate it happily. Nothing beats the joy for a mother to see her child enjoying her food... I wonder what my own mum felt, when I was a child...

References:
http://foodwithapassion.blogspot.com/2007/06/homemade-egg-noodles.html

Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron Pg. 335

http://www.cfood.typepad.com/


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