Do you like mee?

A little story about 2 teenage girls growing up in Singapore. They devised a cunning plan to ask their respective crushes if they felt the same way about them. They could ask, "Do you like me?" If the answer was unfavourable, or the pause awkward, they could answer "I don't! I like kway teow better! ohhh you thought I was asking you if you *liked* me! No lah! don't be silly of course not .... ha ha" but if the answer was positive, they could all live happily ever after. Needless to say, because I ended up marrying an Aussie guy, the plan didn't work for one of them, which was myself. However, it was because I chickened out of asking in the first place :)

Anyway, here is the dish I prepared a few weeks ago.

Hokkien Mee
3 parts hokkien yellow noodles to one part thick rice noodles (serves 4)
250 gms sliced streaky pork
bean sprouts
1 tube calamari
handful of baby octopus (optional)
16 shelled large prawns- king prawns are best (tails can be left on)
sliced fish cake
3 spring onions cut into finger lengths
2 cups of prawn stock (Super dooper magic ingredient!) You can make the prawn stock by boiling the heads of the prawns in 3 cups of water until it reduces to 2 cups with a pinch of salt. If you have pork stock from pork bones you can use one cup pork and one cup prawn. But the recipe is just as yummy if you only have prawn stock.
chopped garlic

1. marinade the pork in salt, sugar and soy sauce overnight
2. slice the calamari into thin rings
3. Fry chopped garlic, sliced pork, prawns, calamari, squid and fish cake together. You can add about 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce if you like. Add noodles and stock. Keep stirring to encourage the noodles to absorb the stock. Add a bit of salt and soya sauce to taste (if needed)
4. When the stock all absorbed, stir in the bean sprouts and spring onion and turn off the flame. This ensures the sprouts stay crunchy.
5. put into your serving bowl. ( I used a claypot to keep it hot) and garnish with fried onions

Hope you all enjoy it ! When eating out, most hawkers fry the ingredients in lots of pork lard as this makes the taste more rich and flavourful and the noodles less sticky however, as we are trying to make our lifestyles healthier, I omitted the lard in the list.