Hainanese Beef Noodles Dry Version

In my hubby’s first efforts to learn how to cook bak chor mee a few weeks ago, he bought a packet of frozen beef balls, and used very little of it. I can’t leave the beef balls in the freezer forever. And I don’t know when my husband’s cooking forays will start again; he’s been so busy at work lately. So it’s up to me to do something about it.

Hubby helped in finding me an online guide on Chef2Chef Culinary Portal: Singapore Signature Dishes http://forums.chef2chef.net/viewtopic.php?t=287257, and the recipes were posted by a chef/cooking teacher. Many thanks to you, kitchencapers! I could not comment on the forum nor send you a message because I did not want to join as a forum member. Surely there are many others like me who appreciate your recipes, because all your original pictures and recipes look simply delicious! I would recommend it to anyone! ^_^

I could not abide by the recipe fully as I don’t have all the stuff needed. So here’s an account of what I did. Enjoy!

Ingredients
Part A:
~250g beef, club sandwich type. (I would have bought more if I realised earlier it was all I had left!)
2 large onions, it looks like A LOT because America’s onions are huge.
0.5 cup Dark Soya Sauce
0.5 cup Light Soya Sauce
2 cinnamon sticks
0 aniseeds (I couldn’t find them in the markets here. *pout*)
11 cloves
Part B:
1 Napa lettuce leaf sliced (yep, just some random veges in my fridge)
1 leek leaf sliced (too bad I don’t have bean sprouts!)
5 frozen beefballs
Dried Kway Teow

Method:

Soup:
1. In a medium sized pot ( I don’t have a large one because I usually cook for 2), I put 0.4 to 0.5 gallons of Poland Spring bottled water. This is because I have not bought a water filter yet.
2. When the water is boiling and bubbling, I added in ingredients from Part A.
3. Partially cover the pot and cook over low heat for 2 hours.

To make the dry version sauce:
Here’s what I did, and hopefully it can be helpful to others trying to thicken their recipe.
1. Put 3 cups of the soup’s liquid into a smaller sauce pot for a boil.
2. In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of water, 2 tablespoons of soup and 3 tablespoons of potato starch into a “paste”.
3. Turn the heat off the boiling soup, stir in the “paste”, a bit at a time. Stop when you deem fit.
I used all the paste, but you use less (or more) if the thickness is good enough for you. Remember, the sauce will thicken more when it cools! At salt to your taste. I didn’t add any.
To serve:
Cook ingredients from Part B in boiling water. Arrange nicely before adding sauce. I garnished with some homegrown spring onions to replace the Chinese parsley. Yep I grow spring onions in a container at home! Hee hee!
To “ta pao” (a.k.a. to pack away in a lunch box for hubby to bring to office):
1. Mix olive oil with the veges, so that it stays fresh-green when he opens it hours later.
2. Mix olive oil with the boiled kway teow and add bits of spring onions, so that it doesn’t adhere to eachother when it cools.
3. Position the kway teow, veges, beef balls, beef meat and onions into his lunch container. Close.
4. Pour the dry version sauce into another smaller container. Close.
5. Paste a Post-it “love note” onto his lunch box before putting them into his bag. ;-)