I realised that day, it’s been a good 2 months since I’ve had this dish. That’s also how long I’ve been away from Singapore because I’m too far along to travel. The little bun in the oven is well on his way to making his debut, hopefully mid Oct and not any later. The backaches from this pregnancy is. Ugh.
After our Korean class (it was test day), we decided to pop by the supermarket to get some cockles for char kway teow. For someone who started studying one night before, I did really well. (Only 5 out of like 40 incorrect simply because there was not enough time to recall and to write them out in hangul.)
Anyway, here’s the Char Kway Teow recipe!
Recipe adapted from recipeineats.
Ingredients:
500g fresh kway teow (i.e. not dehydrated ones)
2 tbsp lard or vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves , finely chopped (because we really love our garlic)
1 Chinese sausage / Lup Chong Sausage, diagonally sliced thinly
2 pieces of fried fish cake, sliced thinly
Handful of spring onions or stems of garlic chives
Handful of bean sprouts
3 eggs, whisked (+ 2 tbsp of water/milk and some seasoning and a pinch of pepper)
seafood – cockles (as much as you like, there never seem to be enough of them when you dine out anyway right), or some prawns, shelled and deveined
Sauce:
5 tsp dark soy sauce
4 tsp light soy sauce
2 tsp oyster sauce
3 tsp sweet sauce / kecap manis
Directions:
The preparatory part:
** If you’ve got unfried fish cake like we did, put it into the air fryer, oven, or simply fry it on the frying pan lightly to get some color on them. Slice, remove and set aside.
** if you’ve got chilled kway teow (we brought them over from Singpaore a few months back), pop them into the microwave for 30s-1minute to soften them so they will not be in a big giant lump when you add them into a pan.
DO NOT attempt to pull noodles apart while cold and hard – they break.
DO NOT pour hot water over them as it will cook them and they will be too damp to fry.
- On the large frying pan/wok, lightly pan fry the sliced lup cheong until they are slightly charred. Remove from pan and set aside.
- With the remaining oil on the pan, fry your whisked egg mixture until it is cooked. Remove and set aside.
- Add your lard and garlic and fry until the garlic turns light golden brown.
- Add kway teow, then toss gently until coated with oil.
- Add bean sprouts and garlic chives and toss gently.
- Add in the remaining ingredients – egg, fish cake, lupcheong, prawn or cockles and cover the pot/wok for about 2 minutes to let the steam reheat the already cooked items as well as the uncooked prawn/cockles
- Pour sauces over noodles, then toss to disperse Sauce through the noodles. Pause between tosses to give the noodles a chance to caramelise on the edges.
- Remove from heat and serve immediately.
I guess the next step is to learn to make my own kwayteow and stop relying on prepacked ones we painstakingly lug back from Singapore!
Enjoy your char kway teow!
cel.koh 