Fried Hor Fun - Fried Flat Rice Noodle

I wish I am starting the New Year with a more celebratory post. Instead, this turns out to be quite..as L said, plain. While I usually post about my baking, I would really like to try my hand at posting about my cooking and am also curious to understand how it feels like to post every day like some admirable fellow bloggers. Will it give me a high or will I get sick and tired of blogging?

Fried Hor Fun (Hor Fun is actually broad flat rice noodle) is one of the most common fast food we get in Malaysia or Singapore at the good old Tze Char stores ( Translated literally to mean Cook and Fry) that are omni present in every neighbourhood coffee shop. Most of us would have been familiar with packing these home in the Tze Char square boxes and while waiting, would have stood at the store, watched the cook fire up the wok and stir fry deftly with their scoop ladle, making alot of noise as the ladle knocked against the wok.

I know it would be difficult to replicate the taste of the Tze Char store because our domestic stoves will never be strong enough to generate the level of heat to yield that special nuance of 'Wok Hei' ( literally means the smell of the wok - but it really means taking the cooking to the brim of burning but not quite - the taste of fire!)

A simple dish but daunting at the same time- depending on how fussy the taste buds are.

The challenge, I now realise, of photographing a hot dish like this is the need to work very quickly. I was in a frenzy to take the photos quickly so that I could eat my lunch while it was still hot. In all the frenzy, I failed to pay attention to the way the garnishes were arranged on the noodle. It was only when I started to download the photos for editing that I realised my pictures looked like a plate of pig fodder. (for those of you who are old enough to remember, the word, Poon So Tang came into my mind)  I had to get L to look at the photos. When he feedback that they did not look like pig fodder, I felt a little more comfortable about using them as fodder for my blog... :)

Recipe :
300g         Hor Fun (broad flat rice noodle)
1tbsp        Light Soya Sauce
1tbsp        Dark Soya Sauce
1tbsp        Oil

200g         Prawns
100g         Pork, sliced thinly
50g           Fish Cake
3 stocks    Mustard Green or Chy Sim

3 cloves    Garlic
1 cup        Chicken Stock
1 cup        Water
2 tbsp       Oyster sauce
1 tbsp       Soya sauce
Pinch        Sugar
To Taste   Salt & Pepper

Method :
1. Heat up Oil in a hot wok, Stir fry Hor Fun quickly and add the dark and light soya sauce. Continue to stir fry for about 5 minutes until the rice noodle gives out a burnt rice fragrance.

2. Remove noodle from wok.
3. Add one tbsp oil into wok and fry minced garlilc. When garlic turns fragrant, add prawns, pork and fish cake and stir fry quickly. Add chicken stock and water. When the stock starts to boil, add in rest of seasoning and the greens.

4. When greens start to wilt, thicken the gravy with corn starch. Dish out gravy onto fried Hor Fun and serve immediately.