Hand-Made Noodle Soup, Mee Hoon Kueh (面粉馃)

“Traditional Mee Hoon Kueh (面粉馃), made from scratch at home!”

Handmade noodle, a popular noodle dish in Singapore and Malaysia. There are many types and variations of handmade noodles, for instances, Ban Mian (板面), Mee Kia (面仔), and Mee Hoon Kueh (面粉馃), easily available at most food courts, hawker centres and coffee shops. I liked Mee Hoon Kueh (to pronounce in Hokkien dialect), because it is made with the “hand-peeled” method. However, for the commercial convenience, all handmade noodles are made with machine, instead. Ban Mian to be cut into flat noodles with about 0.5-cm wideness, Mee Gia will be rolled into long, thin & round strands, whilst Mee Hoon Kueh to be shaped into small flat squares. Those are for convenience as you would even be able to buy the raw machine-cut types at the supermarkets.. That’s why I still preferred the hand-made version from home. Real hand peeled and pressed version, with the home taste, mouthfeel and noodle texture you wouldn’t get from the machine made…. ~

This noodle soup recipe was adapted from my grandma’s original recipe from her hometown, Fu Zhou (福州), one of the province in China. I used clams for the soup base. Clam makes the soup tastier and sweeter with its seafood flavour. I would also add wolfberries as I loved its taste as well as the beneficial health values. Adding wolfberries not just enhances the look of your food presentation with it redish colour, it also creates additional sweetness and fragrance to the soup.

Another important ingredient to my handmade noodles soup is the Chinese Spinach (苋菜). Conventionally, vegetable to be used in this handmade noodle should be Sweet Leaf (Sauropus androgynus). In Chinese, we called it Mani Cai (马尼菜). However, Mani Cai is not commonly available in Singapore, Chinese Spinach, therefore, makes great alternative.

Making this homemade noodle also creates good bonding time for mummy and child. Get your young one to help you in kneading the dough a little. The main fun to her was to press and shape the dough into mee hoon kueh of different shapes and sizes. Well, it’s handmade.

Ingredients
For noodle dough:
500 g plain flour
2 tablespoon of corn starch
1 egg
175 ml water (about 1 – 1.5 small cup of water)
Pinch of salt

Side Ingredients and Soup Base:
200 gram of pork meat (lean shoulder butt part)
500 gram of clam (with shell intact)
1 handful of Chinese Spinach (苋菜 xiàn cài)
1 tablespoon of wolfberries aka Lycium barbarum (枸杞)
1 large pot of water, 50% filled (about 2000 – 2500ml)

1 tablespoon of corn flour (to coat pork meat for smooth texture)
2 slices of ginger
Pinch of salt and pepper

Optional:
1 handful of fried ikan Bilis

Method
1) Mix flour and corn starch with salt in large mixing bowl. Slowly stir in water. Add in egg, mix it with flour and water, and knead it into smooth dough.

2) Cover dough with clean damp cloth, let set for 1 hour until dough expanded. Reserve for later.

3) Place water in large pot. Bring to a boil over high heat. Add clams and ginger slices. Cover pot with lid. Reduce heat to medium fire. Bring it to a boil again for 10 minutes, or until clams open. Remove from pot with tongs or strainer, and remain clam stock as soup.

4) Remove clams out of shells with utility knife. Discard any clam that remain unopened.

5) Coat pork meat with corn starch. Mix well. Then, place pork meat, wolfberries and cooked clam meat into clam stock (soup). Reduce heat to low fire, simmer for 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

6) Remove the cloth and slightly flatten the dough with a rolling pin or using your palms, and then fold it over for a few times.

7) Tear a small piece from the dough, and knead & press into thin piece, and expand it with finger tips till about half the palm size or sized to your preference.

8) Place thin piece noodle into the pot. Repeat step 7, until whole dough is complete, or amount of noodles required. Add vegetables 1 minute before heat off. Serve hot.

So, it’s time to make your own handmade noodles! With a lot of loves, your handmade noodle dish would be the best one, trust me.

A serving of my mee hoon kueh counts about 410kcal.

Tips: Garnish with fried ikan Bilis, if preferred.
* No standard shape of noodles required here, let your fingers do the “shaping” freely!
* Purpose to add corn starch into the dough is to create extra smoothness to the texture of the noodles.