Prawn Noodles - Soupy Noodles #1

It was almost Chinese New Year (somewhere Dec 2011) and I have a lot of prawn shells in the freezer that needs clearing up. I’ve never made prawn noodles before and I’ve been planning for my maiden attempt since months ago. I finally made it when I got some nice fresh prawns again.

I thought it’s difficult. But hey no, it took me just a little while to make this for dinner. The most difficult part could be cleaning the shallots and that’s just it. The rest was quite a breeze.

I used so much prawn shells and heads, that the soup tasted very very nice with no usage of chicken carcass or stock cube. None at all. I referred to these 2 websites to get a general idea and came up with this. Delicious!

I know some of you might find it weird to have pork slices, but in my hometown, we do have this with our prawn noodle at Malai Wong. I see them fishing out huge slabs of pork loin and slicing it later.

Prawn Noodles

Recipe: WendyinKK
Reference: My Wok Life and Eating Pleasure
Serves:6-8, depending on amount of broth in each bowl and portion size

Broth
8-10 cups prawn shells and heads(mine was 725gm)
200gm pork loin
500gm fresh prawns
4 Tbsp cooking oil
1 red onion, quartered
2 clove of garlic, smashed
2 Tbsp Shao Xing wine
4L water
1 Tbsp rock sugar
Salt to taste

1. Put water into a large pot and bring to boil. Put in pork loin.
2. While waiting for the water to boil. Fry shells. Put prawn shells into wok and fry until no more juices come out and looks dry. Pour in oil and on medium heat, fry until the shells are very fragrant and has all turned pink/red/orange.
3. Place all the fragrant prawn shells, onion, garlic, and wine into the boiling water. Bring back to a boil and lower to a simmer on medium low heat for 30 minutes.
4. Fish out the pork loin. Strain the broth. Discard the shells (you can rinse the shells with some water and pour this water into the pot of broth before discarding, waste not yeah)
5. Bring the broth back to a boil.
6. Snip feelers off prawns and put them into the pot of boiling broth. When the water comes back to a boil, fish out all the prawns, set it aside.
7. Thinly slice the pork when it has cooled down.
8. Season broth with salt and turn off the heat. Reboil when it’s almost time to serve.

Chilli paste
5 fresh chillies
5 bird’s eye chilli (adjust to personal liking)
5 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
½ tsp salt
4 Tbsp oil (use more oil if you want your broth to look red)

1. Grind chillies, shallots and garlic to a fine paste.
2. Heat wok with oil, the put in the chilli paste and salt and cook it on medium heat until it looks almost dry(still pasty) and glossy.
3. You can either put this into the soup (after boiling the prawns) or keep this for personal addition later on.

Other condiments:
Rice vermicelli, soaked to soften
Yellow noodles
Fried shallots (you can fry this first, then use the same oil to prepare chilli paste)
Beansprouts, blanched
Water convolvulus
Hard boiled eggs
White pepper

I use a noodle strainer to do this for single portions. Place a handful of beansprouts and some water convolvulus into a strainer. Top with rice vermicelli + yellow noodles. Dip the strainer into the boiling water for a few seconds and pour the contents into a noodle bowl. Put 1tsp chilli paste and some white pepper onto the noodles, ladle the soup over the paste to dissolve. Top with eggs, prawn and pork slices. Lastly, sprinkle on fried shallots.