Malaysian street-style mee goreng.

I haven’t made hokkien at home since my birthday party in November. I made this dish for iftar on Tuesday night. It was supposed to be for my friend Ishrat, alongside a smoked salmon pasta, but she was incapacitated unfortunately. 😦

For months since I got back from Bangladesh I would watch mee goreng recipe videos on YouTube late at night. I kept planning to try combining some recipes to get a flavour I’d prefer, but just never got around to it until now.

I kept reminiscing those nights about this really tasty noodle dish my family would order at this halal Malaysian restaurant my family would often visit, back when we lived in Perth. This didn’t taste like my memory of that dish truth be told, but I was so impressed with it. I can’t believe I didn’t always have the dark sweet kecap manis stored at home!!

My brothers Anan and Ivan were very impressed with this dish. While Anan was helping my mum set up the table for iftar, and listening out for the adhan on the Islamic radio station I was really selling how good these noodles were gonna be, even though I hadn’t tasted the sauce yet because I was fasting. Anan told me later he thought because I talked it up so much that it wouldn’t live up to expectation but that he was surprised and he loved it. ^_^  So if y’all wanna taste it for yourselves, here’s da recipe!

Ingredients:

• 1 kg hokkien noodles
• 500 g chicken thigh fillets, cubed
• 300 g mushrooms sliced,
• 1 red capsicum sliced into thin strips
• 1 yellow capsicum sliced into thin strips
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup kecap manis dark soy sauce
• 1/4 cup oyster sauce
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup sriracha sauce
• 1/3 cup tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon garlic paste
• 1 tablespoon ginger paste
• 1 tablespoon chilli flakes
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2-3 tablespoons of sesame or peanut oil (I used peanut)
• 1 teaspoon sesame seeds for garnish
• 1/2 cup sliced spring onions for garnish

Method:

1. Prepare chicken thigh fillets by cleaning and cutting into little cube pieces.
2. Have all other vegetables chopped and ready so that you don’t need to pause during stir-frying to get it ready.
3. Add some peanut oil to a large saucepan (or wok if you have one) on high heat. Beat the three eggs, fry them in the pan, separating into small pieces with a wooden spoon. Remove from pan and set aside.
4. Add some more peanut oil to that same pan still on high heat and toss in the chopped chicken. Stir and cook through with the garlic paste, ginger paste and salt.
5. Add half of the oyster sauce and kecap manis and continue to stir the chicken.
6. Meanwhile boil water and prepare the hokkien according to the packet instructions and drain.
7. Move chicken to a bowl or shallow dish, and then add remaining oil to the pan. Toss in mushrooms first and stir for a minute. Then add the all the remaining sauces to the pan and stir with the capsicum.
8. Add the noodles to the pan and stir to coat in all the sauce. Throw in the chilli flakes too, and then add the fried egg and chicken and stir until everything is combined.
9. You can transfer the noodles to a serving dish or serve from the pan, with sesame seeds and chopped spring onion scattered over the top.

Notes:

• You could fry the eggs in the pan with the noodles if there is space, but if there is a lot of sauce it probably won’t cook quickly enough.
• Use two spoons to help stir all the ingredients, and coat everything in the delicious sauce. 🙂
• Serving with extra sriracha is really tasty!
• The leftovers of this taste amazing. Somehow a night in the fridge maximises the flavour. Mmmm…