Flat Noodles Soup with shredded chicken aka Ipoh Kai Si Hor Fun is served in an aromatic, clear chicken and prawn stock with chicken shreds, prawns and spring onions.
This recipe won’t be the exact same thing as that cooked by the masters in Ipoh, but it’s a pretty handy home economics version.
This dish uses not only chicken, but uncooked prawn shells and heads. So, you had better start saving them!
There will also be enough leftover stock to make other dishes, perhaps Kuala Lumpur-style Hokkien mee, for the next meal.
Ingredients (makes two to three servings)
For the soup
• 30g old ginger
• 40 g garlic
• 0.6g five spice powder
• 56g prawn shells and heads
• 160g or five to six prawns, shells and heads to be added on the pile
• 450g hormone-injection-free chicken drumstick and thigh
• 60g shallots
• 20g Chinese chives stem base
• 5g salt (an extra 5g or more if you prefer)
• 5g sugar (add more if your palate is on the sweet side)
• 1.5 to 2 litres water
• 1 to 2 tablespoons cooking oil
For the noodles
• 480g Hor Fun (use whatever is available in the supermarket)
• 100 to 115g Taugeh (bean sprouts)
• 50g Chinese chives
• Light soya sauce
• 1 litre water
Preparation
• Clean and remove the skin of the ginger and slice following the grain.
• Rinse beansprouts, set aside.
• Peel the skin of the shallots and slice.
• Clean and cut chives to about 2cm lengths.
• Remove the shells and guts of the prawns. Save the shells and heads to be used later. This is important as these will give the soup its distinct orange hue and complex flavour.
Method
• In a 2.5-litre saucepan or pot, add ginger, garlic, stem base of the chives, chicken, and five-spice powder.
• Add about 1.5 litres of water, and turn on the hob to the highest setting to bring to a boil.
• Once it boils, turn heat to the lowest possible setting and let the broth simmer slowly, with the lid closed, for one hour.
• While the broth boils, heat a frying pan with about one tablespoon of cooking oil and fry shallots till brown.
• Set the fried shallots aside for use as garnishing afterwards. Do not skip this part as the fried shallots give the final bowl of noodles an extra dimension in flavour.
• With the remaining oil in the frying pan, fry the prawn heads and shells till fragrant. Add half a cup of water and let it boil. Let it simmer for half a minute or less, then add the contents of this pan into the pot of still simmering chicken broth.
• Add salt and sugar into the broth.
• On the hour, add in the prawns and let them cook for one minute. Remove from the broth, and set aside.
• Fill a big bowl with room temperature or cold water. This bowl should be big enough to fit the chicken.
• Without turning off the heat, remove the chicken from the soup and bathe it in the bowl of room temperature or cold water for about a minute.
• Remove the chicken from the water and place on a plate.
• Now slowly pull off the bones with a fork and chopsticks. The meat should fall off the bone quite easily.
• Set the meat aside, and put the bones and skin back into the still simmering broth.
• In another two-litre pot, boil one litre of water with one teaspoon of salt.
• Blanch the hor fun, chives and taugeh in this salted water for about 50 seconds, then drain off the water (failure to drain the water will result in a diluted, bland tasting dish). Divide them into two bowls.
• Fill each bowl with noodles/ bean sprouts and chives, fried shallots, meat and prawns, before adding a dash of soya sauce over it. Then, ladle in the soup, minus the prawn shells and the chicken bones.
This article has appeared in butterkicap.com
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