Fish Mee Fen

Greg and I have always been quite telephatic about food. When we were dating, he would sometimes suggest to go for a certain food at a certain place and that would be exactly what I had in mind.

Recently it happened again. I was wondering hard what to cook for dinner because I knew I would have a busy evening ahead. So I decided on this dish "Fish Mee Fen (Bee hoon)". Before I reached home, Greg called and he said he had a craving for Fish Mee Fen. How is that for telephatic?

Greg: This is fun. Nee is like a cooking machine. You just press the button, & the food will come out

NEE: No, he just need to send a signal and my antenna will receive it.

This is a very simple yummy dish to cook. Greg can down a whole bowl all by himself. The recipe is actually for fish head. But both of us don't know how to take this so called excellent part of a fish but Greg seems to be slowly adapting to it as compared to me. I figured it is an acquired taste. So I normally use fish meat to cook this. Or I would buy a whole fish and chop it into cutlets and half the head. Fishes like Tilapia, Red Snappers, Garoupa or the more expensive Ngo Hoo cutlets are all good. I even try a fish called Banana fish because of yellow fins, available at Choice. I was going to try Hai Lian and I actually bought one for RM17, then Mum warned me that this type of fish sometimes has parasite worms sticking to its backbone. Errrrgggghhh....that was a big put off. I just can't bring myself to cook that one. So guess where it went?

Serve 3-4

600-800 gm of fish, cleaned and cut into cutlets, seasoned with
2 tbsp of light soya
2 tbsp of huatiaw cooking wine
1 tbsp of salt

1 cup of cornflour
4 cups of oil for frying

For the soup:
1.5 litre of water + some chicken bones (or 1.5 tbsp chicken granules/2 cube of stock)
3 no of big tomatos, cut into wedges
4-5 slices of ginger
1 tbsp of garlic
2-3 leaves/pcs of salty mustard or xien cai, washed slightly and roughly chopped
1 big red chillis, de-seeded, cut into thick strips
1 pc of tofu (optional)
1/2 cup of huatiaw cooking wine

2 tbsp of light soya
1 tbsp of ideal milk (optional)

1tbsp of cooking oil + 1 tbsp of sesame oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 packet of thick mee fen

1) Soak Mee fen in room temperature to soften. Boil with hot water to cook mee fen. Strain and set aside .

2) Cook the superior chicken stock or use instant chicken stock. Keep stock simmering.

3) In the wok, heat up oil. Add ginger and garlic and stir fry till fragrant. Add xien cai, chilli and tomatos. Stir fry for a min or so. Add seasoning leftover from fish. Add light soya and huatiaw.

4) Transfer the mixture to the pot of simmering stock. Turn up fire and boil. Once boil, let stock simmer while you deep fry the fish cutlets. In a clean wok, heat up 4 cups of cooking oil. When oil is hot, add fish pieces. Fry till golden brown. Dish out and drip off the excessive oil.

5) Taste the soup and add seasoning like salt and pepper. Add ideal milk for extra richness and colour to the soup.

6) Divide mee fen into 4 bowls. Place 2-3 pcs of fried fish pieces and tofu pieces into each bowl and ladle the soup generously for each bowl. Divide tomatos and xiencai to each bowl. Sprinkle with some chopped spring onions or coriander as garnishing. Serve with soya and cut pickled chillis.

Note: If you don't want to fry your fish, you can pan fry like what Terri did with hers.