Home-Cooked: Prawn Noodles - PerutBesi's Style

When you're too lazy to bother with recipes & you don't purposely purchase ingredients for a meal, you're exactly like the PerutBesi! Welcome to my world in the kitchen! I rarely buy ingredients specifically to cook something, but I'll check what I have in stock & I'll think of something to cook...hahaha...yeah, it may not be the best way, but it has been working so far...

I've been experimenting on prawn noodles twice. Last night was my 2nd time cooking prawn noodles again & I think it tasted pretty good :) The hubs approved with a big smile on his face *yay*

What made me think of cooking prawn noodles last night? Well, it's the home-grown kangkung (the Thais call it "morning glory") that I've just harvested - it has to be cooked & enjoyed, right? :D

Part of my small 'lil garden before I harvested most of the crops :P

The 2 veggies that I harvested yesterday 

I'm sharing a simple "recipe" of sort with steps on how I prepared my version of prawn noodles (it's all "agak-agak"/by estimation method). It may not be exactly like the original, but I think it tasted pretty good to us. Heh. If you're picky, you may not want to follow my recipe. But if you're an "explorer" like yours truly, then enjoy this journey of discovery! Feel free to tweak the recipe according to your preference! :)

* serves 2 persons. If you don't take pork, you can use ikan bilis/chicken as well, I'm sure.

Ingredients for soup (Set A)
- garlic, 5-6 cloves chopped/blended 'til fine
- shallot, 3-4 bulbs chopped/blended 'til fine
- chili boh paste, approximately 2 tablespoons
- dried shrimps, 3-4 tablespoons
- ikan bilis/dried anchovies, 1 handful
- cooking oil, 2 tablespoons or more

Ingredients for soup (Set B)
- fresh prawn shells (I used just 10 prawns + at least another 15 prawn shells from previous consumption; I just ate the prawns & kept the shells with their heads in the freezer)
- pork bones for soup, 2 palm-size pieces (if you have more, your soup will be tastier, so you can use however much you can afford to add into the soup...hahaha...I just had 2 more pieces left in the freezer, so that's all I used)
- rock sugar, 1-2 pieces to taste
- salt, 1 teaspoon or according to your preference
- chicken stock/cube, optional (I didn't use it as I don't have any in the kitchen, but it'll make the soup tastier, I'm sure)

Ingredients for the overall dish
- noodles, cooked, drained & set aside (you can use the yellow noodles, vermicelli/meehoon, or like me, use those air-dried Vit's noodles)
- kangkung, at least 2 handfuls, blanched/pre-cooked (I just used however much that I harvested from my garden)
- fresh prawns, shelled (that same 10 prawns in Set B)
- egg, hard-boiled & halved
- fried shallots, optional (I didn't have & was too lazy to fry them on the spot)
- beansprouts, as much as desire, optional (I didn't purchase beansprouts)

Directions
1. Bring a pot of water to boil.
2. Add in the pork bones.
3. Add in the fresh prawn shells. If you want it to be more fragrant, you can fry/stir-fry the prawn shells with the other ingredients of Set A first before adding to the pork-based soup.
4. Keep the soup boiling on medium flame & proceed with the next part of the preparations.

5. Heat frying pan/wok with at least 2 tablespoons of cooking oil.
6. Add the chopped garlic & shallots & fry 'til fragrant, but not 'til it starts to brown.

7. Add the dried shrimps & ikan bilis into the garlic+shallots mix & fry 'til fragrant. I had a pre-fried dried shrimps + ikan bilis + chili mix, so I used that instead of individual ingredients.

8.  Add the chili boh paste into the pan & stir-fry 'til the paste mixes well with the other ingredients.

9. Add the paste into the soup & stir/mix well.
10. Do a taste-test before adding the rock sugar & salt &/chicken stock. (this is because the chili boh paste + dried shrimps + ikan bilis can be rather salty)
11. Scoop/filter out all the prawn shells & pork bones. (I allowed the soup to boil with all the ingredients for another 10-15 minutes before filtering the prawn shells + pork bones)
12. Discard the prawn shells.
13. Peel off the meat from the pork bone & set aside.
14. Blanch the fresh prawns in the soup 'til cooked. Set aside.
15. "Assemble" your noodles, veggie, half the hard-boiled egg, prawns & pork in a bowl & add the prawn-pork soup into that same bowl.

Tadaaaa! PerutBesi's version of simple prawn noodles! Bon apetit!

Me thinks me is quite a good "agak-agak" chef,