Cooking Healthily for Birthdays: Birthday Mee Sua

Cooking Healthily for Birthdays

Birthday Mee Sua

My Dad's a rather traditional Hokkien sort of guy. He's always held on to what he feels is "his" unique culture, as distinct from the broader Overseas Chinese cultural space. From speaking the dialect to reading about Hokkien  He's also dedicated to clean eating and home-cooked food, what with food at restaurants and eateries being really cooked for speed, taste and convenience, both for the operator and for the customer. 

So, what to do for the birthday of the guy who's done everything? I figured a traditional, healthy and luxurious bowl of birthday mee sua was it.

Cultural Background of Mee Sua in Singapore Hokkien Culture

My dad came from a very economically disadvantaged background. He did very well for himself, but still speaks fondly of the old times, and how life in Singpaore as a child in the 60s and 70s was so different from today. He'd actually lived in the Bukit Ho Swee kampung before moving to an HDB near Queenstown (more background on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukit_Ho_Swee_fire). He used to say that the only time anyone in his immediate family would get a whole piece of meat (chicken) to themselves was during a birthday celebration, and invariably the celebratory dish would be mee sua.

Mee sua (面线) is a kind of really thin wheat noodle (as opposed to rice noodle). It symbolises the flowing course of a long life, probably because it's made by stretching the wheat dough into as thin a shape as possible, and folding it up into a dry brick. It may well be the longest Chinese noodle there is because of how it's made.

So, in that vein, a birthday mee sua should have as many uncut elements as possible: from the noodles to the soup ingredients. There is also the onomatopoeia of "roundness": things which are round 圆 are also 圆满 (complete/fulfilling like a fulfilling life or family). So, the chicken, boiled egg, mushrooms and abalone should also be uncut, and therefore tender. There's another potential ingredient that symbolises longevity: leeks. Again, it's a case of onomatopoeia (probably motivated by the universal tastiness of aliums like leeks) - 韭 ”jiu" the word for leeks is pronounced the same way as 九 "jiu" or long, so it symbolises a long life too. 

Birthday Mee Sua Recipes and Variations

I principally followed the recipe from: 

https://noobcook.com/birthday-longevity-noodles/2/

Referring as well to:

https://peepor.net/pint/blog/?p=11881 and
https://whattocooktoday.com/mee-sua-noodle-soup.html

I was cooking for three and wanted to add to those recipes, so I made the following variations.

1.     I varied the amounts a little: A drumstick for everyone, but a whole chicken thigh for my dad instead - I figured the dark meat would be more tender, flavourful and better on the teeth; this turned out to be true! 

2.    I wanted to add some extra heft to the dish so I decided to add leeks as a crunchy garnish, and 150g of pork belly split across 3 portions.

3.    I wanted to build a good fond as a stronger base of flavour, so I inserted the step of sauteeing the sauteeable ingredients (the pork belly with all its unctuous lard, leeks, garlic as slices and ginger, though that last one is really just to burst the cells and bring out the flavour) 

Cooking Logistics

Getting the ingrdients: I did all my shopping at Ang Mo Kio Hub Fairprice. I figured I might have trouble finding Mee sua since nobody really sells mee sua dishes in Singapore these days apart from Taiwanese chains like the excellent Eat 3 Bowls: https://eat3bowls.oddle.me/en_SG, or Shihlin Street Snacks: https://shihlin.sg/. But most FairPrice outlets do stock it! I bought this one: https://www.fairprice.com.sg/product/swan-tai-ann-mee-sua-box-300g-280199

With a few tweaks to fit my cooking situation. I had a pan and two pots, and I wanted my noodles to come out fresh and al dente so to speak, so my smaller pot became my dedicated noodle blancher, which I'd only blanch right as I was about to serve. 

Actually Cooking the Mee Sua

The flow was: sautee, simmer, blanch (noodles and abalone briefly), and support each step by doing the mise en place (cutting, preparing, arranging of raw ingredients) in empty spaces of time, putting my cutting board close to the stove so I could observe steps as they happened. 

I sauteed the sauteeables: cut pork belly, garlic, ginger, and the large white parts of the leeks first, with the pork belly going in first into a hot pan (just hot enough to be unbearable when you place your hand about two inches or close over the base of the pot) winding down to a small flame. 

Once enough lard had been rendered and the pork was just lightly browned (some parts properly browned, most of it still very faintly brown), I sauteed the rest of the aromatics. 

That built up a fond. I reserved the sauteed ingredients (took them out - don't want to boil them yet!). I then added water enough to cover the ingredients, deglazed the fond, and then put in the goji berries, the the chicken drumsticks and thigh, and the mushrooms, plus some of the leafy parts of the leeks. I reserved another portion of leeks as a crunchier garnish just to be added at the end.

To simmer: cover the ingredients in just enough water to

reach the top, bring it to a rolling boil, then back the heat down to as small as you can manage for the liquid to be gently bubbling (something like a few tiny bubbles reaching the top per second). I left it uncovered for a while and added just a splash of Campbell's liquid chicken stock to top up the water level as it fell below the chicken.

While that was going on, I boiled some eggs, boiled and reserved some noodles, cracked open a can of abalone (6-8 pieces in a 425g can, meaning 6 to 8 "Head" Abalone, think of it like US railway or wire gauges!), drained and reserved the (tasty) abalone juice, and got ready for final prep.

I knew the soup was done by poking the chicken with my chopsticks (I used my own drumstick for a penetrating test - with a chopstick, and gave my dad's chicken thigh a press with a flat spoon). You'll know it's done when the meat teases apart easily, and when pressed with a flat spoon, the meat feels like it's on the threshold between bouncy and ready to just give. The soup tastes deep and flavourful, with a faint herbal sweetness from the goji berries and mushrooms, and a complex stack of savouryness. 

Final prep was just reintroducing the reserved sauteed ingredients for a minute or two to heat up, along with the abalone (no more than a minute), and plating it all up! Put the noodles in, pour the soup on and arrange the ingredients. 

Results

All plated up! 

Some important tips and things to watch out for when cooking healthy birthday mee sua: 

1.     Mee sua is a sticky, starchy noodle. Put it in plenty of water per amount of noodle, I would say an amount like "more than enough to surround it on all sides". You'll want to swish it once it softens in a minute, and then immediately plate it up with your chicken broth. Don't leave it sitting in a plate, drying out gradually, because it will clump up into a kind of biscuit.

2.     Mee sua is typically lightly salted for preservation reasons. Hold off on salt until the final tasting - taste your cooked mee sua without the soup and see how salty it is. Taste your nearly ifnished soup to see how salty that is, and imagine the combination fo the two. Again, HOLD OFF ON SALT.

3.    If you want, you can pre-soak and squeeze the mushrooms in their water soaking liquid (I used dried shiitake mushrooms) to make them soak up water and cook more rapidly.

4.     Abalone from a can is already cooked. It is tender and ready to eat. Heat it up, literally, for no more than aminute, or the time it takes to get warm. It will already start to firm up with that tiny bit of heating up and will continue to do so with heat. You don't want to eat firm abalone.