About this recipe
Wide flat rice noodles fried hard and fast over the highest heat you can produce, with prawns, cockles, Chinese sausage, egg, bean sprouts and garlic chives, seasoned with dark and light soy and a spoonful of chilli paste. The dish belongs to Chinese Malaysian cooking — the name is Hokkien and Teochew for fried flat rice noodle — and in its usual form it is fried in pork lard with crisp lard cubes stirred through, which makes it a non-halal dish not eaten by Malay Muslims. Halal versions are cooked in Malay and Indian Muslim stalls without pork. It is not Thai pad see ew, which is sweeter and uses Chinese broccoli, and not Cantonese beef chow fun.
Recipe facts
- Yield
- 2 servings — fry one portion at a time
- Prep
- 25 minutes
- Cook
- 10 minutes
- Total
- 35 minutes
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Spice
- Medium
Allergens Contains shellfish (prawns, cockles), egg, soy and wheat. Contains PORK and PORK LARD as written. Not halal in this form.
Development draft. This is an untested development recipe from the cookbook project. It has not been kitchen-tested, and the quantities and timings are the author’s working draft rather than a verified result.
Ingredients
Per portion — fry one at a time
- 7 oz (200 g) fresh wide flat rice noodles (kway teow), separated gently by hand
- 2 tbsp (30 g) pork lard, or 2 tbsp (30 ml) neutral oil
- 2 tbsp (20 g) crisp fried pork lard cubes (optional but usual)
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp (15 g) chilli paste (dried chillies blended with a little oil), or to taste
- 4 raw prawns, peeled and deveined
- 2 oz (55 g) Chinese sausage (lap cheong), sliced thin on the diagonal
- 1/4 cup (60 g) shelled cockles, rinsed (optional)
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup (80 g) bean sprouts, tails pinched off if you have the patience
- 1 small handful garlic chives, cut into 2 in (5 cm) lengths
The seasoning, mixed in a small bowl
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) light soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tsp (7 ml) dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp (5 ml) oyster sauce
- 1/2 tsp (2 g) sugar
- Pinch of ground white pepper
Equipment
- Carbon-steel wok, 14 in (35 cm)
- Wok spatula
- High-output burner if you have one
Method
- Heat the wok over the highest heat available until it smokes. Add the lard or oil and swirl to coat.
- Add the garlic and fry 10 seconds until it just colours, then add the chilli paste and fry 15 seconds more.
- Add the prawns, sliced sausage and the crisp lard cubes if using, and stir-fry 45 seconds, until the prawns turn opaque at the edges.
- Add the noodles and the mixed seasoning — the light and dark soy, oyster sauce, sugar and white pepper whisked together. Toss hard, lifting from underneath and pressing the noodles against the hot wok surface between tosses, 1 minute, until every strand is coated and evenly dark brown.
- Push everything to one side. Crack the egg into the clear space, let it set 10 seconds, then break the yolk and fold it roughly through the noodles.
- Add the cockles if using, then the bean sprouts and garlic chives. Toss 30-45 seconds only — the sprouts must stay crunchy and squeak against the teeth.
- Tip straight onto a plate and eat immediately. Repeat for the second portion.
- Do not hold the finished dish or let it sit; the noodles soften within a minute or two of leaving the wok.
From the foundations
The book pairs this recipe with the following, from the sauces, sambals and pastes that open the collection.
The Complete Edition
Char Kway Teow sits in the Malaysia chapter
The book carries this recipe in full alongside the rest of the Malaysia chapter, the pastes and dips it is built on, and the twenty-seven pantry studies that open the collection.
In review with Amazon KDP
Both editions have been submitted to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and are currently in review. Submitted prices are $9.99 for the kindle edition and $49.99 for the paperback. Neither is on sale yet, and prices are as submitted rather than final.