Soups and Dhals Archives - freespiritfood

This version of the famous Hokkien Har Mee, spicy Malaysian prawn and pork soup, was inspired by our daughter’s recent visit to have Laksa at Abel’s Komi Tiam in Canberra.

Stuck here in Sydney, with a couple of pork short ribs in the freezer, I googled around for a recipe to use the ribs and come close to an almost irreplaceable Abel’s Mum’s Laksa experience.

I read with interest about all the different versions of street hawker soups …which brought back great memories of our trip to Malaysia many moons ago.

Night market at Langkawi Island in Malaysia

The solution came forward in the form of a combination of recipes and my decision to just buy a good ready-made curry paste to start off the process. I bought this and other ingredients at a new Asian supermarket Summit at Bondi Junction

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s easy to make and you can pre-prepare most of it and just repeat and assemble at the end.

The other inspiration was this article in The Guardian Use your Noodle By Yottam Ottolenghi

The end result, somewhere between a laksa and a har Mee was just the soupy Asian fix we were looking for, and I got to use up the pork short ribs!

This recipe will serve 3-4 people.

Ingredients:

500-750g pork Asian style short cut ribs (ask your butcher)
8-10 green prawns with heads and shells intact
180g curry laksa paste (or closest you can get)
50g of rock sugar chunks
1 teaspoon salt
4 litres of water
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
500g yellow Hokkien noodles
350g or thereabouts of rice vermicelli noodles
1 bunch water spinach or Asian greens of your choice eg bok choy
2-4 hard boiled eggs
3-6 tofu puffs
Bean sprouts
Asian crispy fried shallots
Leaves of half a bunch of Vietnamese mint (totally optional but great if you can get it. It’s not called Laksa leaf for nothing)
Finely chopped coriander, mint or vietnamese mint for garnish.

Method:

1. Cut pork ribs into single pieces in between the ribs, set aside

2. Peel and remove veins from prawns, reserving heads and shells.

Don’t forget to keep prawn heads and shells

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large stock pot or casserole, add half the curry paste (reserve the rest for later). Stir fry curry paste until dark and fragrant, add prawn heads and shells (not the prawns!). Stir fry until prawn heads turn pink.

Add in prawns after frying half the curry paste

4. Add pork ribs, rock sugar and salt and cook turning until ribs are covered in curry paste and meat is sealed.

Add pork ribs to prawn and curry paste mixture.

5. Pour in all the water if you can and bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for 1.5 hours, checking from time to time to skim off impurities and oil from pork ribs. Check to see park is fall of the bone tender, add more water along the way to ensure you have enough soup for all your diners. (End result should be about 2 litres of delicious soup stock.)

Skim stock to remove impurities along the way

6. After about an hour, hard boil your eggs, blanch your green vegees and set aside, blanch Hokkien noodles and vermicelli noodles, chop herbs, wash bean sprouts …so you have all your ingredients ready to go.

7. After an hour and a half of simmering…..Strain soup stock into a large bowl through a fine sieve or strainer. Remove pork ribs from sieve and set aside to cool in a bowl.

8. I then strained the stock one more time through a fine sieve, but that’s not totally necessary.

9. Clean stockpot or casserole dish. Pour stock back into the pot and place on stove ready to heat up and pour into your bowls.

10. In a small non-stick pan, add the other 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, heat, then add all the rest of the curry paste. Once the curry paste is dark and fragrant and the oil is separating from it, place half of it into a small sambal dish. Add the prawns to the remaining paste and oil in the pan and fry until prawns turn pink and paste is nicely coating the prawns.

11. Heat the soup stock until simmering and add vietnamese mint leaves, tofu puffs to warm up….Quickly reheat ingredients in microwave if needed, an assemble bowls.

Reheating stock with laksa leaf and tofu puffs

12. In large soup serving bowls, arrange your ingredients starting with equal amounts of Hokkien and vermicelli noodles sitting side by side, top with warmed pork, green, prawns, bean sprouts, heated up tofu puffs and halved boiled eggs.

13. Remove vietnamese leaves from stock if using, then ladle soup over bowls until just under the brim of ingredients.

Soup poured over ingredients and garnished before serving

13. Sprinkle with herbs and crispy shallots and serve piping hot with the sambal on the side for those who want an extra chilli kick.

I learnt how to make this soup at the fabulous cooking class in Hoi An Mrs Vy’s Cooking Class (my review).

This is my version which features a prawn and carrot filling, fish balls and puffed tofu.

It is a light but filling meal and very healthy.

Prep time: 25 minutes Cooking time: 15 minutes

Ingredients
10-12 green prawns shelled, I used frozen prawns
1 carrot (3/4 grated and the rest cut into thin discs)
3 cloves garlic
2 red chillies
1 stick lemongrass
1/4 bunch of coriander
2 tablespoons fish suace
1/2 savoy cabbage
1/2 bunch of spring onions
10 Pre-made small vietnamese fish balls – available in most Asian supermarkets.
fried tofu puffs
2 litres chicken stock (homemade if you have)

Method:

1. Cut the core of the cabbage out being careful not to break leaves.

2. Carefully “peel” the cabbage leaves off one by one keeping them as intact as possible. Trim the leaves, removing the tough stalk and so the leaves are of as equal size as you can. Save the trimmings for your broth.

3. Bring a pot of water to boil and then submerge the cabbage leaves in the water, bringing the water off the boil so the leaves gently simmer until soft but still intact. Remove the leaves with a slotted spoon and douse the leaves in iced water, then allow to drain.

4. Cut the spring onions just above the white part, and then put the left over green stalks intact into the cabbage boiling water until they soften. Drain and allow to cool.

5. Chop up the prawns finely.

6. Mash up the garlic, white part of the lemongrass (about 2 teaspoons worth), chillies and some of the coriander leaves in a mortar and pestle to a fine paste. I add a bit of salt to help this process. You can whizz in a small blender if you like.

7. Finely grate 3/4 of the carrot. Thinly slice the leftover white part of the spring onions.

8. in a bowl mix the prawns, garlic chilli paste and 1 tbspoons of fish sauce — mix vigorously – I use gloves – to mush together the prawns and the paste, then add sliced spring onions, grated carrot judging the quantity to have about 2/3 carrot to prawn in the mixture.

9. Add the leftover lemongrass, coriander stalks, leftover grated carrot, cabbage trimmings to the chicken stock and bring to the boil, then simmer for 10-15 minutes while you make the cabbage rolls. This adds sweetness and nutrients from your leftover vegees into the stock.

10. Dollop a teaspoon or two of prawn mixture on a cabbage leaf and , bring in the edges first, then roll to close into a secure neat parcel using the green spring onion stalks to tie them together.

11. Strain the chicken stock and put back into the pot, bring to a simmer again, add the other tablespoon of fish sauce, then add carrot discs and cabbage rolls, simmer for 5 minutes, then add fish balls, simmer for another 5-8 minutes and then finally add tofu puffs, additional coriander leaves to garnish, Taste the broth to see if additional salt is needed.