Making the perfect Cantonese fried ho fun (rice stick) dish at home!

This is a favourite of my wife's. Whenever we eat out, whether it be in the UK or when visiting Malaysia, she always asks for Cantonese Fried Ho Fun. It is actually quite easy to make at home. Only problem is that you need a tiny handful of a lot of ingredients to make it an interesting dish and as a result, I can only make this when I have enough leftovers accumulated in the freezer.

This dish consist of prawns, pork slices, char siu, fishballs, squid and pak choy.

It needs to be fried separately:

The fresh noodles (ho fun / rice stick) is tossed into a hot well greased wok, or a less greased non stick pan, then fried with a bit of light soy and sweet soy sauce. Keep sprinking it with water to ensure they stay separate, till lightly charred. If they start sticking together, then you have overcooked it. This is the most important part of the dish to get right and if you get it wrong, the whole dish will not taste right!

Then put the noodles aside.

To cook the sauce... you have to adjust the cooking method according to how hot you can get your wok. Assuming you are doing this at home and your wok does not achieve "wok hei"....

I first brown some garlic and ginger, then add all the ingredients except the pork. Fry lightly then remove.

Next, I brown more ginger and garlic and add marined pork slices. Add bones too if you have any. When they are fragrant, add chicken stock (enough to cover your noodles) and bring to boil. Add rice wine, oyster sauce, salt and sugar into it. This will take awhile to heat up if cooking at home, so it is like stewing the pork, hence why you add the bones. When the mixture starts bubbling add cornstarch to thicken. Then add the rest of the cooked ingredients and remove from heat within 1 minute. Add egg white for Malaysian style "wat tan hor" or leave as it is. I did not add the egg white cuz I dont want to waste the yolk!

Then, just pour over the noodles, remove bones and serve.

If your cooker is hot enough to heat up the stock within seconds, you do not need to cook this part separately. Just add everything in and fry them, add cornstatch and pour onto noodles.

Lobster Fried Ho Fun

Another treat for the Chinese New Year fortnight. Managed to get a frozen Canadian lobster. Added some other bits of seafood and then fried it with garlic, rice wine, soy and oyster sauce, then poured stock over it and thickened with cornflour. Then I poured the whole lot over plain fried ho fun (with a bit of sweet and light soy). This is my version of "wat tan hor" but without the egg cuz I never seem to get it right and always overcook the egg.