crab beehoon style prawn beehoon

recently a friend bought 4pax dinner & crab beehoon at seng kee on 1.2.2015.

we were all quite disappointed with the food, especially the crab beehoon which cost S$70 after my friend was given a special discount.

i was thinking, maybe i should cook this myself. it did not look difficult at all.

subsequently i did have a very good S$60 crab beehoon (i think at this price all stalls selling crab beehoon must at least be of this standard) at kamjiazhuang organised by my daughter on 7.2.2015.

crab beehoon style prawn beehoon

anyhow, today i decided to give it a try, on 26.2.2015. ^^

i didn’t have crabs & did not intend to get crabs to experiment, so i did a flavourful stock of prawn heads & shells with salt & oil. (i did the same for my chilli crab pasta w/o crabs).

i fried some chopped shallots, garlic, 2 chilli padi & 1 cm sliced ginger in oil in a wok on medium to a nice aroma. then i added the cleaned chinese cabbage & fried till it softened, and added some fish sauce. i removed the vegetables and added about 200g of beehoon softened in cold water & stir fried a short while. then i added the prawn stock together with the unshelled prawns & turned the fire up to reduce the stock. i added 2tablespoon of oyster sauce & 1 tablespoon of cornflour.

once the stock was reduced and checked for taste & making sure the beehoon was not overcooked, i added the oysters, covered it with the beehoon & off the fire.

& it was ready to serve. voila!

crab beehoon style prawn beehoon

crab beehoon style prawn beehoon

crab beehoon style prawn beehoon

for me the test was –

1. that the shellfish stock flavours were infused into the beehoon (入味)
2. the beehoon are NOT marshy, stick together

i had tasted the dish during cooking, so i knew it was tasty & flavourful & the shellfish stock was properly infused. overall i was quite satisfied with the result, so maybe will try with crab or lobster.

while the current preparation was not really superb, it was still probably better than seng kee’s which was more like a singapore fried beehoon than a crab beehoon.

c/w with kamjiazhuang’s crab beehoon & ming kee’s crab beehoon though, mine was quite some way to go. so let’s see if i can get close using crab instead of prawns.

c.h.e.f andy