Every time I tell my mom I am making mee siam, she’ll remind me to use Taocheo. But ma! I have been cooking for more than 30 years?! Yet, you know what, it is such a blessing to have a mother to nag at you even at this age. My mum is 80 years old.
I am not sure why we call this Mee Siam, as if it originates from Siam or Thailand. I have never seen any Thai noodle dish that is close to this version.
Mee Siam is a common street food in Singapore and Malaysia. However, in Singapore, ours is more soupy while those we get in Malaysia tend to be the dry versions. I like the Singaporean version much better. In addition, I like to have a whole spoonful of fried dried prawns as toppings rather than having them incorporated into the soup.
So here’s my version. Really good and a comfort food for most Singaporeans.
Mee Siam
Ingredients
- 200 g Bee Hoon fine rice noodles (soaked in cold water for 30 minutes)
- 1 litre Stock
- 2 Tbsp Cooking Oil sunflower, canola, peanut etc
- 3 tbsp Asam (mixed with 3 tbsp water and drain
- 2 Tbsp Sugar
- Salt and lime juice to taste
Toppings
- 3 bunches Chinese Chives finely chopped
- 20 Prawns blanched
- 5 Hardboiled eggs sliced
- 5 Taupok diced to 5 mm and toasted
- 6 Tbsp Dried prawns soaked for 30 minutes, dried, pounded and then fried till crispy
- A handful of Taugay or bean sprouts
Spice Paste
- 10 Dried Chilies soaked and then cut to thumb length
- 9 cloves Garlic
- 1 Big Onion
- 1 Tbsp Belachan or Prawn paste
- 2 Tbsp Taucheo or miso paste
- 5 buah kerak
Instructions
- Grind all the ingredients for the spice paste together.
- Heat up a stock pot and cooking oil. Add the spice paste and stir over medium heat until it is fragrant. This takes 10 minutes, so be patient or the mee siam will not be delicious.
- Scoop up 1/3 of the paste and put that into another pot.
- Onto the 2/3 of the paste, add 1 litre of stock, assam juice, sugar and salt. Bring to a boil.
- Add prawns to the pot and when cooked, remove the prawns to be used for toppings.
- Add the noodles to the 1/3 of the paste that was reserved, stir through and mix until even.
- Put noodles into five bowls, arrange toppings on the noodles, and scoop the gravy over the noodles.
- Serve with a wedge of lime and/or more sambal chili.
