How to cook Quick Pan Mee (Flat flour noodle)
Posted by Kan Hong Hong , Thursday, October 7, 2010 10:03 AM
Pictured sourced from Wikipedia
Its name originated from a very humble stall located at Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur. Stall's name is Tin Ai Ker and is still in business! Visit here to know more about the store. 'Pan' means wooden board in Cantonese and 'Mee' or 'Mien' means noodle. Wooden board is used to knead the flour into dough, then flattened using a roller. The main tool used is the wooden board, that explains how 'Pan mee' is originated.
Here's a quick home recipe on how to prepare Pan Mee. Enjoy!
The broth: You'll need anything which is protein based such as anchovies/bones. Peel and cut some garlics, some ginger and some onions into pieces. Clean bones/anchovies by running it in clean water twice. You wouldn't want to wash away the taste/aroma of the anchovies. Strain anchovies and place them into a big pot. This pot will be used to cook the pan mee till the end.
Throw in garlics, ginger and onions into pot and add 1 tbsp cooking oil. Heat pot and stir ingredients with a spatula until fragrant. Add in 1 litre of filtered water into pot. Boil for at least 30 mins. You can let the broth to cool under room temperature and keep it into fridge and use it on the next day. I do this at night so that when I come home from work the next day, I would have my broth ready to cook pan mee. You may even add some mushrooms into the broth.
The fried onion/shallots: Chop onion/shallots into tiny pieces, you may use an electrical chopper which can do your job faster. Tune in to find out what type of chopper I'm using @ Great tools in my kitchen.
The dough: Refer to pictures below
Sift flour into a container. You'll need approximately 100 grams per person. For a family of 2 adults and 2 small children like mine, I used 350 grams of flour (my sons love it, cooked more just in case)
Add 1 tsp of fine salt and 1 tbsp cooking oil into sieved flour. You may replace cooking oil with 1 tbsp of butter.
Mix well oil, salt and flour.
Add water gradually while mixing the flour until the flour is completely kneaded into dough.
Mix dough well and knead until dough is smooth and not sticky.
Sprinkle some flour onto dough if dough is too sticky.
Walla!
The cooking process : You may now tear/peel the dough in thin pieces and place them into the pot of broth boiling with low fire. Stir occasionally. You may also roll the dough into flat pieces before tearing them into pieces, but I found home-made doughs are much softer, therefore, making it harder to be rolled. Use some warm water to moist the dough and stretch the dough into thin layers of about 2 inches in length before throwing into the pot.
When all dough is inside the pot of broth, switch to high fire, coz it's time to throw in all other ingredients.
Fish balls/meat/choy sam vegetables. Cook until all ingredients are cooked, about 3 minutes. Add 1 tbsp of sesame seed oil and 1 tbsp of fish gravy.
Serve in large soup bowls and sprinkle some spring onions/fried onions/fried anchovies
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