Still Feeling Peckish

Seafood rocks my boat. Hubs is a carnivore and that’s why I keep a hearty supply of beef steaks, cubes, and mince in the freezer, but my personal go-to for food joy is seafood. Unfortunately kid#1 hates seafood (well, not squid or octopus but pretty much everything else that lives underwater). To top that off, Grandpa also thinks he has a squid allergy which really cramps my style in indulging my food preference when cooking for the family.

It was on a rare “alone” day at home that I could indulge myself. I had recently bought some egg white noodles from Umami Keto. I had ordered the udon style noodles, but the vendor kindly threw in 2 bags of vermicelli style egg white noodles to try. When I looked at the bags of thin noodles, I instantly had a craving for white seafood bee hoon which has been all the rage in Singapore for the past few years but I was never able to eat it. So this recipe was an experiment but a very happy and successful one.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I actually had almost all the ingredients in my freezer except for the squid and vegetables. I do have an awfully bad habit of stocking up way too much food in the freezers at home. Recently I discovered that someone must have left the freezer door partially open at night because I discovered some frozen condensed drips of water at the top of the freezer the next morning. That was terribly distressing as I had just done some meat shopping and the freezer was full. It was a frenetic week of cooking up all the meats in the freezer and I was actually heartily sick of all the meat at the end of the week. But it was good because I tidied and cleaned up the freezer (it hadn’t been cleaned for 3 years!!!!) and it was refreshing to start again at ground zero. It was surreal looking at an almost empty freezer and fridge. Anyway in the big clean up, I discovered that I had frozen clams and prawns and these were a timely addition to this dish.

The secret to this dish is to have a really good prawn stock. I usually accumulate a good amount of prawn shells which I always save to make stock. There is nothing better than freshly made stock and the Instant Pot makes this ever so easily. I love the frugality of Chinese cooking that never wastes even prawn shells and fish bones!

The egg white noodles held up their shape and texture well in the cooking. However, I wouldn’t have been able to pre fry it for the “wok hei” or burnt smell aroma that chefs do with regular vermicelli. But this keto noodle did seem to absorb some flavour (but not a lot of the sauce) and so the amount of gravy also needed a little adjustment. All in all, this was a lovely dish. I adored having it all by myself, but I might make it again in larger portions if another seafood lover comes through the door!