This is a recipe for Singapore Char Kway Teow (炒粿條), a favourite local hawker delight. The name of the dish is Hokkein (Chinese dialect group) for stir-fried flat rice noodles. I personally love a small amount of yellow mee (local yellow egg noodles) to balance all that kway teow.
The noodles are commonly fried with see hum (cockles), Chinese chives, lup cheong (Chinese preserved sausage) and fish cake. It is so sinful especially when fried with lard, but so good! To me, wokking it in high heat is the most important factor – not only does it impart more flavour, the char kway teow will also be less oily (not glistening in oil) when cooked.
Char Kway Teow is not complete without cockles (that’s my friend mochachocolatarita‘s beautiful artwork). The perks of cooking this at home is that I can treat myself to extra servings of cockles. You can buy whole cockles and shell them on your own. For a lazy cook like me, I bought shelled cockles from Sheng Siong supermarket. They may look scary in packaging with all that blood liquid, but it’s a total time-saver. And if you have leftover cockles, you can season them with some dark soy sauce for another quick dish.
These are the three sauces used in my char kway teow. From left to right, fish sauce (I usually use this particular fish sauce for local dishes, and Thai fish sauce for Thai dishes), dark soy sauce and kecap manis (Indonesian soy sauce) which is sweet, thick and syrupy.
Use high heat when stir-frying char kway teow. For halal and healthier choice, replace lard oil with olive or vegetable oil and omit the fried lard pieces. You may also add prawns and chye sim for a more sumptuous version.