Mee Siam Mai Hum Recipe

For Stephanie and Samuel's sake, I have decided to get off my lazy butt and to organize and transcribe the recipe of my grandmother's superb meesiam. This is my first attempt at a recipe that is more complicated than "Chop. Stir fry. Add sauce. Boil noodles. Toss.", so do bear with me! If you need visuals for the cooking process, most of it is up on my previous post =)

Mee Siam Mai Hum Recipe For 8-9 Greedy Folks

Sweet sour spicy savoury soup
Ingredients:
- 2 packets of tamarind (a.k.a. asam)
- 2 large (peeled) white onions
- 1 packet of chilli paste
- 1 tablespoon of salted soya beans
- 1 packet of rock sugar
- 4-5 stalks of lemongrass
- a handful of dried shrimps
- 1.5 packets of (peeled) shallots, 5 candlenuts (a.k.a. buah keras, not bacarrats, which is a game), a tablespoon of belachan
- 1 packet of tau-pok

Steps:
1. Soak the tamarind in enough water to cover over. Use your hands to rub off all the soluble stuff off the tamarind. That's what grandma did, anyways. Drain and throw away the tamarind seeds.
2. Add 1 tablespoon of salted soya beans and 1 packet of rock sugar to the tamarind suace. Add water to fill the pot (refer to picture in the previous meesiam post). Set to boil.
3. Add the lemon grass into the boiling put.
4. Blend the dried shrimps.
Blend the shallots, candlenuts, belachan.
Heat the wok and add oil. Fry the blend of shallots, candlenuts and belachan with the packet of chilli paste. When fragrant, add the blended shrimp paste. Divide to 2 portions: 2/3 for the soup and 1/3 for the beehoon. Add the 2/3 portion to the soup.
5. Blend the white onions. Add to boiling pot.
6. Rinse and squeeze the excess oil off the tau-pok. Throw into the boiling pot.
7. Turn off the heat and let it simmer for another 20min or so. According to my meesiam consultant, a good meesiam sauce is one that is "Sour, sweet and spicy enough." So make sure it puckers your mouth and burns your throat as you swallow!

Yummy beehoon
Ingredients:
- 2 packets of 400gm beehoon
- 400gm of beansprouts (or as much as you like)
- 50c worth of jiu3 cai4
- 1/3 of the stir-fried chilli paste+blended stuff(leftover from the stock)

Steps:
1. Soak the beehoon in water until it's no longer brittle.
2. Wash the beansprouts and chop the jiu3 cai4 to inch long lengths.
3. Heat wok, add oil, fry chilli paste + blended stuff.
4. Add in the beehoon. Fry, fry, fry... Make sure the chilli paste is evenly spread out among the beehoon =)
5. Add in the beansprouts. Fry, fry, fry...
6. Drizzle in 3/4 cupful of water to the beehoon, so that it won't be so dry. Drizzle in soy sauce to taste. Fry, fry, fry...
Meesiam consultant complains that many stalls outside don't bother frying the beehoon--they simply add chilli oil to make the beehoon look reddish, but frying it adds that much more flavour to it.

Meesiam additionals
Boiled eggs, boiled prawns, sliced fish-cakes, lime to taste. Add as much as you like to your helping of meesiam! Use the best and freshest ingredients! Meesiam consultant says not to skimp on the quality of the prawns: buy expensive ocean prawns if you must! Otherwise it won't taste fresh and springy and will likely turn to mush as you try to slice them. Words of wisdom indeed.

There you've got it. If you need to clarify anything, feel free to leave a comment, and I'll call my meesiam consultant and get back to you when I can ; )