福州太平面 - Hock Chew "Peaceful Noodles"

It's the first day of Chinese New Year today.  As my paternal grandmother is of Hockchew origins, we have always started the day off at her house in the morning where we will pay respects to our elders, where we wish them good health and a good year in return we get their blessings back in a red packet that contains a token sum of money.  After that it is tradition that we have breakfast painstakingly prepared by my grandma and aunt the night before, breakfast consisted of a hot piping bowl of "Peaceful Noodles".  It is an auspicious start to the year, ensuring a smooth sailing year ahead.  Till today my grandma still boils this stock overnight on a stove of hot coals.  Thats why my stock is never as good as hers cos I'm too lazy and worried to have a charcoal stove up over night for fear I might burn down the house. :P


Ingredients  
Serves 4

- 4 Chicken Thighs with bones
- 4 Chicken wings with bones
- 10 shitake mushrooms (Remove stem and cut into bite size)
- Thumb size of ginger
- Wheat Vermicelli aka longevity noodles
- 4 Hard boil eggs

How to cook

- Put chicken pieces, mushroom & ginger in a pot.  Bring to boil on high heat.  Add salt according to how salty you want the stock to be
- Lower heat and keep boiling it for at least 3 hours.  I cooked it for 4hours today
- When soup is done, Prepare hard boil eggs, set aside.
- Boil a pot of water, add a dash of salt.  Boil noodles till it's soft.  This should not that very long.  2mins at most.
- Put noodles in a bowl, put egg and spoon soup over with some chicken and mushroom
- Optionally you can add a dash of Chinese rice wine or Cognac in the soup.

 恭喜发财，万事如意！

Monica Eng

Singapore