Beyond Pho

Another good meal we had in Singapore was here. It's on Hok Lam St.

hok lum.jpg

They serve an excellent bowl of Teo Chew (Chaozho in Mandarin or Chiuchow in Cantonese) beef noodles.

hok lum noodles.jpg

The noodles are somewhat similar to a bowl of pho bo but much much richer with a far more deep fragrant herbal broth, my guess is probably more cinnamon, more star anise and probably some shaoxing wine.

Teo Chew cuisine is renoun as a herbal almost medicinal version of Cantonese food. Other famous Teo Chew dishes include a herbal pork anise stew, a great steamed fish in herbal ginger broth with wolf berries and chinese prunes, and dishes such as what is known in Thailand as goong woosen, frangrant glass noodle and prawn claypot, goose feet noodles and fried oyster omelette. Teo Chew people hail from Northeast Guangdong, they are the original rice smugglers and triads (yes the original gangstas) of China and make up the majority of the Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia, thus most of Southeast Asia now has regional variations of Teo Chew dishes, I'm thinking of Thailand's Khai Paloo and Singapore's Ba Ku Teh. Thailand also has a beef noodle dish that is similar to above said noodles, but it's sweeter and they put Thai basil in it.

My Thai/ Chinese side of the family are Teo Chew, that's how come I know this shit.

Anyway, if your interested in learning more wiki has some info although I'm not sure about the fruit carving comment, this is prevalent everywhere in asia, not specific to Teo Chew people

2 comments:

    that soup sounds and looks DAMN good.

    anise is in my top 5 flavourits.

    i wonder if it would be recreatable at home?

    do you know any good chinese cookbooks by the way? obviously it's very broad... but i am open to any style

     

    I would boil up some beef bones, with sliced ginger, star anise, white pepper corns, cinnamon, whole garlic, a few corriander roots, corriander seeds, fennels seed, splash of shaoxing wine, light soy and maybe some dark soy and then I would boil up my rice noodles, strain the broth and add sliced beed and beef balls......try that and get back to me

    I find second hand book stores are the best for Chinese cook books, I can't recommend one off hand, but Kylie Kwong and Neill Perry do ones that are ok and with recipes accessible to most, they're not the most adventurous though....

     

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