Rard Nar Moo Sub – Rice Noodles with Minced Pork Sauce

I was reading some food blog (I can’t say it’s a very interesting one, it’s all about eating healthily and how much trans fat there is in food and how butter is something you should never touch) and they were talking about a comfort food has to be warm and gooey and saucy. Well I certainly think this is one of them.

The dish is a basically Thai version of the famous Chinese char hor fun. It is usually made with sliced marinated pork instead of minced pork and wouldn’t usually have onion or tomatoes. The tomatoes and onions seem to be something that’s specific to the minced pork raad nar.

We start with half a kilo of fresh rice noodles (hor fun – by the way they are actually called koey teow in Thailand so I didn’t know until today that in Singapore there is actually a difference between a hor fun and a koey teow – which is really like a difference between fettucine and linguine, the width of the noodle itself). The reason I had to buy half a kilo is because they don’t seem too willing to sell me less quantity than that. This will feed 3-4 people. Sprinkle some dark soy sauce on the fresh noodles and fry in a hot wok until they are nice and hot. If you use a non-stick wok, there is no need for oil because it usually has a lot of oil already. So that’s your noodles done.

Now for the sauce. Chop a medium brown onion, quarter 12 cherry tomatoes, crush 2 cloves of garlic, and chop a handful of kai lan.

In a heated wok, in goes a little bit of oil and fry off the onion and garlic. Add about 100 grams of minced pork (I was very impressed that when I asked for minced pork at the market, the butcher just grab a piece of pork and minced it. No premincing. No having mince sitting there. No leftover pieces of questionable meat getting passed as meat. Just a piece of nice pork minced for you!). Brown the mince and season with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon of molass sugar, 1 tablespoons of oyster sauce and 1/2 tsp of chicken stock powder.

Add chopped tomatoes to the mince sauce. The juice in the tomatoes will make the sauce just a bit nicer.

Add your greens. Then add about half a litre of water. Bring to boil.

Add a tablespoon of yellow bean sauce. Don’t forget to taste. With lots of salty ingredients, it may end up being too salty.

Thicken the sauce with some corn flour. Take 4 tablespoons of corn flour and add a bit of water. Make sure the sauce is boiling before adding the corn flour. Stir quickly. The corn flour will cook and thicken the sauce. Add some pepper. Serve the sauce on top of the noodles.

It’s rather good. If I may say so myself…