Ban Mian

One stone kill two bird, I'm actually cooking Mei Cai Kou Rou with my favourite pot and making use the time to update my blog. OMG looking thru the entry, I have being blogging lesser and lesser. I have taken so many food photos, tried a few new places but not discipline enough to sit down and write about it. Reckon it's not going to get any better. Especially with my 6 weeks vacation coming soon.....seriously overdue especially for Minister! Hmmmm maybe it's still a bit to far to start counting down.

Read Jeroxie entry on Ban Mian and realised I had never blog about this dish. Mum used to cook this dish very often when I was really young! During then it wasn't even popular and couldn't be found in the hawker/coffee shop. I always thought it's a very traditional Hakka dish like Lei Cha. In my teens, I started hating this dish same as Lei Cha. Frequency of Mum cooking it also decreases.


As I got older, I began to appreciate both dishes. Lucky for me, Minister's family is also Hakka and he loves both dishes. Both of us grew up practically eating similar Hakka dishes.


Ban Mian is a simple and nice dish which I tend to cook when I have chicken stock in my freezer. Mix some flour with water to form a dough and either by hand flatten some dough and tear into pieces or using a rolling pin roll it flat (thickness depend on individual) and cut into pieces. As for the side ingredients to go with it really depends on what I like and what's available. But 1 ingredient which is a must is Ikan Bilis (Anchovy). To us, it's not Ban Mian if there isn't it.