So red…

When we cook our own mee sua and serve it with traditional Foochow red wine and ginger chicken soup at home, it would look something like this…

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…and despite the red wine used, it is not really red in colour.

I noticed that those that I had had in town seemed so very red…

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…right down to the colour of the meat served with it…

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…but when I asked around, I was told that this was because they used the cheaper low-grade ang chiew (traditional Foochow red wine), the not-very-well-filtered ones selling at around RM4.00-5.00 a bottle. We usually use the best available, RM8.00-RM10.00, that is usually very clear. No wonder when I ate at the shops, most seemed to lack the very nice fragrance and taste of the wine.

I also noticed in some blogs that the ones at Sitiawan, Perak and elsewhere in the peninsula are also very red in colour including this one that my friend, Claire, had when she was there not too long ago…and even the one my sister-in-law’s gave us once was of this darker shade of red.

Well, I felt like having some mee sua that day and instead of just marinating the chicken in the red wine we had in the house, I added a pinch of ang chao – the residue from the red yeast rice left over from making the wine…

I cut a few slices of ginger…

…and fried them in a bit of sesame oil till golden brown before adding the meat…

You can add more ginger if you like or just bruise one whole chunk of it for use or if you love ginger a lot, like my missus, you can pound it and use in your cooking. I am not all that fond of a lot of it as it is very heaty and I would feel somewhat unwell after eating too much of it.

After cooking the meat thoroughly, I let it simmer till the juices had come out before I added some water…

…and a handful of Chinese wolfberries (枸杞 or kei tze) which people say are good for one’s eyesight. For one thing, they’re sweet and will subsequently complement the taste of the soup. I would have added some dried shitake mushrooms (soaked and softened, stalks removed) as well but there wasn’t any in the house so I had to do without those.

After simmering for some time, I transferred everything from the wok into a pot…

…and continued simmering for a while longer. There! I could see that the meat was red and so was the soup, just the way I wanted it to be. I tasted the soup and it was nice enough so I did not add anything else to it. You may want to add some seasoning – salt and msg or chicken stock granules, if you are thus inclined.

For one thing, the longer you simmer, the tastier the soup will be but you have to be careful as the chicken these days may not be able to withstand all that heat and may disintegrate and fall into tiny bits and pieces. The best would be corn-fed or kampung (village) chicken and not the ones fed and fattened with those factory-produced chicken feed and hormone injections so that they would be ready for sale in a jiffy!

After I had cooked the mee sua, I poured the soup over the noodles and served them with a piece of the meat…

It was very nice but it became even nicer after I had added a spoonful or two of the red wine straight from the bottle…

They say that alcohol evaporates in the process of cooking so for that extra kick, it is best to add a bit more prior to eating. Brandy would be nice too for this purpose, if you have any in the house. I did not have any hard-boiled eggs with it as those would usually be served in conjunction with somebody’s birthday…plus I was thinking that I already had quite a few over those days leading to this one.

There you have it! My very delectable bowl of mee sua served in traditional Foochow red wine and ginger chicken soup in the desired darker shade of red and if you are thinking that it is so easy too cook, you are absolutely right. That’s the beauty of Foochow cuisine – so simple and yet so very very nice!