Hokkien mee: Noodle dish from Southeast Asia, with ingredients varying by region. Prawns are a key component in Indonesia and Singapore, while in Malaysia pork, squid and cabbage are used.

For days she had been preparing this meal in her home in the Katong neighborhood of Singapore.
Each buah keluak shell had been cracked so that it gaped, revealing a thick, inky paste that Chee instructed me to scoop out with a tiny spoon designed for only this purpose.
Cassava is a root from the Cassava or Tapioca Plant .
This is a bushy plant that grows to about 3 meters tall.
It really is an annual plant with underground food-storing root-tubers.

Towards the finish of the meal — generally an extended and raucous affair — the noodles are added to the rich, full-flavoured stock and slurped.
I immediately fell in love with the dish, and years later my hubby still makes it regularly when we’re in the home.
His recipe is adapted in one in a cookbook that people bought in Bangkok at Mai Kaidee’s, an excellent vegetarian restaurant.
Fideuá was originally created in 1915 by fisherman Joan Batiste Pascual who was simply from Gandia, Valencia and was additionally referred to as Zabalo.
This Spanish noodle dish is comparable to paella but with small very thin noodles instead of rice.
Fideuá is a combination of fedeos pasta with squid, prawns, pimenton and tomatoes served with a generous helping of garlic aioli.
The dish is currently considered a normal dish in the province.

• The pastitsio is really a layered pasta dish with tubular pasta as a base.
• Bak kut teh is a pork rib dish, cooked in broth and very popular in Malaysia and Singapore.

One local hawker meal I am cracy about is ‘ mee rebus ‘.
I needed to order the complete menu, but finally had to narrow it down to a number of dishes as it was only we who have been eating.
The beef with spring onions was excellent, tender slices of beef with crisp green onions.
I also highly enjoyed the claypot yong tau foo, a variety of veggies and tofu filled with fish paste and braised in brown sauce.
Taro is a starchy veggie common in Asian cuisine and growing in popularity worldwide.

Then she spoons the black velvet back into the shells and drops them whole in the stew.
This is the touch that makes the dish distinct; that makes the dish, like Chee herself, Peranakan.
Choy Sum is really a most popular vegetable in Southeast Asia.
It belongs to the Brassica family alongside Bok Choy and Gai Lan .
My favorite method of preparing that is to stir-fry it as a side dish with salt and pepper or stir-fry with any rice noodles or egg noodles.
It takes a short while to cook and is simple to pair with other ingredients.