As far back as I can remember (and no, I’m not one of those people who can remember things from when they were two years old, my memory extends back to 6 or 7 years old, but I digress…), Mum would make fresh noodles and meehoonkueh (literally noodle flour cakes in Hokkien, also called Pan Mee). We would ‘help’ her make the noodles – she’d make the dough – and somehow the whole thing would occupy us for hours. Nowadays the process is a lot faster (I think the ‘too many cooks’ saying definitely applied to us as kids).

So the basic recipe for dough is: 3 cups of flour, 4 eggs. That’s it! Simple, huh? You can use that recipe for any dough thing: wonton mee, meepok, dumpling skin, spaghetti, fettucini, ravioli, lasagne sheets, the list is endless!! For Asian recipes I tend to use the recipe as is, but for Italian dishes I have on occasion added herbs (fresh and dried), salt and pepper, and vegies (spinach, beetroot juice for colour). You can either mix by hand (I prefer this myself, but it can be time consuming) or use a magimix or something similar.



When mixing by hand:
1. make a well in the flour
2. add eggs
3. combine the flour into the eggs with chopsticks (or a fork)
4. knead until smooth
5. separate into small fist sized balls to rest



When mixing with a magimix:
1. add flour and eggs to mixer
2. whiz to a crumbly texture
3. remove crumbs from mixer and knead until smooth
4. separate into small fist sized balls to rest

After leaving the dough for at least 30mins (this allows the moisture from the egg to work its way into the flour), you can make it into whatever you like. For noodle-y dishes, make it quite a dry dough so that the noodles don’t stick to each other (if you poke it and it sticks, then it’s too wet). For meehoonkueh it can be a little wetter because you’ll be pulling the dough with your hands. Same goes for dumplings, ravioli and other similar dough ‘packages’ – since you’ll be wrapping things inside, you’ll want the edges to be sticky enough to stay together!