Chee Cheong Fun, Singapore Style

My first attempt at making chee cheong fun from scratch. It isn't as tedious as I had thought, but very time-consuming.    Eating fresh chee cheong fun makes me miss home more.  

Ma, I am so proud of myself.

I can't believe I managed to persuade my lazy bum to make chee cheong fun, one of my favourite breakfast I never dreamed of having it here.  So far, two Singaporeans living here had tried and their results were very encouraging, but it wasn't enough to get me going.  Finally, inspired by a third Singaporean, who tipped that using the microwave oven (instead of the conventional way of steaming) was possible, I decided to give it a shot.

After 20 minutes of preparation, my first CCF was ready.  I tried it, oh my god!  It is indeed chee cheong fun.  I gave some (actually only one mouthful) to Christophe, he also agreed with me.  I was already so excited, I called the boys to the kitchen for the big surprise.  They love CCF and this is the one dish that they always say they want to eat when they visit Singapore again.  They came in, saw this, dropped their jaws, almost popped their eyes, then jumped and jumped and jumped, shouting, "CHEE CHEONG FUN! CHEE CHEONG FUN! CHEE CHEONG FUN!"   Now they get to eat it here, you must imagine how comforting it feels for a mother to be able to give what her children have been yearning, for close to two years.

Fortunately, I still have half a pack of the CCF paste left in the fridge.  My sissy had hand carried with her from Singapore when she visited last summer.  This is so valuable it's as good as rationing.  I added some water and sesame oil to the paste and heated up to make the dark sweet sauce, the way we eat CCF in Singapore.

Now that my sauce is all used up, I would have to make it from scratch here.  Luckily, it isn't so difficult to gather those ingredients.  Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, dark soy sauce and water.  I have made it here once, I  added something else, but cannot remember what.  I managed to get the taste as close to the original as possible, by tweaking here and there.  It helped when I had the original side-by-side for taste comparison.

The ingredients I used for my CCF are:

1 bowl rice flour
2 tbsp tapioca flour
1 tbsp corn flour
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp vegetable oil
2 bowls water

Mix all ingredients well in a bowl, ladle into an oiled pyrex glass pan, place in microwave oven for 4 minutes in the highest setting.  Sorry, I am too lazy to type out the steps, if you google for chee cheong fun recipes, you will get numerous hits on their step-by-step instructions.  They are all similar and some even come with videos.

I made 3 times the above amount, and that yielded 20 rolls.  80 minutes in the kitchen for 5 plates (4 rolls each) of CCF... very time-consuming but I am willing to do it again when the craving hits.  Now, I have to use the remaining sauce (about 1 tablespoon left) as my standard taste guide to make my own sauce from scratch.