I came back from tutorial today wondering what to have for dinner. And then I remembered, I had half a can of chicken stalk left in the fridge. It had been sitting there since Friday when I made chicken rice. So at that thought, something welled up inside of me: it was time to retry cooking the ever elusive Wat Dan Hor Fun (a type of hor fun, 河粉).

Wat dan hor fun is another one of my favourite noodle dishes, probably up there with char kway teow and Hokkien mee. I suppose, it's one of those few Singapore-based dishes that I was exposed to as a kid growing up in Canada.

And given my favourable results cooking Hainanese chicken rice the previous week (I think it's all due to the fact that I acquired a jar of proper chicken rice chili from my last visit home), I was spurred on to give my hand a try at wat dan hor fun again.

Gathered all the ingredients I could from the four corners of the kitchen, washed, sliced and chopped stuff. There wasn't all that much slicing and chopping needed actually.

It's probably one of the more expensive meals I'd be capable of cooking here in Waterloo though, as it consumed pork, fishballs and prawns (and I was even missing squid). Usually, I'd just have one type of meat for a meal.

At any rate, boiled the hor fun noodles, and as soon as they were done, threw them into a well-oiled pan. Fried with dark and light soya sauce until I could see some of the noodles becoming burnt - quite necessary indeed. A bit too much dark soya sauce though - the noodles started to look like char kway teow instead

Then on to the sauce... this has always been the source of failure for me. I just can never get a handle of cooking with corn starch and egg at the same time. When everything is combined, they somehow just become a big clumpy mess.

But somehow this time, maybe the merlion was with me and things didn't go so poorly. As the sauce mixture came to a simmer, I held my breath and poured in some corn starch premixed with cold water. Mixed it in, covered the lid and waited. Washed some dishes, for good measure.

And finally it came time to add the eggs. Held my breath even more this time. Cracked two eggs and threw them in. Stirred them around a bit. Things looked like they were starting to get clumpy, and I thought I had met my match. However, the thought crossed my mind to maybe let the eggs cook from the heat of the sauce, rather than the heat of the stove.

And so I turned off the stove and moved the pan to an empty element (yah, I know, I should probably be using a gas burner, no?).

And... the egg stayed separate in the sauce. It actually looked, something like wat dan hor fun.

Now, in terms of appearance, I guess maybe I could fool some distracted passer-byer into thinking it was actual wat dan hor fun. Maybe I could even fool myself. But I know that since I'm no hawker, it probably isn't that great at all. Taste-wise, it's ok. But I have no standard here in Waterloo - where else can you find Singaporean cuisine?

At any rate, this is why perhaps I term today's version of wat dan hor fun the kiasi version. I'd imagine that if you placed my rendition beside some authentic hawker rendition, people would stay clear from mine. Why?

... Kiasi lah!