Birthday Noodle for Longivity

Penang Lam Mee

In Penang, the lam mee has a close significance to celebrating birthdays for parents and grandparents. The lam mee that is cooked for birthdays is the plain lam mee, not the ones with dark soy sauce and vinegar. I kind of missed this noodle cuisine because there are no friends old enough to be in that category yet. And not many people from Penang that knows about the significance of this noodle cuisine because it is a Baba Nyonya traditional noodle cuisine.

Nyonya Lam Mee

When my grandmother was still around, we used to cook this traditional noodle cuisine during her birthdays. After she passed away we hardly cook or order this noodle cuisine when we dine in restaurants. Yesterday night, I decided to cook this Baba Nyonya Lam Mee at home. My wife had prepared a pot of shrimp broth with pork ribs earlier in the afternoon. So, when I got home I used that shrimp broth to cook the Penang lam mee.

Simple Plain Noodle in Shrimp Broth

Other than preparing the shrimp and pork ribs soup, the other ingredients for the noodle cuisine were pretty simple. Main component of the noodle cuisine is the noodle itself. Followed with chives or spring onions, shrimps, pork ribs, hard boiled eggs, fried eggs and fried shallots. Most people like this noodle cuisine plain but I like it spicy. So, I put some samble belacan in the broth to spice up the soup a bit.