Yesterday I said I'd have Shalla make the tikoy this Lunar New Year. It's partly because, well, she can do it better - and she has done it better; I'm eating it right now as I type this. It's also partly because I, for some reason, committed myself to cook something else to mark the occasion: noodles. Pancit canton, to be specific.

I'm not sure why I thought I could do it. Was it the new wok I got? My mother got it as a birthday present - a non-stick not-quite-a-wok, a stone one, one which she's long had an eye on for herself but couldn't quite find lately. Considering the frying pan I've used for the past couple of years has been pretty difficult of late - the non-stick coating has gone - my new piece of cookware changed my life, or at least the way I did my fried rice experiments.

A few weeks back I had a hankering for Singaporean food. It's one that's difficult to satisfy lately, because there just aren't a lot of options. Megamall used to have this Singaporean restaurant that I frequented in the many solo lunches I've had, but that's long closed. Another similar restaurant popped up elsewhere in the mall, but I never got to try it, and now it's closed. Well, sure, Nanyang is good in a pinch, but it's no Toast Box, and also, I honestly don't think Filipinos are able to appreciate both Singaporean and Malaysian cuisines. We're stuck with the really generic fare, if we're lucky to find it. The more, er, adventurous stuff that do pop up - the Makansutra hawker place at Megamall comes to mind - close after a while because, I don't know, if it's not exactly Chinese, it must be weird, eh?

Anyway, I had a hankering for Singaporean food. (I promise I'm going somewhere with this.) I've been to the country twice for work. The second time, my bosses bought the food and had us eat at the office. The first time, however, they just let us loose at the hawker center right next door, and they'd cover the expenses. It was a challenge for some of my colleagues, who didn't know what to order, and also found that whatever they got tended to be on the greasy side. Not a problem for me. I may not understand half the menu, but I managed, to the point that I spent the most among my colleagues at the end of that week. SGD 24, around that.

Anyway - for real this time - I had a hankering for, of all things, "economic bee hoon". It's something close to a traditional breakfast in Singapore, one you'd get at the hawker stores. It's easy to customize - throw in an egg, or a slice of Spam, or whatever floats your boat - and it seemed easy to do. And I had a pack of bihon from the city government. And I had most of the other ingredients. (Most, because the bean sprouts were optional.) And I had a non-stick not-quite-a-wok. And I was bored. So, off to YouTube I went, to watch a couple of videos, and a couple of hours later, we had dinner. And it was... all right. To be honest, I don't think I've tasted economic bee hoon in Singapore - I always went for other noodle dishes. But it felt right to me, so I considered it a success. (It helped that we had some quekiam in the fridge, although that went to Shalla.) I guess this means I can cook pancit next time!

And that time was this morning. I spent the past couple of weeks planning it all in my head, watching recipes and figuring out which items would work best. I mean, I know there's a recipe and I would usually stick by it, but the nearest grocery's vegetable section is horribly unreliable, so I'm at the mercy of what they decide to stock on a given day.

If there's anything I got from cooking pancit canton today, it's a new appreciation for all the effort my grandmothers, aunts, and my mother do in the kitchen on a big occasion. I remember, as a kid, walking through the kitchen of one of my grandmothers as she's preparing a big family lunch. I'd love to watch, to see all the ingredients get prepared and divided and sorted, but that part of the house has a lot of mosquitos and we were discouraged from lingering as a result. Now, well, my kitchen counter is non-existent, so getting all the moving parts going is a chore, and no video on mise en place can help me, even if it helps me map out the whole damn thing in my head, roadmap style.

Oh, and I also learned the recipe, or at least a rough one.

Step one: Prepare the meats. Shalla is allergic to most seafood, so it's all meat from here on. I boiled a couple of chicken breasts I got from the freezer, and with the help of a chicken cube, turned the boiling water into chicken stock for later. I had a couple of Chinese sausages lying around, so I sliced it lengthwise, then on the bias. Same thing for five pieces of orlian that's been on the fridge for a couple of weeks. It should still be fine.

Step two: Prepare the vegetables. It's become clear that this is a pantry raid. I had leftover pechay - two kinds, one of which was from last week's nilagang baka - so those got sliced into thin strips, roughly slightly thicker than the noodles. Carrots, julienned. Cabbage, a quarter, shredded. The idea is, everything should be roughly the same size, preferably one you can easily eat with chopsticks. It's how the Chinese would do it, or so YouTube tells me.

Step three: Cook the meats. On an oil-less wok - although you could use a little oil at this point - cook the Chinese sausage. I remember cooking these things the first time around and also mucking it up. Shalla knows more about these things, of course. Slice it as thinly as you could, and then stir-fry on a low flame, so it doesn't burn quickly. It will also release its own oils, which is perfect if you're trying to cut down on, well, oil.

In this case, though, you want to slice the sausages a little thicker than thin. I know it's confusing, but you'll get it if you do it.

Once that's fried and oily, add in the chicken - which I boiled in the morning and shredded just before all this - and the orlian. Then, at the very end, add the chopped liver. Oh, I forgot to tell you about the liver. Chicken liver, chopped roughly. It's not a pleasant thing to handle if you're generally squeamish, but it adds a nice depth of flavor to the dish. You'll smell it the moment you put it in. Then, after you've seasoned with some pepper, set it aside.

Step four: Cook the vegetables. Same wok, definitely with some oil this time. One onion, sliced - you can slice it whichever way you want, since it'll be barely noticeable anyway; just don't do it in chunks because, again, you want your slices to be uniform. Then, garlic, minced. If I was a Western YouTuber I'd point out that you don't want to put the garlic first unless you want to burn it. But then, I'm sure you know that garlic does that, because we're not Westerners who don't know their way around herbs, spices, or alliums, for that matter. Also, I'm not an expert. Don't listen to me.

Then, just add in all the vegetables. Act like you're making side dish of vegetables. You want them to wilt slightly, but not thoroughly; you'll be cooking them again when you put the whole dish together. I sprinkled some salt in to help it along - it pulls water out - but somewhat counterintuitively, I added some water to help cook the carrots. I could've added the broth, but I was keeping it for the noodles. It's a good idea to have a lot of chicken stock - or boil a lot of water with two chicken cubes - ready for this.

Step five: Cook the noodles. In the same wok - without the vegetables, because you would've set it aside at this point - add the broth. Once it starts to boil, add the noodles. I bought a half-kilo pack of dried canton noodles thinking my not-quite-a-wok would be able to handle it, but, turns out.... it doesn't really fit.

And so begins chaos.

My mother's advice: put a plate on top of the whole thing. Makes sense. The broth is cooking the dried noodles at the bottom, which would collapse, and allow the upper layers to go further down, not to mention they're already being cooked by the steam. The wok came with a lid, so that was better, but it was still a mess. Scraps of dried noodle on the floor. Also, at some point, you get nervous. How exactly do I add the soy sauce and the oyster sauce? Should I have mixed it in with the broth? Well, that sounds like a good idea, and I'll bank that for next time. For now, I attempt to work the noodles around so I can put the top layers at the bottom, and pray that this whole thing works.

Maybe it won't. I don't have any more chicken stock, and I'm sensing that the liquids in the wok have already been absorbed by the noodles. I'm able to maneuver it now, but it isn't fully cooked yet. Damn it! I filled my electric boiler with water and got that to work. Hot water is better than room temperature water, because that would speed the cooking process along. And then, the soy sauce and the oyster sauce. It should work - the economic bee hoon recipe I tackled a few weeks ago specifically mentioned adding the soy sauce just as the noodles absorb the water. But I have my mother's voice ringing in my head at this point. "May timpla na 'yang pancit mo." Meaning, if you season it just a smidge too much, it might get too salty, and that's difficult to salvage. But, well, screw it. Soy sauce and oyster sauce on the noodles. Mix until the color becomes uniform. Add more boiled water if you think it's needed. It's an all-hands-on-deck challenge, but if you get it right, it'll settle. It must settle, for the love of water tigers!

Step six: Mix everything. At some point, you'll know that the noodles are ready. I had to taste them as I went along. Is it salty enough? I don't know. It's too hot at this point. Whatever. Add the meats, and then the vegetables, and toss them together until well-combined. Five minutes later, you're done.

"Parang kulang sa tamis," Shalla said. "Dagdagan mo ng oyster sauce?"

Turn on the stove again, on a lower heat. Add a couple more tablespoons of oyster sauce. Mix it again. Ponder what would've happened if you had more chicken stock. I planned to do the saucy sort of pancit canton, but the noodles absorbed all the liquid and I was left with something drier than I intended. I'm not going to perfect this today, but at least we both decided it's a serviceable dish, which isn't bad for a first try. Maybe when I reheat leftovers - and there are a lot, for we're just two people in the flat - I can make a quick "sauce" with chicken stock, oyster sauce, pepper and a cornstarch slurry, to which I will add in the noodles.

I'm incredibly tired at this point. Was this all worth it? A week's worth of noodles, made from almost-scratch? (Almost, because I did not make my own noodles. Now, I'm not prepared for that.) I mean, Lucky Me! gets the job done, right? But they did say noodles on Lunar New Year means a long life, or something. I don't know. These traditions just blend into each other at this point in my life. Whatever. I succeeded, and I'll get better next time. For prosperity!