It might be unconventional, but it’s worth a try: Hokkien mee using a type of Japanese noodles called chukamen. This recipe is essentially yakisoba cooked in the style of fried Hokkien mee, and you can get the best of both worlds with this fusion dish.
Yakisoba is Japanese for fried noodles and it uses Chinese-style, wheat-flour noodles called chukamen.
Why use chukamen instead of the usual yellow thick round egg noodles? The texture of chukamen is springy and I find that I can pre-cook the noodles in prawn stock for a longer time to really soak up the flavour without them turning limp.
Expect to pay more for chukamen since it is an imported product.
Interestingly, yakisoba is not part of traditional Japanese cuisine.
In the book The Untold History Of Ramen: How Political Crisis In Japan Spawned A Global Food Craze, the author George Solt tells of how the dish came into being after the United States introduced American wheat to the Japanese diet post-World War II. Yakisoba became a delicacy sold on the black market at exorbitant prices.
