Pancit Molo

Achi and I have been planning for the longest time to make pancit molo. The plan took time to actually materialize because the recipe is work intensive and time consuming to prepare, the wanton wrapper is also homemade.

At last, all in good time.

Pancit Molo is an Ilonggo dish, we got from our mother side. This dish might confuse you because when you say pancit it means noodles and this dish does not have noodles in it.

It’s Friday, our only weekend in Kuwait… Achi and I woke up earlier than the usual and so we started preparing Pancit Molo.

Firstly, prepare the chicken broth for the soup. While boiling the broth start preparing the stuffing for the wanton. Once the wanton stuffing is ready, start working on the wanton wrapper.

PANCIT MOLO CHICKEN BROTH ·        250 grams chicken thigh, cleaned and washed ·        3 pieces bay leaves ·        1 large onion, chopped ·        5 cloves of garlic, chopped ·        ½ tablespoon of whole peppercorn ·        1½ liters of water or more ·        Salt to taste Combine all ingredients together in a cooking pot and boil/simmer until chicken is tender. Add more water, if required. Once chicken is tender, remove chicken from the soup. With two forks, shred the chicken meat. Throw the bones out and put back all the shredded chicken into the broth. Bring to a boil. WANTON STUFFING ·        250 grams of ground pork (you can use ½ ground beef and ½ ground chicken) ·        15 pieces of fresh shrimps, peeled, deveined and chopped (Put aside shrimp shells) ·        1 medium onion, chopped ·        3 cloves of garlic, chopped ·        3 tablespoons of sesame oil ·        ¼ cups of spring onions, chopped ·        ¼ cup of spring onions, sliced (set aside for later) ·        Salt and pepper, to taste ·        1 egg, room temperature Combine all ingredients except shrimp shells together in a bowl and set aside. Using a mortar and pestle, add one tablespoon of water to the shrimp shells, and juice out the shell of the shrimps, strain and add in the chicken broth. It adds flavor to the soup. WANTON WRAPPER ·        2 cups flour ·        2 egg yolks, beaten ·        Pinch of salt ·        Water, as needed Combine flour, egg yolks, and salt in a bowl using your hands, adding water as needed, a teaspoon at a time, until the mixture forms a dough ball. Knead until smooth. ASSEMBLING: Pinch off a marble-sized piece off of the dough and roll into a thin rough circle on a lightly floured surface using a rolling pin until thin enough to be filled. Drop a tablespoon of the stuffing mix on the center; bring up the edges of the wrapper and pinch to secure above the stuffing. Repeat until you run out of stuffing. Roll out the remaining dough with a rolling pin until very thin and slice into ¼ inch wide noodles. Drop the wantons and noodles into the broth and bring to a rolling boil. Let simmer for 15 minutes. Serve.

This goes perfectly with siopao Chinese pork bun or just itself.