Pad Thai

Pad Thai is the quintessential Thai street food. It is tangy and sweet and salty and delicious. If you've never had it, you are missing out, and it's time to try it! I love pad thai with shrimp and tofu, but it's good no matter what protein you put in it, or even if there is none at all.

And please...don't call it "pad thigh".

(4-5 servings in my house, but it would probably feed 6-8 more reasonable people)

Ingredients:

Pad Thai sauce:

:: 1/2 cup water
:: 1/2 cup fish sauce
:: 1/2 cup white sugar
:: 1/2 cup lime juice
:: 3 tablespoons tamarind pulp

Stir Fry ingredients:

:: 1 package rice stick noodles. I prefer medium width, use whatever you like.
:: canola oil (or another high smoke point oil. I wouldn't recommend olive)
:: 6 cloves garlic
:: 4 eggs, beaten
:: 1 pound shrimp
:: 1 package extra firm tofu, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes and patted dry.
:: chili powder
:: chopped scallions (optional)
:: chopped peanuts (optional)
:: lime wedges (optional)

2 hours before cooking, soak the rice stick noodles in COLD water. You can cut them with scissors, as they are extremely long and unmanageable to stir fry as is from the store.

Pad Thai sauce

The leftover sauce will keep in the refrigerator for a little while if you don't finish using it the day of, but I would probably throw leftovers out in 1-2 weeks.

Heat the 5 ingredients (lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, water, tamarind pulp) over medium heat. You only need to cook it long enough to dissolve the sugar and break up the tamarind. You will need to strain the sauce, I just use a slotted spoon. Little specks of tamarind are fine, giant chunks are....unpalatable.

(At this point, one of my friends threw away her sauce because she said that it smelled terrible and she had obviously done something wrong. Fish sauce smells terrible. Hot fish sauce smells even worse. Somehow, though, the combination of these ingredients transforms into something delicious, even if it doesn't smell like roses. You're doin' it right, now keep going.)

Not pictured below: tamarind pulp. Oops, sorry. It is a dark brown sticky mess that is packaged into a dense rectangular shape. I literally cut off chunks with a knife, or take a hard spoon (don't laugh, I've actually bent spoon handles trying to dig out chunks) to take off the pieces I need. Tamarind pulp is probably not an optional ingredient for pad thai, but luckily it has never been hard to find in asian grocers. It is sour and sweet!

Set aside to use while you cook.

Stir Fry

Heat a large pan, or wok over medium high heat. You will pan fry the shrimp, eggs, and tofu separately so that they are 80% cooked by the time you start to stir fry the noodles. By all means, substitute the shrimp or tofu with anything or nothing else, but please, please at least keep the egg. It is just so good and pad thai without eggs is like...a burger without a patty. Or something equally dramatic.

Cook the tofu in 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 teaspoon garlic. Let them fry until they begin to turn golden brown. Set aside.

Cook the shrimp in 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 teaspoon garlic. Fry them 90 seconds on each side or until both sides are pink. Set aside.

Cook the eggs in 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 teaspoon garlic. Cook just until they are not runny, and look slightly shiny. Do not overcook! Set aside.

Drain the noodles. You MUST MUST MUST cook noodles in batches. With one package of noodles, I like to cook it in 3 batches.

Please trust me on this. T and I learned one hungry evening how essential this step was. We were too impatient to take the time for this extra step and ended up with a sticky, gunky mess of essentially...steamed noodles. While still good, it was such a waste of what would have otherwise been a wonderful meal.

Take 1/3 of the noodles and begin stir frying them over the highest heat your stove has with 2 tablespoons of oil and 1/3 of the remaining garlic. I know it probably sounds like we've used a ton of oil so far, but let's face it - pad thai is not low-cal dining. I use as little as I can get away with while still having a good end result.

Ladle in 1/5 of the sauce. Just eyeball it, you can be liberal, but like always, taste as you go along. Add in a teaspoon of chili powder. This really helps to make the color of the pad thai 'pop', and gives it that reddish orange hue we so love to see.

Stir fry this for a minute or two, until the noodles become less rigid and more pliable. Add in 1/3 of the shrimp, tofu, and egg. Since the proteins should more or less be cooked anyway, at this point we are just reheating them and making sure the noodles are well cooked.

Stir fry them until al dente, STOP before they become mushy! If you are convinced it is too dry, add a few drops of oil and water and keep going. Taste the noodles. Once they have a nice toothsome bite, stir in some scallions if desired and dump them out on a plate.

You can serve chopped peanuts, bean sprouts, scallions, and lime wedges on the side as garnish if you like!