Pad Thai

Pad Thai - This Pad Thai recipe is how you actually find it in Bangkok and comes from testing hundreds of different variations from food carts all over the city. Pad Thai is the ultimate street food. While "street food" may sound bad, food cart cooks are in such a competitive situation, with such limited space, ingredients and tools they need to specialize in a dish or two just to stay in business. The best of these cooks have cooked the same dish day-after-day, year-after-year, constantly perfecting it.

Great Pad Thai is dry and light bodied, with a fresh, complex, balanced flavor. I've never actually seen the red, oily pad thai in Thailand that is common in many western Thai restaurants.

The ingredients listed below can be somewhat intimidating but many are optional. If you would like to make authentic Pad Thai, just like in Thailand, use all the ingredients.

Pad Thai is another perfect vegetarian dish, just omit shrimp and substitute soy sauce for fish sauce. Add more tofu if you like.

Ingredients

1/2 package Thai rice noodles, medium thickness

2 medium eggs

4 teaspoons fish sauce

2 tablespoons tamarind

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 shallot, minced

1 cup bean sprouts

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/4 pound shrimp, whole

1 chicken breast, sliced

2 tablespoons palm sugar

2 or 3 stalks scallion, sliced at an angle

2 tablespoons crushed peanuts

juice from 1/2 lime

Starting with a bit of oil, he stir-fries the dried shrimp, shallot and tofu before tossing in a handful of rice stick noodles. He then adds a generous amount of water from the teapot, and cooks it all together over fairly high heat. During the cooking process he adds fish sauce, tamarind sauce and palm sugar. The next ingredient, which is one of the "signatures" that defines his Pad Thai as unique from others, is the addition of sriracha sauce (see picture). A tad bit more water and fish sauce is added, before the Pad Thai is moved off to one side of the wok to make room for the egg. He doesn't add fresh shrimp, chicken or any other meat to the Pad Thai.

After the egg is added, a generous serving of bean sprouts are added, and he folds it all together & serves it to-go wrapped up in a large piece of paper with plastic coating on one side. Crushed peanuts and spring onion are served separately.

enjoy cooking Thai food.