Last week, after our weekly weigh-in in our battle against COVID lethargy, our weight totals continued to drop and this caused Ann to ask, "After we weigh in next week, I feel like a treat. Would you make pad thai?"
Pad Thai with Tofu and Dried Shrimp |
Soapbox alert. Why is the average dish of pad thai in the US so terrible? Even restaurants that I really respect make crap for pad thai. Why? There's nothing hard about it. Is it because it is the one Thai dish that every American knows and will order and therefore restaurants knowingly serve slop to these unadventurous diners? Maybe as pizza is to Italian food in the US, so goes pad thai for Thai food: Americans will eat anything you put in front of them as long as it is cheap, massive in portion, and not challenging. Off my soapbox now.
I don't keep the ingredients that I need for pad thai at home, so our dish had to wait for a run to the grocery store to pick up tamarind, dried shrimp, and rice stick. Rice stick especially, along with all forms of pasta, is in that class of carbs that we would decimate were it in our pantry. So we don't keep it in our pantry. That forces me to make a special trip to buy it eliminating the temptation to carb out after a couple of glasses of wine. Don't judge. It works for us.
Pad Thai Mise en Place |
Pad Thai Sauce
Pad Thai Sauce: Tamarind, Palm Sugar, and Fish Sauce |
To sauce the rice stick, I make a sauce separately from the noodles and combine the two at the last minute. First, palm sugar is hard to get into solution. Second, I don't have enough firepower on my range to reduce the sauce ingredients quickly and efficiently without overcooking the noodles.
1/2 cup tamarind water2 tablespoons palm sugar1 tablespoon fish sauce
Mix the ingredients in a small sauce pan and cook until the sugar is well dissolved. Follow this link for a primer on making tamarind water. Adjust to your taste.
Pad Thai Procedure
1/2 pound rice stick
2 eggs, beaten
4 ounces firm tofu, in bite-sized pieces
1 ounce dried shrimp2 green onions or a few Chinese or garlic chives, in 1-inch lengths1 cup bean sprouts1 recipe of Pad Thai sauce, above
Soak the rice stick in hot water until it is pliable and ready to eat.
In a very hot pan, add the beaten eggs and scramble.
Add the tofu, dried shrimp, chives, and bean sprouts. Cook for a minute.
Add the soft noodles, then the sauce.
Cook, tossing until the sauce coats the noodles and everything is hot. Serve immediately.
My only regret about this dish? I wish I had some preserved vegetable to put in it, some radish or mustard pickles.
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