Pad Thai

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

Of course I would make pad thai, for it is one of my favorite foods, so much so that I continue to blog about making it. It seems that I make it so infrequently that I feel compelled to blog about it on those occasions when I do make it. If you want to see how my versions vary, here is one from 2015 and another from 2012. Each dish is different, yet they all share the same common steps and ingredients.

Making pad thai is really our only option, if we want to eat it. If going out for pad thai weren't a non-starter because of COVID, we still wouldn't go out for it here. We have one Thai restaurant and one Thai food truck and neither make food that we would pay for. Both make especially un-noteworthy pad thai. It's probably a good thing. If either made a decent version, I might have real trouble keeping the weight off.

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

Similarly, we cannot have peanuts in the house. We're down a combined 38 pounds now during COVID and all that might go out the window if we had peanuts to feast on, because neither of us has any self control when it comes to roasted peanuts. So, as a salty crunch for our pad thai, I substituted some tiny dried shrimp. Not peanuts exactly, but not bad either.

The rest of the ingredients are eggs, bean sprouts, green onions, firm tofu, and lime wedges for garnish.

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 water

2 tablespoons palm sugar

1 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

This makes enough for two nice portions.

1/2 pound rice stick
2 eggs, beaten

4 ounces firm tofu, in bite-sized pieces

1 ounce dried shrimp

2 green onions or a few Chinese or garlic chives, in 1-inch lengths

1 cup bean sprouts

1 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.

Pot-O-Pho, Winchester VA

One of the primary types of restaurant missing from Winchester is a decent Vietnamese place. You can't swing a dead cat in Northern Virginia without hitting at least a pho shop if not a full-fledged Vietnamese restaurant, but here, there is zip for Vietnamese cuisine, which ranks up at the top of my list of cuisines that I love. I was happy to learn about a month ago that somebody was giving it a go at a restaurant named Pot-O-Pho which we tried yesterday.

Phở Đặc Biệt

Gỏi Cuốn: Summer Rolls with Shrimp

The restaurant itself is a huge cavern, a recycled Chinese buffet, that is very deep, very hard, and very noisy. It's not a comfortable space. Service was lackadaisical to comical. The food was decent for the money. Having a lot of experience making pho broth, I would give the pho broth here a solid B, being both a little too cloudy and a touch overseasoned for my liking. I like to take my spices out of the broth sooner than whoever made this broth does. The bean sprouts served with the pho should have been thrown out the day before.

The atmosphere is tough to love and the servers really don't know what they are doing and have had no training, but the two dishes we tried were pretty much what they should be. Given the poor location of the restaurant, it's going to be a tough go for them. I wish them luck.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai

Yesterday was a Monday, my short paperwork and erranding day at work, and I was in high gear from 7am on to make it home by early afternoon to spend time with Ann. Dealing with her father's stroke has been wearing us both thin, her more than me, and she has been away a lot, so we just needed some us time. When it was clear that I would be getting home on the late side of lunch, I asked her if I could bring something home for lunch. By the time she suggested Thai, I was long gone from downtown where I could get some carryout Thai. She then asked if I could make pad thai at home. Fortunately, I was at the market where I could grab some fresh rice stick and tamarind.

It's been a long while since I have made pad thai or even eaten it. It's a dish that I love but don't ever order out. I have yet to find a Thai restaurant in these parts that makes this simple food cart food well. So I make it at home and although the prep takes a little while, the dish itself takes almost no time to make.

Ingredients for Pad Thai

The setup for this pad thai is as follows from the bowl of beaten egg clockwise: cilantro, pickled turnips, pad thai sauce in the sauce pan, lime wedges, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, fresh rice noodles, and shallots.

The first thing to do is to make the pad thai sauce, which I always make separately from the noodles because the palm sugar is difficult to dissolve if put directly into the pan with the noodles. The sauce is roughly equal portions of palm sugar and tamarind paste, a half portion of fish sauce, and a half portion of water.

Tamarind Pods

Tamarind paste is fairly easy to make. If you are working with a block of tamarind pulp, cut off a chunk and cover it with water. I find a little heat helps dissolve the pulp, so I put it in the microwave for a minute. I find it easier to work with tamarind pods than with block tamarind. As you can see above, the pods have a loose bark and then longs strings under that running along and through the pulp. Pull off the bark and pull out the strings, then break the pulp apart between the seeds. Cover with water, and warm. At this point, no matter whether you're working with block or whole tamarind, use a spoon to agitate the warmed tamarind, then work it through a sieve to separate the tamarind pulp/paste from any seeds and debris.

To start making pad thai, I like to caramelize my shallots and garlic and this time I added lime leaves for their haunting scent. I added spicy pickled turnips instead of red pepper for spice. This would be the point where I would have added shrimp and/or tofu if I were using them. Next come the rice noodles. After tossing them for a few seconds, I start adding the sauce in small additions along with more water as needed to steam-fry the noodles until they are just ready to eat. At the last second, I add the beaten egg and stir it in.

I garnished with lime wedges and cilantro. And usually I garnish with crushed peanuts, but I didn't have any. I serve it at the table with white pepper and fish sauce for those who want a little more in their noodles.

A Food Blur

The last couple of weeks have been a total blur. Crazy business last week and playing catch up this week. Working on a new restaurant project. Dealing with upcoming fall winery catering. Working through the details for a bunch of big parties over the next few weeks. It's all enough to drive a person crazy. Pardon me if I don't remember when or if we ate any of the following dishes over the past couple of weeks. Call me surprised that I had any energy at all to cook. It all ran out last night. With a belly full of cheeseburger, I passed out at 8pm and didn't budge until 6am. Be thankful for business, I have to keep reminding myself, and also that not only on "Game of Thrones" is winter coming.

Real Pho, No Garnish

I vaguely recall that I made pho on a Monday when I had all afternoon to make the broth in which to quickly cook some fresh rice noodles. The broth was classical with beef bones, charred ginger, charred onion, and a hint of spice, right up until the end when I put a handful of fresh kaffir lime leaves in the broth to give it a haunting quality. This broth was so outstanding that it did not need any garnishes to get in the way.

Strozzapreti with Fresh Tomatoes, Butter, and Garlic

This was a quick Sunday night supper. I sweated some slivered garlic in butter and tossed in a bunch of peeled and seeded tomatoes for the world's quickest pasta. The days for fresh tomatoes are winding down quickly. Gorge now.

Fried Rice

Another quick meal, a clean out the refrigerator meal. Scrounging in the fridge yielded lop cheung, green onions, a rough-looking carrot, cilantro stems, and red and orange peppers. I make my fried rice Thai style with white pepper and fish sauce. A little prep aside, this is an effortless meal and a great way to use up all those odds and ends in the fridge.



Cheeseburger!

And the coma-inducing cheeseburger. Slow night last night and I got home early enough for dinner. Ann wanted Five Guys. Ed doesn't like their burgers. We compromised. Ann picked up some burger, cheese, buns, and chips at the grocery on the way home. I got there a few minutes later and prepped all the toppings. A couple of glasses of wine later, outside to the grill, where I grilled what is quite possibly the last burger of the year, for it is getting too dark too early from here on out.

This burger photo pleases me. This is a cheeseburger in its natural habitat, hot, on a plate, cheese sliding off the side, lopsided, lid all smashed because the package got manhandled on the way home, getting ready to get slammed. Have you ever seen professionally shot burgers, with the carefully pinned on lettuce, the cheese that was hit with the blowtorch, perfectly lit so there's not a shadow anywhere, condiments artfully put on with a squeeze bottle and a Q-tip? Those burgers are like women with the big fake boobs: they don't look real because they aren't. This, friends, you know is a real burger. And it was awesome, I assure you.

Shrimp and Lemongrass Soup

Shrimp and Lemongrass Soup

Monday I was in the mood for light fare and I wanted soup too, so I combined the two into a very colorful bowl for dinner. This soup is all about the broth as are most soups. I made a stock from water, chicken stock, galangal, kaffir lime, smashed lemongrass, smashed garlic, shiitake stems, and snow pea trimmings. The stock simmered for 90 minutes, at which point I strained it, seasoned it with fish sauce and lime juice, brought it to a slight boil, and added the shrimp and shiitakes. Once the shrimp were nearly cooked, about two minutes, I added the fresh rice noodles for another minute.

Then I transferred some rice noodles and shrimp to each bowl, garnished with sweet pepper rings, snow peas, and cilantro, and then ladled the boiling broth over the top.

Faux Pho Bo

Faux Pho Bo

Yesterday, after working all day catering a dinner at Delaplane Cellars on Sunday, I moved heaven and earth at work to get my deskwork done and to get home as early as possible to spend some time with Ann. My last stop on the way home is FoodMaxx and it was there that I got a text from Ann asking if we could go out for Thai food for lunch. Knowing that it was already about 1pm and by the time I got home and got the groceries unpacked and we got back into town to the Thai restaurant, it would be every bit of 2pm, I decided that since we generally order a rice noodle soup very similar to pho, that I would just throw together a quick version at home so that we could spend more of our afternoon being with each other and less of our time scurrying about trying to get somewhere.

So I grabbed two bowls of instant pho bo, cilantro, a lime, and a pack of snow peas (because I know how much Ann loves snow peas). At home, I got a red pepper and Thai basil out of the garden and sriracha and hoisin sauce out of the cabinet. I made the soup in the microwave following the directions printed on the sides of the disposable bowls and while they were cooking, I squirted hoisin and sriracha in the bottom of big soup bowls and strung the snow peas.

Here you see the result fully garnished with cilantro, Thai basil, sweet red pepper, sriracha, hoisin, lime, and snow peas. And you know, it wasn't half bad, all doctored up like this. An OK bowl of soup in under 10 minutes: now that's my kind of lunch!

We sat outside under the umbrella and had soup along with a bottle of Taittinger Brut Française Champagne. What else to have with pho? ;)

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

Tough weekend. I couldn't eat all day Sunday for a minor medical procedure on Monday and after getting out of that, I needed something really comforting to eat. Enter phở gà.

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

When I make pho, it is typically the more common beef version, but when I am not 100%, chicken suits me (and most of us) better. It was Ann's idea that I make chicken noodle soup: good call!

Here are my tips for making phở gà:

1. Poach the chicken until it is done, remove it from the broth, pick the meat from the bones, and return the bones to the stock to keep enriching it. This way, you achieve both goals: rich broth and tender chicken. Leaving the chicken meat in too long just renders it tough.

2. Char the onion and ginger on the flame for a few minutes before adding to the stock. It adds great depth of flavor.

3. Sweetness is optional. I almost never add sugar to chicken pho. But I often add just a touch of Chinese sausage (lop cheung) to the broth at the last minute. It imparts a certain sweetness. This is certainly non-traditional, but it's my bowl of soup, damn it, and I will cook it the way I want.

4. Have a light hand with the seasonings. To a half gallon of stock, I added four star anise and half a stick of cinnamon for just 20 minutes so that the flavor was there, but really in the background. You want the delicate chicken flavor to come through.

5. Knock yourself out on garnishes. I love pickled mustards stems from China, so I garnish my soup with them, but not with so many that I mask the delicate chicken broth.

6. I don't add either hoisin or sriracha to my bowl with chicken as I would with beef. Again, I want the chicken to be front and center.

Soup, Glorious Soup!

Ann and I had a tentative date to go to Thai Winchester yesterday, where surely we would have ordered a big bowl of roasted duck noodle soup. Our date fell through but still Ann wanted soup for dinner and so I obliged her with a huge bowl of rice noodle soup. And it turned out to be one of the best soups I have ever made.

Soup Nirvana!

While I was shopping at the local market, one of the Korean managers happened by and we chatted for a minute, as we always do. He spied the pork necks and the chicken necks in my basket and asked what I was making. When I told him soup, he exclaimed, "I wish I were eating at your house tonight!" And indeed he does wish he did for this pot of soup was outstanding.

First, I made a stock of the chicken necks, pork necks, slabs of ginger, two pieces of lemongrass whacked with the back of my knife, six or eight smashed but whole cloves of garlic, a bundle of cilantro stems, and the stems off a couple dozen shiitake mushrooms. And after this simmered away for about three hours, I strained the stock, seasoned it with salt, and returned it to a low flame.

In the meantime, I prepped the garnishes for the soup: small cubes of country ham, bean sprouts, sliced shiitakes, some pickled mustard stems, sliced green onions, and cilantro leaves.

Into the hot stock, I put the shiitake mushrooms and some fresh rice noodles and let the noodles just soften, about 90 seconds. Once the noodles were divided between serving bowls, I put the bean sprouts, mustard stems, ham, and green onions on top of the noodles. Finally, I poured the hot soup stock over all and topped everything with fresh cilantro.

Soup does not get any better than this.

Dim Sum: Golden King, Sterling, VA

Before my chef days, I used to eat dim sum regularly when I was living in Fairfax County and when I was on the road on the West Coast. I have eaten dim sum more times than I can count in tiny little places without cart service to huge airplane hangers with hundreds of diners, in New York, in Seattle, in Portland, in San Francisco, and of course, in DC and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. My dim sum experiences span the gamut from rigidly traditional to more innovative and downright avant garde. And as a chef, I have made many of these dishes you'll see below with my own hands. Kudos to all the cooks in the back turning out these delicacies: I know what hard work it is.

Since becoming a chef more than a dozen years ago, though, there hasn't been much opportunity to eat dim sum, except for what I have made myself. It was time to break the drought and Ann has been asking to eat dim sum a lot recently, so when we found ourselves heading into Landsdowne on Sunday to see some friends, we decided to go early into Sterling and get dim sum at Golden King beforehand. I have been reading some good vibe on the Internet about Golden King and since it is a lot closer to us than any other place, I was eager to give it a try.

A Cart of Various Dim Sum at Golden King, Sterling VA

On the scale of traditional to avant garde, Golden King is strictly traditional. I saw nothing out of the ordinary dim sum canon on offer and that is just fine by me. I'm not looking for a novel experience when I go for dim sum; I'm looking for comfort food and decent tea. Typical of most dim sum places, there just isn't any décor: it's a big open room full of huge round-tops in the middle and small tables around the edges. But you're not going into the cacophonous dim sum hall for the ambiance, are you? If you are, maybe you're looking for a different experience elsewhere?

The always hustling staff in this apparently family-run business were friendly and hospitable in my experience, treating both the mainly Chinese crowd (and it was crowded) and the scattering of non-Chinese equally. As a round-eye who has made the dim sum rounds, I can tell you stories about the receptions that I have had, from indifferent to downright hostile.

Once we selected a table, our server swooped in and dropped a dim sum check on our table and I asked him for tea before he could ask me. I'm glad he dropped the dim sum check: many places will ask non-Chinese if they want dim sum or the standard menu, the unspoken assumption being that the table has no clue what dim sum is. I only saw it happen to one table at Golden King (and I might have asked them too, for they seemed very much fish out of water).

 Siu Aap : Roast Duck, Ice Cold

Our roast duck was refrigerator temperature. Room temperature is what I expected; ice cold is not. That was the only thing I might have complained about.

Fung Zao: Chicken Feet: Among the Best I've Had Anywhere

The chicken feet were really good, some of the best I have ever eaten. Ann was brave and tried two of them. She was a bit hung up that they look like what they are, but she tried them anyway! Me, I can't imagine dim sum without chicken feet.

Lo Baak Gu: Turnip Cake: Tasty, but Crudely Executed

Turnip cakes are my favorite dim sum and this one was probably the crudest in execution that I have ever seen. Generally the radish is grated: in the photo you can see the big strip of radish on the plate. Somebody whacked away at this one rather than grating it and as a result, the texture of the cake was a little off. Also, I like my turnip cake infused with lop cheung flavor; there wasn't much meat at all flavoring these cakes. In any case, I still enjoyed it.

Siu Mai and Har Gau: Run of the Mill

Really nothing much to say about the siu mai (pork dumplings in the foreground) and the har gau (shrimp dumplings in the back steamer tin) other than the wrappers were torn in places. They were fine, but nothing to rave about.

Wu Gok: Taro Balls: So-So

The taro balls were a little greasy as you can see in the paper wrapper in the photo and the pork filling was not memorable. I have had some really, really good taro balls in the past and these were not them. Again, they were fine, but I won't remember them in another week.

Cheong Fun: Steamed Rice Noodles: Sauce Could Have Been Better

Cheong fun, large sheets of rice noodle stuffed with various items, is always one of my favorites. The server cut them into pieces with a scissors for us and everyone, which is a nice touch that I haven't seen before. Otherwise, it gets a bit tricky to cut them with chop sticks. We had two orders, one stuffed with shrimp and another with fried tofu. I like the sauce that they pour over the noodles to be a bit thicker so that it clings a bit more, but other than this, just what you'd expect.

Jiu Cai Bau: Leek Dumplings: Awesome

Towards the end of the meal, a server came from the kitchen bearing a small tray of leek dumplings, maybe three orders. We snapped one up and they were awesome, everything you want a dumpling to be. When we tried to get seconds, we found they were all sold out.

Chow Mai Fun: Rice Noodles: Waste of Money

Ann wanted some mai fun so we got an order and it was miserable. And that it such a shame because one of my all-time comfort foods is Singapore-style chow mai fun. Slathered in chile oil, they were still stiff, dried out, and flavorless. Bummer to finish our meal with such a low light.

I'd go back. Everybody was friendly and the food was decent. The prices were very reasonable. And at an hour from our house in Winchester, it is by far the closest place to get dim sum. I definitely prefer other places (Oriental East in Silver Spring and Mark's Duck House in Falls Church), but the much shorter drive is a huge bonus.

Ginger Chicken Noodle Soup

Monday, I just wasn't feeling up to par, very run down with a queasy stomach. Not my best of days. Ann wanted to go out for sushi, but I just couldn't face going out. I needed what I always need when I am feeling low: soup, nice chicken noodle soup. And I craved lots of ginger for my ailing stomach.

And so while I was out running errands, I picked up a pre-cooked chicken, a head of nappa cabbage, and a pound of fresh rice noodles (bánh phở). Once home, I put the chicken into a pot of water with about a pound of sliced ginger and let that steep on low flame for about 30 minutes. After removing and picking the chicken and removing all the ginger, I brought the stock to a rolling boil and put the noodles, cabbage, and chicken back in and turned off the flame. A good bit of salt for seasoning and I tucked in to a delicious bowl of noodles. Ann put a brave but disappointed face on it. She wanted to go out and eat sushi and was not thrilled by soup for date night. Sorry honey and thanks for being a good sport.

Ginger Chicken Noodle Soup with Nappa Cabbage

Pad Thai

Pad Thai

Yesterday was one of those rare days when I just didn't have any idea about what I wanted for dinner. It happens from time to time. Ann and I talked in the morning and she didn't have a lot of input other than she wanted something Asian, something light and refreshing. This didn't spark anything for me until late in the afternoon when I got to thinking that it has been years since I had Pad Thai. While I was writing out a list of ingredients that I'd need to make sure we had on hand, Ann texted me out of the blue, "Carter says he loves Pad Thai." That's kind of freaky coincidental!

It's been years since I had Pad Thai because it's been years since I found a restaurant that actually made good Pad Thai. All the ones in this area serve a dumbed down Americanized Pad Thai. Pity. I love the interplay of tamarind, palm sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce that gives Pad Thai it's wonderful flavor, the flavor that is missing in many restaurant versions of the dish.

Mise en Place for Pad Thai

In the photo above, you see most of the ingredients for our dinner. From the little crock of tamarind pulp in the upper left, you see a hunk of palm sugar, garlic chives, a shallot and a lime, bean sprouts, preserved vegetable, firm tofu, peanuts, shrimp, and rice stick. Missing are the egg, fish sauce, white pepper, and sriracha.

The rice noodles need to be soaked, but not all that long. Start them soaking before prepping the rest of the ingredients and you will be fine. I buy tamarind pulp in blocks, then rip off a chunk, soak it in warm water, and then work it well with my hands to separate the pulp from the seeds. I strain the pulp to make sure I have got all the seeds out.

I like to make my sauce separately from my noodles, because palm sugar is nearly rock hard and in the time that it takes to dissolve into the sauce, the noodles would be overcooked. I melt about equal quantities of tamarind pulp and palm sugar together and then add a little sriracha for heat. Traditionally, ground red pepper is used but I find that the liquid sriracha mixes into the sauce better. I adjust the sweet-sour balance according to my taste and then add a little fish sauce to get the salty component to my liking.

Then it is just a matter of stir-frying from here. First go in the ingredients that you want to really sear or caramelize such as the peanuts and shallots and then each item in its turn according to cooking time, save for the soaked noodles which go in next to last. Last in the pan are some of the sauce and an egg that gets scrambled in as I sprinkle in a bit more fish sauce and white pepper. Done.