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.

Kitchen Basics: Making Tamarind Water

Tamarind is a wonderful culinary tool, tasting a good bit like lemon, but a little darker and fruitier. While tamarind is not commonly used in the US, it is really popular in a lot of other places, often as a substitute for citrus and used as a souring agent. In India, tamarind makes a great chutney and is commonly used in cooked dishes all over the south. In Mexico, tamarind makes a wonderful agua fresco, very similar to lemonade. Here in Oregon, you seem to be able to get a bottle of tamarindo at any taco shop or truck.

But I mainly use it to create the national dish of Thailand, pad thai, in which tamarind is a key component of the sauce for the noodles.

Tamarind comes in several forms: as whole pods, in bricks of pulp and seeds, and as a purée. If you have (and likely overpaid for) tamarind purée, you're all set. If you have pods or a brick of pulp, follow the steps below to make tamarind water, which is what you'll need for pad Thai, tamarind chutney, or to flavor a curry.

A Whole Tamarind Pod

What we call tamarind is the seed pod of a leguminous tree with African heritage. If it looks to you like the seed pod of an acacia or pseudoacacia, you're right. They're in the same family. Covered by a suede-like peel, the flesh is sticky and contains large seeds. It is the flesh that we use to make tamarind water.

I'm not sure what conditions are like where you are, but out here in Oregon with our large population of people of Mexican heritage, you can find tamarind pods in many large groceries. We can buy just what we need without having to buy an entire brick of pulp or container of purée.

Peeled Tamarind Pod

Tamarind peels easily with your fingers. As you work with it, you'll see that the pod has transverse ridges. Between every two ridges is a seed. My working rule of thumb is that the flesh of every six seeds will make a half a cup of tamarind water. If I'm cutting tamarind pulp from a brick of tamarind, I'll use the same amount, about one and a half to two ounces of tamarind.

Six Sections Per Half Cup of Water

For each half a cup of tamarind water, I break off six sections containing six seeds. In a bowl, I submerge the tamarind under warm water and let it soak, periodically rubbing the flesh off the seeds.

Tamarind Water

After a half an hour in warm water, you'll be able to work the tamarind with your fingers and rub all the flesh into the water. Discard the seeds and you're ready to use the tamarind water in your dish.

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.

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.