Sunday June 12, 1995

Pad Thai

This has to change - and it will change NOW.

One of the secrets of a good Pad Thai is the choice of the right noodles. There are fresh ones and the dried ones that we mostly know as the noodle-noodles. We want to use (would you have guessed?) the fresh kind. The story here is that the dried noodles have to be soaked, usually they soak all the way to the inner soul and just become too mushy. The fresh ones on the other hand are soft but still have a firm inner part and that makes them so much more interesting to chew on.

Some other items to put on the shopping list when you prepare for Pad Thai are bean sprouts, green onions, eggs (you probably have them at home, don't you?), some meat (either chicken, pork or shrimp or a combination of them) and salted turnip (this is definitely a Thai market item, but it is not one of the very important ingredients, so if you don't get it leave it out).

Something else that is optional, but I prefer to make it mandatory, is firm tofu. The rest of our constituents you will have in your kitchen - I guess. That's garlic, oil, sugar, fish sauce, vinegar or lime juice and sweet paprika, tomato extract or (yes!) ketchup.

OK, shopping is done - let's start now. Don't forget the apron to protect the Chanel dress (or silk suit if you are the cooking man) that your better half gave you after the last dinner you cooked.

We start with the sauce. Bring to boil an equal amount of fish sauce, sugar and lime juice. We need to get a bit of red color onto this sauce. We can accomplish this with either sweet paprika powder, tomato extract or (we are in America here, aren't we?) ketchup. The goal for this sauce is a very strong taste of salty, sweet and sour. If you want to hold back a bit on saltiness, use less fish sauce and use salted turnip instead.

While the sauce keeps on simmering slowly we heat up a pan and in some oil fry crushed garlic until it starts to turn brown, add chicken, shrimp, or whatever meat we chose and sautee until nearly cooked to our liking. Now comes the firm tofu and salted turnip and the sautee-ing continues.

Now we have to do some planning for the real estate in the pan. Push all what you have in there to one side, so that you get about half of pan-real-estate free to fry some eggs in a bit of oil. The eggs should become scrambled eggs. When this is accomplished the noodles are added on top of everything, we mix and add just enough water to cook the noodles to the preferred firmness.

But when you add the water calculate that we also have the already prepared sauce which we will add now and mix again. This mixing you want to do in a way so that you don't tear too many noodles into too small pieces. We want them mostly complete.

Nearly done. Do a last taste adjustments, add some bean sprouts and green onions (cut in 2 inch pieces) and sautee very briefly. We want the two last ingredients still crisp. Dinner is ready! Serve with fresh bean sprouts and crushed peanuts (or cashew as a tried last time) on the side. I discovered just the other day that my little blender does a great job in nut crushing. Not as good as the big blender that Merlin and I sometimes play with, but still a good job. Honestly, I never tried to crush nuts with the big blender. Wait - if you have some of the sauce left - keep it in the refrigerator. It last a while and I bet you will make this Pad Thai again soon.

Aloha - OOPS, wrong country - jua kun mai kraow nah.