Last week I did Indian which I like, but I decided to do Thai this week, which I LOVE. It's my favorite type of food. I love Thai curries so much that I almost have to dislike other curries by comparison. I would drink red curry from a glass. I would use peanut sauce as a condiment. I feel like I need to join Tom Kha Gai Anonymous. I think you get the point.
I long ago learned to make red curry chicken, and make it well (or so I'm told.) I would make it a lot more often if Kendra liked spicy food more. But it's the only Thai dish I've made. I was somewhat shocked to realize that myself,, and decided to fix that problem immediately by making one of my favorite dishes, Pad Thai.
First, of course, was the research. I remembered that Alton Brown had done Pad Thai so I went there first. Now, I worship the man; truly I do. But his recipe had a few too many experimental elements to it and I was looking for a traditional dish to start from. Next time I might get a bit more tricky. I quickly found one that looked better for my purposes. It had a couple problems such as my wanting to make chicken pad thai, not shrimp, and there were a couple of ingredients I wasn't familiar with, but it was a solid base to build on.
I rounded up the family this morning and took them out to dim sum (possibly my second favorite type of food) at the Great Wall Mall, which has a Ranch 99 store. If you haven't been to one, it's an Asian grocery, and a really good one. You can get lots of things there that you'd be hard pressed to get even in other Asian groceries. They have live tanks full of exotic eating fish. A full produce department with fruits you don't see on this continent much. I really recommend it. The only ingredient I had any problem with was the tamarind, and that was just because the only thing they had labeled itself as a "sour soup base." However it really didn't have anything in it beside tamarind, so I got it, and it ended up working fine.
The recipe was for 2-3 servings. I knew I'd be serving at least three adults and my daughter, so I decided to double the recipe. I think the flavors were just fine with that, but cooking twice as much was a bit difficult.
Pad thai is a noodle stir fry, and the one thing you have to do when making a stir fry is get all the ingredients together ahead of time. It's just too fast to do prep while things are sizzling in a wok on high. So I was very careful to try to get as much done ahead of time as possible. I put the noodles in some water, but kept an eye on the time. I cut up the tofu and the chives and set them aside. I got the bean sprouts clean and minced the garlic. Ranch 99 didn't have any shallots, so I gave them a pass and didn't really notice their absence in the final product. I cut up the chicken and got it ready to go, and got all my sauces out.
I hadn't gotten any peanuts, but we did have a big can of Planter's Deluxe Nuts which contained peanuts, so I improvised and use them. I chopped them up and threw them into the hot oil as the first step... and promptly burned them. They cooked VERY fast. They didn't even seem to brown, just straight to very dark brown. I scooped them out as best I could, but decided to carry on with the same oil since it seemed to be fine and carried a peanut flavor, but not a burned one.
Since I was using chicken instead of shrimp, I had to modify the recipe a bit. It would have to be cooked a lot longer than the shrimp, so once I had cleaned out the burned peanuts, I threw it into the pot. Well, that's what I should have done and what I planned to do. What I really did was started making the recipe the way it was written down and forgot all about my forethought with the chicken.
I cooked the garlic and the tofu to a nice brown and had just tossed in the noodles when I remembered my brilliant "cook the chicken first" plan. I briefly considered starting everything over again, but decided, instead, to see what I could do with what I had (especially because I didn't have any more rice noodles.) So I took the contents of the wok and dumped them into a bowl and proceeded to cook the chicken. Once it was done, I tossed the noodles, tofu, and garlic back into the wok. It seemed to work just fine, probably because the noodles hadn't really cooked the first time.
This is where the problem with a double batch cropped up, though. That many noodles are not only hard to stir, but incredibly difficult to mix with other ingredients. My spatula was useless, so I switched to a spaghetti ladle with all those nice prongs around the edge to pull the noodles apart. That made things much easier.
I added the tamarind, sugar, and fish sauce. I left the chili pepper out in deference to my wife and hadn't found any preserved turnip at the store, although I hadn't looked very hard. I have no experience with it as an ingredient and wasn't sure what it would add.
I mixed it and then moved the mass to the side for the eggs. Eggs in a wok are difficult. They stick a lot, but I managed to keep them going pretty well with constant stirring until they were mostly cooked and then mixed them in.
I added the sprouts and chives and cooked it a bit more to soften them, and then it was done. It looked perfect to me. I've never used Chinese chives before, and was a bit concerned about them, but they looked perfect in the dish.
The results: very good! I am very very pleased with how it all turned out. After using so many new ingredients, I was prepared for a disaster, but instead I got pad thai! It tasted right and had all the right textures. My noodles came out perfect! The sprouts still had just enough crunch, and the chicken melted in my mouth.
There were a couple of negatives. First, it was a little bit oily. Not much, but I noticed it. I blame that on my mistake with the chicken, though. I had to toss in a bit more oil to cook it. Second, the flavors were a bit mild. I don't know if the tamarind was weak or what, but I know I'll use more next time. It needs a bit more of that vinegar-y flavor.
Overall, though, a rousing success even though I left out a number of the ingredients. But, then again, that's what cooking is all about; experimenting to make it taste the way you want. I'll definitely be cooking this again and maybe next time I'll try the shallot and the turnip!
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