Pad Thai

My friend Julie sent me a link to this site, and while I've been focused on the Indian thing a lot the past few weeks, it had been nagging at me.



I actually have the stuff to make the chicken fried rice recipe she mentioned, and I'll probably make that this weekend, but tonight I made the Pad Thai. Except I took major liberties with the recipe on that site.





Googling my way around I discovered there are about a million ways to make Pad Thai. Here's mine (or my first anyway).



The Asian market I went to told me I didn't need the garlic chives it called for. Which reminded me of the Indian market where I was told fresh curry leaves were not worth the trouble. But this guy had a lot of good stuff on the shelves. Included at least 50 versions of fish sauce from all over the orient.



Had fertilized duck eggs, too, which he assured me are absolutely rife with cholesterol. Said it as if this were a selling point. I told him, I know Americans (I'm not one of them) who'll toss an egg if they crack it in the pan and see a spot of blood in the yolk. He told me Balut, which I gather is big with Filipinos (and possibly other Asian nationalities) is a delicacy. You steam or boil the egg, there's the white, the yellow and the duck.



First, the sauce:

Putt Thai Sauce
1 cup fish sauce (I used a Thai fish sauce recommended by the market owner)
1 cup tamarind concentrate
4 tablespoons brown sugar (recipe really calls for 3 tablespoons of palm sugar, which I forgot to buy)



For the Pad Thai:

Pad Thai
1/4 cup peanut oil
4 dried chillies
1 lb. diced chicken marinated in the putt thai sauce
2 tablespoons crushed garlic
1 cup diced turnip (the recipe called for 'preserved turmip,' but I only had fresh)
1 cup diced onion
3 oz. dried shrimp
14 oz. diced tofu
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 eggs
1/2 cup Putt Thai sauce
1 lb. rice stick noodles (dried, soaked 30 minutes to soften in water)
1/4 cup crushed peanuts
8 oz. bean sprouts
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper
1/4 cup chopped chives
green onions, cucumber and lime to garnish
Get the oil hot and add the four dried chillies. When they start to darken, add turnips and onions, keep it moving until the onion turns translucent. Add chicken, stir continuously while keeping wok really hot. Add dried shrimp, cook another minute or two, add tofu. Add noodles and 1/2 cup chicken broth and stir for one minute. Add eggs, stir another minute until all is incorporated. Add peanuts, Putt Thai, and bean sprouts, stir another minute or two, add chives and red pepper, stir another minute or so.

Serve with green onions, cucumber and lime.



A note on how I treated the chicken: since I made the sauce immediately before the Pad Thai itself, I had sauce that was relatively hot. I used this to marinate my chicken to reduce cooking time by bringing the overall temperature of the chicken up while I did my other prep work. I added the chicken earlier than the guy on the cooking show added the shrimp because undercooked shrimp is all well and good, but I don't take chances with undercooked poultry.