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IT’S a dish that is quick and convenient, a favourite of many families, and unquestionably one of the world’s great street foods, but according to scholars, pad thai also played a role in the history of the country in which it was invented. It’s not too big a stretch to say this unassuming dish helped shape Thailand as a nation.
The origin of pad thai can be traced to the 1930s, but it has since been adopted and adapted across the globe, in a similar way to pizza or sushi.
The story goes that then- prime minister Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, desperate to stop his country being colonised (and also to hang on to power himself), developed a series of edicts to promote national pride.
One of these was changing the name Siam to Thailand. Another was to eat only Thai food. A competition was run to develop a new national dish, and the winner was pad thai. The Government promoted it up and down the country, sup- plying restaurants with the recipe, and even handing over free street carts.
Now pad thai is cooked in homes all over the country, as well as being a staple on the streets.
Thai chef Nu Suandokmai is an authority on the dish, honing his skills with the wok at restaurants throughout Australia, as well as in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Bali.
For the past year, he’s overseen the kitchen as executive chef at Adelaide’s laneway restaurant Lantern by Nu, which he also owns.
“It is a street food, but is also cooked in a restaurant, where they sometimes make it fancy by wrapping it in an egg net or omelet,” Suandokmai explains.
“On the street it is cheap ( sometimes less than $1) and cooked in a big, flat pan, like paella. They can cook 40 to 50 serves. It is hotter in the middle, so the cooked noodles can be moved to the outside.”
Suandokmai says noodles came to Thailand from China, but the Thai people have “made them their own” with the sweet, sour and salty flavours they love.
They were a regular meal for his family when growing up on a farm north of Bangkok, he says, and the recipe he uses at Lantern is based on his mother’s.
The dish uses comparatively few ingredients and relies on being cooked quickly.
Indeed, when Suandokmai cooks pad thai on a powerful wok burner in his restaurant, the entire process takes only a few frantic minutes of hissing heat and flashes of the spatula.
Away from a commercial kitchen, Suandokmai and his head chef, Peter Westfield, share their combined wealth of knowledge to help home cooks take their noodles to the next level.
HOT SPOT
The biggest trap for a home cook is trying to cook too much at once.
An ordinary wok burner on a stove or barbecue doesn’t have the firepower of commercial equipment. The secret, Westfield says, is to cook a little at a time, so the noodles can still pick up some of the smoky, lightly scorched aroma – known as “the breath of the wok”.
“If I was cooking for two people, I would cook two pad thais,” he says.
“And it can be quicker, as well. When you throw in too many noodles, it all slows down and stews and takes longer.
“With this kind of food, one portion doesn’t take much time as long as all the prep is done. And it doesn’t have to be smoking hot out of the wok when you eat it.”
THE SAUCE
While it is possible to make (or buy) a premixed sauce, it will never be as good as adding the individual components so the flavours can be adjusted.
“The balance of sweet and sour flavours can
change each time,” Westfield says. “And if a premix sauce is kept in the fridge for a few days, the flavour can deteriorate.”
Suandokmai’s basic ratios are simple: three tablespoons of tamarind and fish sauce, and two of white sugar.
SWEET AND SOUR
When it comes to tamarind, both chefs agree that a commercial bottle or jar of puree is nothing like making your own. They recommend buying a compressed block of dried pulp and seeds, available at most Asian grocers. For those in a rush, this can be soaked in warm water then pushed through a sieve with the back of a large spoon.
“But it is easier if you can put the pulp in cold water the day before you need it,” Westfield advises. “And by the time you want to use it, it has become really pliable. It makes a huge difference. You are not rushing and you don’t have to force it through the sieve so much. It is really important to massage the meat out of the seeds. Get your hands dirty and make a mess.”
A 375g block of tamarind needs to soak in about 1.5 litres of water. The resulting puree will keep for at least a week in the fridge. Using hot water can start the fermentation process, meaning it will be spoilt in a few days.
NOODLE KNOW-HOW
Even more important for your pad thai planning is to soak the noodles ahead of time.
A traditional pad thai uses dried rice noodles, or rice stick noodles, which are widely available in supermarkets and other stores.
“You need to soak the noodles overnight – or at least for a few hours – in cold water,” Westfield says.
“You can’t rush it, and definitely don’t use hot water. If you do try a shortcut, the noodles will be nutty in the middle and overcooked on the outside. If it was me and I forgot to soak the noodles, I would actually change the dish.”
MEAT OR VEG
The street hawkers of Thailand will most often make their pad thai without fresh meat or seafood, using egg, firm tofu and dried shrimp as the protein.
At Lantern by Nu, the noodles often include fresh prawns, slices of chicken, or both. Whatever the case, the protein should be introduced at the beginning of the cooking time.
Dried shrimp can be added whole if they are very small, but Suandokmai prefers to use a slightly larger size and blitz them to a rough powder in a blender.
ON THE SIDE
One ingredient that’s never found in a pad thai is chilli – fresh or dried. Rather, dried chilli powder is served in a little heap alongside the noodles as an accompaniment that can be added to taste, or left out altogether.
To make the powder, Suandokmai buys packets of dried chillies that are 4-5cm long. They are roasted in bulk and then repackaged, ready for use.
“Roasting them again adds a whole new dimension,” Westfield says. “It brings a different, earthy roastiness to the chilli.”
Smaller chillies will be hotter, but they do vary, so check the flavour. The same size chilli grown in Australia is nowhere near as hot as one grown in Thailand, Westfield says.
The chillies are then blitzed to a powder when required and used as an accompaniment with extra roasted peanuts and a wedge of lime.
OIL CHANGE
Suandokmai uses canola or mixed vegetable oil for stir frying. Peanut oil, he says, is expensive and also causes issues for people with allergies.
READY, SET, GO
Even in the home kitchen, cooking a serving of pad thai shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Everything happens quickly, so it’s important to have all ingredients ready to go and within reach of the wok.
Heat the oil until it is shimmering before adding the protein ingredients. If cooking chicken thigh, this should go in first or, preferably, be fried and then removed.
An egg is broken straight into the bottom of the wok and gently scrambled so it forms an omelet with yellow and white still showing.
“It’s a slow scramble,” Suandokmai says. “Break it up a little, look at it, but don’t totally demolish like a normal scrambled egg.”
“And you want some scorch marks on it … not burn marks … for that smoky flavour,” Westfield adds.
Check the burner’s heat once the noodles go in, and turn the temperature down if needed. Cook the noodles until they soften – “a little bit of tshhh, tshhh”, Westfield says – for about 30 seconds.
Then add the sauces, dried shrimp, turnip, and some of the peanuts.
Continue cooking until the sauce caramelises and takes on a lovely deep-brown colour. Finally, add the bean sprouts and garlic chives.
Taste to make sure the noodles are tender and the balance of the sauces is right.
NO NOODLES HERE
To make an alternative pad thai, swap the noodles for the shredded heart of a green papaya for a dish known as “malagor pad thai”.
The fruit is amazing when cooked, retaining a tempting bite and amplifying the flavours of the sauce in a way that is different to the rice noodles.
“In Thailand, it is another way of using the papaya when it is in season and the trees are full of fruit,” Suandokmai says.