Pad Thai’s mysterious balance of flavors
In my cookbook “The Recipes I Love,” I featured a recipe for pad Thai, which I learned years ago at a cooking demonstration of the Blue Elephant Cooking School and Restaurant in Bangkok. While this recipe is good, I have since modified it to make it simpler.
For instance, instead of having to extract tamarind juice from peeled ripe tamarind, I’ve found that you can use bottled tamarind paste, which is available in some supermarkets, and probably from some online sellers, too. Using bottled tamarind paste saves you a lot of time and effort.
In addition, instead of heating the tamarind sauce in a saucepan to melt the sugar, simply heat the sugar and water mixture in the microwave oven until the sugar melts, then just blend in the remaining ingredients for the sauce.
I’ve also discovered that instead of searching around for the elusive preserved turnip or radish called for in some recipes, you can just substitute pickled labanos or pickled radish. Or you can omit this ingredient altogether.
Pad Thai is probably one of the most popular Thai dishes. What makes it so appealing is its delicate balance of the sweet, the salty and the sour. The sweet comes from the sugar infused into the tamarind sauce, the salty from the patis or fish sauce, and the sour from the limes. Blended together, they create a mysterious balance of flavors so typical of Thai dishes, and yet so unlike anything you’ve ever tasted in a noodle dish.
About the limes: Regretfully, we don’t really have the variety of fragrant, emerald-green, seedless limes that are best used for pad Thai and other
Thai dishes. Some local restaurants use green lemon, which really isn’t the same. Probably the best local substitute is the dayap, which is also just as fragrant. If you can’t find dayap, maybe you can badger friends and relatives coming home from the United States or Australia to bring you some limes.
This recipe for pad Thai may look complex, but once you’ve prepared all the ingredients, cooking it will be a breeze. It’s probably best to prepare the sauce first, which you can then set aside while you prepare the other ingredients.
Pad Thai For the tamarind sauce:
⅔ c brown sugar or muscovado
¼ c water
⅔ c tamarind paste (from a bottle)
¼ c fish sauce (patis)
2 Tbsp lime juice or dayap juice For the noodles:
4 Tbsp cooking oil, divided 2 squares firm tofu (each measuring about 2 inches by 2 inches), cut into cubes 8-10 medium-sized prawns (or more, if desired)
2 shallots or 1 large onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped ¼ c pickled radish or cucumbers, diced
1 carrot, sliced into thin sticks ¼ c dried shrimps (hibe),
washed and soaked in water for 10 minutes to refresh, then drained
300 g flat rice noodles, soaked in water for 20 to 30 minutes, or until softened, then drained
1 c bean sprouts, washed and trimmed
½ c chicken broth or water 1 tsp chili powder (optional) 2 eggs, beaten
5-6 stems garlic chives, cut into 1- to 2-inch lengths (don’t use the bulbs)
To garnish:
⅓ c ground peanuts
2 Tbsp white or brown sugar
Few strands of bean sprouts, trimmed
1 egg, cooked scrambled then cut into strips
1 lime or dayap, cut into wedges
Make the sauce: Mix together the sugar and water, then heat in the microwave for about 30 seconds to melt the sugar. Add the tamarind paste, fish sauce and the lime or dayap juice. Set aside.
Cook the noodles: Heat 2 Tbsp of the cooking oil in a wok or large skillet. Fry the tofu on both sides until light brown. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add one more tablespoon of the cooking oil and saute the prawns just until they turn an even orange color. Remove from the pan and set aside.
In the same pan, saute the shallots, garlic, radish and carrots. Add the drained dried shrimps. Stir in half of the noodles, the bean sprouts, the chicken broth or water, the cooked tofu and the chili powder (if using). Mix well to coat the noodles with the sauce. Add the remaining noodles and tamarind sauce and continue to blend the ingredients with the sauce.
Push all the ingredients to one side of the pan and pour in the remaining one tablespoon cooking oil. Stir in the eggs then mix to incorporate the eggs with the noodles. Sprinkle with chives.
Garnish and serve: Transfer the noodles to a serving platter. Arrange the cooked prawns on top. Mix together the ground peanuts and sugar and sprinkle over the noodles. Top with bean sprouts and scrambled egg and serve with lime or dayap wedges.
Note: Use rice noodles that are wide because they hold the sauce better.