Reflection 7

If I was only allowed to eat one food on the face of the earth - it would be Pad Thai - hands down. Not restaurant Pad Thai, definitely not Pad Thai from a packaged kit. And if you feel insulted because you like either of the aforementioned, let me tell you the truth about Pad Thai. There are restaurants that make great authentic Pad Thai using all native ingredient (we'll get to those in a minute) but these restaurants charge you a lot of $$$ for the lowly dish called Pad Thai. Which if you know about Pad Thai is absurd. In Thailand Pad Thai is cheap street vendor food. No expensive ingredients, no years of grand culinary school are require to perfect this dish. I do contend that the right ingredients do matter and many of them will not be found in you local grocery store. I order a lot of my Thai cooking ingredients online from ImportFood.com . They are incredibly reliable - even with fresh producc which I order every other month or so. They also have great free videos of Thai street vendors making traditional dishes, which are great to watch for learning how to cook dishes. This is where I found the video of a street vendor making Pad Thai. The Pad Thai recipe I'm sharing is off the Import Food website. They have at least 150 great recipes.
The three must have ingredients that are a bit hard to come by are the Kaffir Lime Leaves, palm sugar and tamarind. They are not expensive ingredients, but unless you have a specialty Asian food store in town they may be hard to come by. I made Pad Thai for a long time without these three ingredient, and when I finally got them - it turned Pad Thai into a completely different dish. Palm sugar is is much mellower that cane sugar, closer to maple sugar or honey in taste. Tamarind is a must have for all kinds of South East Asian cuisines. It is a tart fruit paste. It can be found in pulp form and as a concentrate. I recommend the concentrate, it's easier to work with. You may have an easier time finding the pulp (also the pulp is cheaper) but you have to boil and strain it. Kaffir lime leaves I discovered when learning how to make Tom Yum Soup (a story for another day . . ) the leaves when fried in cooking oil with give off a citrus fragrance that masks much of the fried oil smell from the dish.

I make Pad Thai for lunch about once a week.
Prep time 20 mins Cook time 10 mins.

First, prepare your Pad Thai Sauce:

Ingredients for Pad Thai Sauce

1/4 cup palm sugar
1/4 cup fish sauce
4-6 tablespoon tamarind concentrate
1/4 cup Sriracha sauce

Method for Pad Thai Sauce

Put tamarind concentrate into a measuring cup, and add enough water to make 1/4 cup, stir, this is your tamarind juice. Combine shaved palm sugar, fish sauce, tamarind juice, and sriracha sauce. You can make this Pad Thai sauce ahead and put in a jar in the fridge up to a week.

Ingredients for Pad Thai (makes 2 servings)

1 egg lightly beaten
1 cup fresh shrimp or chicken (optional)
1 tablespoon sliced shallot
1 handful rice stick noodle
1 cup fresh bean sprouts
1/4 cup fresh scallions
2 tablespoons chopped unsalted peanuts
vegetable oil for frying
2 Kaffir Lime Leaves

Method
Boil water, once boiling turn off and soak the rice stick noodle in the water for 15 minutes, leave noodles in water while you prep and cook. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a wok at medium-high heat. Add egg and cook it quickly, scrambling into small pieces. Remove, set aside. Add 2 tablespoons of oil in wok. Add shrimp/chicken and cook until done. Remove, set aside. Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the wok. Add shallot and Kaffir lime leaves fry until aromatic. Increase the heat of your wok. Add a handful of soaked noodles. Stir-fry this mixture for until the noodles start to get soft. Add 1/4 cup of Pad Thai Sauce and mix well. Add cooked egg, bean sprout, scallions and cooked shrimps. Stir well for another 1-2 minutes until everything blends together. Turn off heat, transfer to serving plate with sliced fresh lime, roasted peanuts.