Pad Thai

The main driving force behind this blog being my best half Percy, i want to introduce you all this time to a dish prepared by him. To those of you who know both of us we both are big foodies and we can’t just sit eating the routine daal chaawal daily …..we need all of those tangri kebabs and spicy noodles and Rogan gosht in our life so here i am writing about this dish planned, prepared and coordinated by our sou chef at home (he calls himself that though i fight for being his sou chef but I must say whenever he comes up with a dish he has never failed to surprise me.

It was 4 years back on my trip to thailand when I first got to taste this dish. Somehow it’s not the usual chinese rice noodles but flat noodles that is used to prepare this dish. Contrary to popular belief the origins of this dish is actually chinese ( because of the use of noodles and the stir-frying method) and not thai though later it was adapted to suit thai tastebuds. Its originally called kway teow ( meaning rice noodles in chinese) phat thai – thai style stir fried noodles. This dish is a popular street food in bangkok as well as other cities of thailand ( people do have it for breakfast also).

It was only a while after trying out various chinese and thai dishes at restaurants that he decided to plunge into preparing thai cuisine at home this time for a change and that too on the first day of winter officially – December 1. Since it was our first thai dish it took us a while to get introduced to the different ingredients needed. So our preparation started with grocery shopping especially for this.

Few ingredients in it like fish sauce, tamarind sauce, coconut sugar and sriracha hot sauce make up the backbone of this tasty bowl of noodles. Moreover its a protein rich food too with all the bean sprouts and tofu that go into this famous dish. Though it took only 20 to 30 minutes to prepare this staple thai dish, the flavours and aroma start building up right from the time you start frying the prawns. All in all, it was a power-packed bowl that we got to relish by the end of the day for dinner.

So please do try it out and i am sure you won’t be disappointed.

Recipe

Ingredients

Flat rice noodles – 2 packets ( 500 g)

Jumbo prawns peeled – 300 g

Eggs – 3

Coconut sugar – 2 tsp

Long bean sprouts – 300 g

Spring onions( chives) – 200 g

Diced pink onions – 1/2 cup

Tofu – 300 g

Tamarind sauce – 4 tsp

Fish sauce – 4 tsp

Sriracha red sauce – 3 tbsp

Dried shrimp / shrimp paste – 2 tsp

Olive oil (extra virgin) – 3 tbsp

Horseradish sauce – 1/2 tsp

Salt – to taste

To garnish

– Coriander leaves

– peanuts

Steps

1. Pour hot water into a bowl containing the flat rice noodles and place it for 30 minutes. Try bending it after that and if it doesn’t break your noodles is ready to be cooked.

2. Heat wok and add olive oil and once the oil is heated up, fry the peeled prawns until golden brown in colour. Remove from wok and place aside

3. In the same oil fry the entire tofu and then add the diced onions to it.

4. Once the tofu turns golden brown, add the half cooked noodles and stir the wok thoroughly. You may just sprinkle some water on top before the stir.

5. Now add the fish sauce first and stir well. Then to it add the tamarind sauce, shrimp paste and coconut sugar and stir well again.

6. Add the sriracha red sauce and continue to stir on medium heat for 5-6 minutes till you see a golden brown colour on the noodles.

7. Now set aside the noodles on one side of the wok and scramble the eggs on the other side. Once properly scrambled, add bean sprouts , horseradish sauce and chives and mix these with the noodles on medium heat.