INGREDIENTS
Pad Thai
- 2 cups bean sprouts
- 5-6 cut Chinese chives – green
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon soya sauce
- 3 cloves chopped garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon ground dried chili pepper
- Ground pepper
- 1 lime
- 2 tablespoons toasted and crushed peanuts
- 1 chopped shallots
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
- 1/2 packet Thai rice noodles
- 3 tablespoons cooking oil
- 1/3 cup julienne Pressed Tofu
Method
- Soak noodles in lukewarm water for 15 minutes while prepping. When it is ready it should be flexible
- but not soft. Toast peanuts in a pan until lightly brown, about 3 minutes on low heat. Coarsely grind
- peanuts with pestle and mortar.
- Chop garlic, shallot Cut the Chinese chives tips off leaving 6 inch of the chives whole for garnish. Cut
- the rest into 1-inch pieces for cooking.
Cooking
- Use a wok or a large pot for easy stirring. Heat up your wok. You want good heat to the wok, but not necessarily extreme heat like other dishes.
- Add oil to the wok. Drop the chopped shallots and garlic in. Stir for half a minute then drop tofu. Let the tofu brown, about 1 minute.
- Add the drained noodles and ground dried chili pepper.
- Stir to separate the strands. If your noodles are ready, you will see that they will cook easily and become soft and chewy. However, if your noodles are still hard and inflexible, they have not been soaked long enough.
- Add more water in wok, a tablespoon at a time. It is not a bad idea when you make pad Thai for the first time, to have your noodles under-soaked.
- You’ll have more time to correct the flavours. If your noodles are over-soaked, you won’t be able to keep on cooking and stirring while making the adjustments; your noodles will turn mushy.
- When the noodles are ready, add the seasonings, ground chili pepper, soya sauce, sugar and tamarind.
- Stir to mix them well. Add dried shrimp. Keep the noodles turning? Taste to see if you need more seasonings.
- When the noodles are cooked and chewy with desired seasonings, push the noodles aside to make room for egg. Crack and drop the egg in. Scramble the egg into the noodles.
- When the egg is cooked, add half of the bean sprouts (save the other half for garnish) and Chinese chives. Stir quickly to preserve the crunchiness of bean sprouts and green colour of the Chinese chives. Pour the pad Thai onto a serving plate.
Garnish
Sprinkle with ground pepper and chopped peanuts. Garnish with beansprouts, Chinese chives and a wedge of lime.