Thai food

I figured I'd post an entry on the food I cooked for class, plus then you can all get the recipe. ; )

When I began looking up recipes, I had no idea what to pick. Some of the food turned me off immediately, but then I found the recipe for pad thai and it looked really tasty (even though I don't know what a few of the ingredients are). So, I called up my friend, and we hit up the store.

Here is the list of ingredients, the bolded items are the ones I actually used:

egg
fish sauce (substituted soy sauce)
garlic
dried chili pepper
ground pepper
shallots
sugar
tamarind
rice noodles
vegetable oil
tofu
shrimp
chinese chives (substituted regular chives)
peanuts
bean sprouts (substituted broccoli sprouts)
preserved turnip

This recipe is fairly flexible with what is added or omitted. The only ingredient I had trouble finding was the tamarind, though I eventually found it in the oriental foods section. The recipe states that white vinegar is a fine substitute for tamarind.

Because the dish is cooked on high heat and needs to be stirred constantly. I measured, and set out, all of my ingredients beforehand. Here is the exact recipe:

Soak the dry noodles in lukewarm water while preparing the other ingredients, for 5-10 minutes. Julienne tofu and cut into 1 inch long matchsticks. Cut up Chinese chives into 1 inch long pieces. Rinse the bean sprouts and save half for serving fresh. Mince shallot and garlic together. 

Use a wok. If you do not have a wok, any big pot will do. Heat it up on high heat and pour oil in the wok. Fry the peanuts until toasted and remove them from the wok. Add shallot, garlic and tofu and stir them until they start to brown. The noodles should be flexible but not expanded at this point. Drain the noodles and add to the wok. Stir quickly to keep things from sticking. Add tamarind, sugar, fish sauce, chili pepper and preserved turnip. Stir. The heat should remain high. If your wok is not hot enough, you will see a lot of juice in the wok at this point. Turn up the heat, if it is the case. Make room for the egg by pushing all noodles to the side of the wok. Crack the egg onto the wok and scramble it until it is almost all cooked. Fold the egg into the noodles. Add shrimp and stir. Add bean sprouts, chives. Stir a few more times. The noodles should be soft and very tangled. 

As always, in Thailand, condiments such as sugar, chili pepper, vinegar and fish sauce are available at your table for your personal taste. Some people add more pepper or sugar at this point.


The recipe says to turn up the heat to high, but high heat was too hot, so I turned mine down to avoid burning. It's a pretty easy recipe, but kind of messy to cook without a wok.