Food as Adventure: Pad Thai

I have hobbies. I am training for a half marathon, making beaded jewelry, knitting socks, and letter-boxing.

The Boyfriend has hobbies. He is a wine connoisseur, a gamer, and a reader of terribly complicated fiction (I love to read, but want a staff genealogist and note-taker before tackling some of those tomes).

We like each other. We each have our own passions. And, we don't have very many hobbies in common.

I was squawking about this (since I am gaming and drinking wine too, while The Boyfriend has thus far declined to take up knitting), and we decided that cooking, with its "sharp edges, open flames, and risk of trauma," might qualify as a common interest. Our first foray into adventure-cooking was shumai, of dim sum fame. (The Boyfriend wrote it up here). The dumplings were good the first night, and even better once we trekked to Whole Paycheck for better quality won ton wrappers.

Our next adventure was Chicken Pad Thai, based on the recipe / formula found at Chez Pim.

Unfortunately we did not find Tamarind Paste in cute little jars, even when we walked to 'Little Vietnam' and prowled the aisles of the 'Asian SUPER Market.' There was only one employee in the store, and I stood patiently in line to ask for Tamarind. He agreed they had it, and strode off to the furthest wall, reached under a shelf into a closed cardboard box and handed me a brick of gelatinous dried Tamarind fruits. Damn.

I took my gooey brick home, and followed Pim's directions to unmold the gel into a large bowl and pour four cups of very hot water over it. While it soaked, I went through our kitchen armaments, despaired, and walked over to the grocery store to buy a wire strainer. It was that, or push all four cups of water and two cups of fruit through my tea ball.... um: No.

After the water cooled and I was properly armed, I reached into that bowl of weird goop and massaged away. I am a very tactile person - I like to touch things, I like to eat with my fingers, and novelty is good. Even with that as my baseline, this still felt weird and odd. Fortunately after some strenuous kneading, I was able to dump the whole brown mixture into my strainer and shove it through with the back of a ladle. It left me with about four cups of slightly-gooier than ketchup goop and a really gross colander.

I added half a cup of the tamarind goop to half a cup of fish sauce and a third of a cup of sugar, melted it, and stirred in chili powder. Unfortunately it was still sickly sweet, so it took more tamarind, more fish sauce, more chili powder to balance the sugar out a little. Next time, I think I just wont put sugar in at all.

Once the sauce tasted right (well, right-ish), we moved on to setting up the mise en place - aka all the stuff I needed to cook it - in cute little bowls. I call this 'Cooking-Show Style' and enjoy it, even for recipes which are not time sensitive. For wok cooking, it is practically mandatory.

We had sliced chicken, but no tofu (since The Boyfriend believes Sheldon Comic's claim that tofu is "the bastard love child of styrafoam and jello," and resists it mightily), sliced limes, roughly ground peanuts, chopped green onions, scrambled eggs, and chopped garlic. Oh, and the rice noodles.

In this version, you do not actually cook the rice noodles. Instead you pour hot (we used nearly boiling) water over them, and let them soak until they are almost-soft-enough. That almost thing appears to be key - that way they finish cooking in the wok. So, we soaked 'em and drained 'em and added their bowl to my collection on the counter top.

Then I stuck the wok over the flame until it began to smoke, and poured in some olive oil. The chicken went first, and a minute later I added a tablespoon or so of garlic and a slug of sauce. I stirred that up, then dumped in some peanuts, then the noodles and more sauce. I let that all cook for a couple minutes, moving the contents around, and then added the scrambled eggs. I stirred some more and let the eggs cook, then squashed in some lime juice, stirred in the green onions, and pulled the whole thing off the heat. It felt like it happened fast.

To serve the Pad Thai, I lifted the tangled portions into bowls and garnished them with more ground peanuts, green onions, and slices of limes. The results of this first experiment tasted good, but looked and felt sort of pale and sticky. I was pleased, but not totally satisfied.

My sous chef and dishwasher also noted that, in this inaugural attempt, I'd managed to dirty just about every bowl in the kitchen. I consider this just revenge for getting stuck de-veining the shrimp for the shumai. We both may like having staff just a little too much...

There was lots of Tamarind and about three-quarters of a cup of the Pad Thai sauce left over. I put them each into the freezer, and was fascinated and a little terrified to realize the Pad Thai sauce did not freeze. It worked out for the best though, since I was able to use it for Monday lunch, without having to defrost.

Monday's repeat went much better - I was less intimidated by the preparation, and didn't have to make the sauce or grind the peanuts. Instead, I just assembled a collection of ingredients, turned on the stove, and away I went. It came out infinitely better, which I think is due to adding more of the protein and about doubling the amount of sauce. Using so much more sauce didn't make the noodles sticky or funny-tasting, instead it gave them that beautiful orange color and subtle flavor I just hadn't managed Friday night.

One of the best things about making Pad Thai this way is that it seems endlessly customizable. We were out of of lime slices Monday, so I slugged a couple tablespoons of grapefruit juice into the mixture, and it was fine. The Boyfriend isn't a fan of peanuts, so I can make his without them and then stir them into mine.

I will definitely be making this again, as soon as I buy more rice noodles.