Chicken Pad Thai







Chicken pad thai with bean sprouts and garlic chives, garnished with ground peanuts and chilli flakes



 

It was only when G and I came to Australia that we started eating a lot of Thai food. That's probably because half of the restaurants in Sydney (okay, maybe I exaggerated a little...slightly less than half perhaps) serve Thai cuisine. I usually order a Pad Kee Mao and G will, without fail, order his favourite Pad Thai. So, while we were out on our grocery run this morning, G asked if I wanted to make Pad Thai for dinner. We had recently watched an episode of Poh's Kitchen on TV this week and there was a segment on preparing this dish. So we decided to try it out and bought all the necessary ingredients.

The way it was prepared on TV looked quick and easy. Of course, it would have been better if we had a cast iron wok over a flaming hot stove, but our Tefal non-stick wok did the job just fine. We didn't have prawns (as used in the recipe), so we added chicken instead. The pad thai turned out fantastic, almost as good as the one we had at Thai La-Ong in Newtown some time back. It was moist and had the right balance of sweet, salty and sour. Great texture in the noodles too, and I simply loved the sweetness of the red (spanish) onions in it. No more takeaway pad thai for us! Or perhaps not for me at least.

Chicken Pad Thai

(Source: Poh's Kitchen)

Ingredients    

Pad Thai Sauce:

• 45g palm sugar
• 35g tamarind juice
• 8g tomato sauce
• 3g salt

• 1 tbs vegetable oil
• 50g dried rice stick noodles, medium
• 2g eggs
• 50g prawns, shelled
• 10g onions, red
• 10g white pickled radish, diced (Thai product also called preserved turnip)
• 30 - 40g tofu
• 40g bean sprouts
• 20g garlic chives
• 2 tsp peanuts roasted, crushed
• 1 tsp dried red chillies, roasted
• Lime wedge (to serve)

 

Method

1. To make tamarind juice, dissolve one part tamarind with two parts of warm water. Using fingers, break up the lumps and let stand for a few minutes. Drain and discard fibre and seeds.
2. To make the Pad Thai Sauce add palm sugar, salt and tomato sauce to the tamarind juice.
3. Soak approximately 50 grams of dried rice noodles for 30 minutes and drain. This will yield about 120 grams. Pre blanch prawns in hot water that is slightly salted and cool down.
4. Reserve some bean shoots and chives for garnishing. In a wok heat some oil and sauté half the amount of sliced red onions.
5. Add beaten eggs and sauté for a few seconds stirring and breaking up the lumps, remove from heat and set aside. Heat the remaining oil and add the rest of the onions.
6. Add the noodles, prawns and all the remaining ingredients including the sauce. Toss for about a minute or two and check for seasoning.
7. Serve on a plate with two teaspoons of crushed roasted peanuts and crushed red chilli flakes on the side. Garnish with bean sprouts, chives and a wedge of lime and serve immediately.