Pad, Thai and Tempting

It took me a while to get my pad thai recipe down, largely because there is no such thing as a pad thai recipe. The reason why is a bit complicated, and it has to do with how the thai got into the pad.

Back in the beginning, the way I heard it, ethnic Thais did not even have noodles (aka pad), and continued to generally not have them until the late nineteenth century. That's about when a wave of ethnic Han refugees came flooding in from China, fleeing from something called the Taiping Rebellion, the biggest war you've never heard of. It's sort of off topic, but let's just say China had seventy million less mouths to feed at the end of it, some of whom were doubtless refugees bringing noodles to Thailand.

The Han Chinese have this gift of going to random foreign countries and managing to cook for local tastes while still using traditional Han ingredients. Witness General Tso's Chicken. The same thing happened in Thailand. Here's this poor Han refugee with his fistful of rice noodles, and before he opens up his first food stand – here's the part I really admire about the Han- he looks methodically around him at what all the weird jungle people around him are eating.

As far as he can tell it's mostly chili, limes, fermented fish, and whatever crustacean is clinging to the nets but is too small to sell. And some weird jungle fruit thing, and probably more chili because that seems to be the way these Thai people roll. Ingeniously and undoubtedly quite a bit imperfectly at first, our Han refugee seasons his noodles to match the local palate. It's a trial and error thing, but it's also a negotiation. The Chinese guy figures out how to deliver the classic Thai flavors, but the Thai people also get accustomed to things like rice noodles and cabbage pickle. Accustomed is the key word here. Pad Thai was not really a big thing, at least not until The Big Thing, that is, World War II.

Outside of the monasteries and hill country (where Chinese/Buddhist cultural influence predominated), noodle dishes do not get widespread reception until rice rationing in the lead up to the Japanese takeover. That preventative rationing was a pretty amazing thing in itself; the Thai have been gifted with some very cunning and slightly clairvoyant heads of state. Seeing that 1) Japan would soon be commandeering the economy, 2) rice noodles dramatically stretched out the rice needed per person per day compared to the natural product, and 3) starving your people is bad- which is not a foregone conclusion when talking about leadership during WW2- PM Phibunsongkhram pursued an aggressive and if possible pronounceable Pad Thai program. The government distributed leaflets and noodle cart starter kits, recipe books, print shops for the recipe books, workshops for grannies to make rice noodles, even subsidizing entrepreneurs willing to bring this bastard culinary child to the masses, and bring it they did. It's eaten in Thailand the same way Americans wolf down hamburgers today, and for perhaps the same reason is a hard culinary rabbit to catch. It's just not restaurant food. Still not following? Imagine a Japanese businessman walking up to you and asking for "the definitive hamburger recipe", and you've got an idea.

The version posted here is more Thai style than what I usually get in the restaurants here, much drier and fluffier, less heavy. I'm not bragging on this, because it's not always a good thing. Dinner guests expect pad thai to be a loot gooier, a lot more red, sweeter perhaps, and I'm not sure how to do that without unbalancing the flavors and breaking the dish. Since I just figured out how to make the damn thing I'm loathe to break it.

The only trick I'm still working on is getting the noodles done just right. Timing the rehydration of rice noodles is tricky, like when I was first learning how to work with phyllo. Yeah. That. Tricky. Bitch.

All things considered, Pad Thai is probably one of my favorite foods: sour, salty, spicy, fishy, with just enough sweet to not suffer third degree chili burn. This recipe makes two portions. It's important to cook only one or two portions at a time- otherwise the noodles don't get stir fried evenly and it turns to pad thai gloop. If you're feeding more people, cook no more than two portions at a time, which is not-so-coincidentally what the below recipe makes up.

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup Nam Pla (AKA Fish Sauce, which unfortunately is not vegetarian, but you can substitute light soy sauce. It changes the flavor pretty substantially, though. Be prepared for "sort of Pad Thai" on the palate. Of course, it's sort of going to taste that way anyway, because it's your pad thai and not your local thai restaurant's. So whatever.)

¼ cup Tamarind concentrate (Available from Oriental food stores, this stuff is basically ready to roll. Otherwise you have to do all kind of stuff with the blocks of tamarind stuff: soaking, straining, boiling, human sacrifice, etc.)

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1-3 tablespoons red chili flakes

8 oz rice noodles (available from your friendly neighborhood oriental market, or, hell, Wal-Mart has them now.)

8 oz tofu, cut into 1/2 " chunks

2 eggs, scrambled

2 cups bean sprouts or brocco-slaw(I like this one) or thinly sliced cabbage (I like a lot of crunch in the pad thai, and the more vegetables, the less carb-guilt)

4 green onions, chopped

6 tablespoons chopped peanuts

1 lime, cut up

Peanut oil

Mix up the first five ingredients. This is your basic pad thai sauce. Adjust flavors to your taste: fish sauce for salt, tamarind for sour/bitter, sugar for sweet, chili for fire. Keep in mind that sweet is hard to correct for later- you can always add sweet later, tableside even. Thai street vendors often have a big sugar shaker right there for you to sweeten your noodles.

Put rice stick noodles into hot tap water. Let them sit for ten minutes or until they have just become pliable. Don't let them sit until al dente or you will end up with pad thai stew. It's better for them to be too hard than for them to be too soft, because if they're too hard now you can let them sit in the wok longer later on. Once they're at the right consistency, drain and toss with oil.

Make sure everything is chopped, scrambled, sliced, soaked, and/or otherwise ready to rock. Pad thai happens fast once the food hits the wok because the wok is so damn hot. You'll be busy stirring once the food hits the pan, believe me.

Heat some oil in the wok until it's rocket hot. Put in the tofu, stir fry until it gets brown around the edges. Push the tofu up the sides of the wok, out of the way.

Add the egg in the center area you've just cleared of tofu, stir fry until the egg is good and scrambled.

Dump the noodles in the wok, followed by the sauce. Be quick with this because those eggs are going to scorch. In fact, depend on some scorching- from what I've heard, the scorch is actually an essential part of wok cooking. But not too much. Just enough. It's very Eastern. Dude.

Add more oil if you need to. Stir to mix everything up. Add bean sprouts/cabbage/vegetable crunchies. All this mass will drop the heat in the wok a bit so the noodles can soften without burning, if you took them out of the water too crunchy. Stir. If the noodles are still not quite done add some fluid or more sauce if you have it, keep stirring until the noodles get soft enough for you.

 Throw in the peanuts and green onions, stir until mixed. Plate it up and serve with lime wedges. Eat.