Besides pineapple fried rice, pad thai is my next favourite carb dish that I really enjoy eating especially the one from Thai Express that has a great balance of all the necessary flavours of Thailand – sour, sweet and savoury. My mouth is salivating now at the thought of it, lol. I experimented with the pad thai sauce several times which in my opinion is probably one of the heaviest in flavour in my cooking to date as I normally like to go less-salt, less-sugar. For this, I went all the way and the end result was a delightful one. A burst of flavours on the palates with fresh and crisp seafood. Absolutely gorgeous. Of course if you prefer your version to be more sweet or more salty, you just need to adjust the seasoning accordingly. Enjoy!
Pad Thai Recipe
Ingredients (serves 2-3)
250g dried pad thai noodles, soaked in water for half hour
350g bean sprouts
1 large squid, butterflied, cut into smaller pieces & scored
12 tiger prawns, remove heads & shells but keep tails intact
3 stalks spring onion, cut into 1″ sections
1 piece firm tofu (tau kwa), cut into small cubes & pan-fried till golden brown
3 eggs, lightly beaten
vegetable oil
Sauce:
1 tbsp tamarind with 1/4 cup hot water
4 tbsp palm sugar with 2 tbsp hot water
3 tbsp fish sauce
Pinch of salt
Sugar
Chilli flakes
Ground peanuts
Instructions
1. Heat a little vegetable oil in wok and stir fry prawns and squids till just about cooked. Remove and set aside.
2. In the same wok, scramble the egg mixture till cooked. Push the egg to the upper end of the wok, add more oil on the lower end and saute the garlic and onions till fragrant.
3. Add the bean sprouts and briefly stir fry.
4. Add the tau kwa, noodles and sauce and stir fry till everything is well combined. Keep stir frying until the noodles had totally absorbed the sauce.
5. Return the prawns and squids into wok and stir in the spring onions.
6. Dish the ready noodles onto serving plates and add sugar, chilli flakes and ground peanuts on the sides.
Toss everything up on the plate and enjoy your home-made pad thai! Easy to make, isn’t it? 🙂