Pad Thai, Healthy Home Cooking

LTH,

Sticking with my 2008 theme of cooking healthy at home I made an old standby for the bride and I this evening, Pad Thai. Simple - quick, once you have your ducks in a row I find the key is using quality shrimp, both fresh and dried.*

Ducks in a row


Stir fry garlic, add shrimp


Beaten Egg


Stir Fry


At this point I neglected to take additional cooking pictures, though the complete recipe and additional pictures may be found here

Completed dish



Enjoy,
Gary

*Thai Grocery carries high quality dried shrimp, which taste great simply eaten out of hand.

Thai Grocery
5014 N Broadway St
Chicago, IL 60640
773-561-5345

Your meez is quite impressive. I wish I could be that organized while stir frying.

Love the pic with the just-added beaten egg.

Gary,
This is a little different process than I've used. The recipe I have sautees the noodles for a bit before adding the eggs. This is usually unfeasible since the noodles take up most of the wok (when cooking for 4). I'll try it your way next. I am concerned that the shrimp can get overcooked like this.

The more I cook, the more I see the value of the mise, especially for the restauranteur. Sunday I made Shrimp Etoufee from Paul Prudhomme's cookbook (before he went low fat). Peeled shrimp, mixed spices, chopped onion pepper and celery, measured flour, ready butter and oil, sliced green onions, hot rich stock (simmering since 1PM), and the recipe almost makes itself. If I had to do twenty covers of this in an evening, having the prep cooks getting everything ready makes a dish like this a no-brainer. Pad Thai is very similar in this need to have everything at hand.

izzat catsup?

(horrors!)

oddly enough I was perusing this just a couple hours ago

http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2007/0 ... or_be.html

which addresses the ketchup question

thankfully, there is no "peanut sauce" in evidence

Christopher Gordon wrote:izzat catsup?

Yep, I am not Miss Pim, nor am I proper.

Anyhoo, the tart with a hint of sweet adds a subtle, there is only a bit used, note. It's not due to laziness or sourcing, I have tamarind on hand, but I've been using the Brennan recipe for a couple of decades with good results.

Christopher Gordon wrote:thankfully, there is no "peanut sauce" in evidence

I make a monster peanut sauce, might even post the recipe if you poke no more on the pad Thai ketchup front.

Enjoy,
Gary

JoelF wrote:I'll try it your way next. I am concerned that the shrimp can get overcooked like this.

Joel,

When cooking for both my wife and myself overcooked shrimp is never a problem, as she prefers them cooked to a greater degree than myself. Frankly, I don't quite get it, here is a woman who likes her beef still mooing, yet gets fussy about anything south of overdone with shellfish.

Paul Prudhomme's Shrimp Etoufee is one terrific recipe, though it's been years since I've made it, might be time to dust it off.

Enjoy,
Gary

Might I be so bold as to suggest a time saving side dish for Asian food nights?

Trader Joe's frozen coconut lime, or coconut curry chicken stix. These little lumpia style crunchy deals are much better than I assumed they would be, and if you pop them in the oven at the start of your process, they'll probably be ready in harmony with your meal. I've been crunching on these for a few years now for homemade thai curry / stir fry / asian food in general night.

--I wouldn't be recommending them if they weren't decent enough to eat. S/o had to practically FORCE me to try one. I normally do not even consider pre-packaged frozen stuff.

After such a stunning presentation, I feel somewhat churlish in asking: are there rough (or even specific) quantities to accompany that lovely recipe or am I safe in estimating based on the mise-en-place?

(Many thanks for posting this apropos of a particular conversation....)

Gypsy Boy wrote:are there rough (or even specific) quantities to accompany that lovely recipe

GB,

As I mention upthread, complete recipe and additional pictures may be found here

Thanks for the compliment on the presentation, and yes, my post was partly based on our conversation.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:

Christopher Gordon wrote:izzat catsup?

Yep, I am not Miss Pim, nor am I proper.

Anyhoo, the tart with a hint of sweet adds a subtle, there is only a bit used, note. It's not due to laziness or sourcing, I have tamarind on hand, but I've been using the Brennan recipe for a couple of decades with good results.

Christopher Gordon wrote:thankfully, there is no "peanut sauce" in evidence

I make a monster peanut sauce, might even post the recipe if you poke no more on the pad Thai ketchup front.

Enjoy,
Gary

All in good fun, I assure you; your pad thai mise is mouthwatering all on it's own.

I was mainly tickled that I'd literally just been perusing Pim's recipe *and* that she talks about ketchup use.

It's a pet peeve when pad thai is translated as "peanut sauce noodles" and, taken further, that Thai cuisine is often erroneously-defined as peanut butter and chile-based.

Obviously, you do not suffer this misapprehension.

...

we're you to post your peanut sauce recipe(after my gentle ribbing), I'd like to read it

G Wiv wrote:

Gypsy Boy wrote:are there rough (or even specific) quantities to accompany that lovely recipe

GB,

As I mention upthread, complete recipe and additional pictures may be found here

Holy pad thai, Bat-wiv! How on earth could you have expected me to see, much less read and appreciate text (text, I tell you!) in the middle of a series of photographs of such lip-smacking goodness?


PS The fact is ( ) I was so taken (truly) with the pics that I didn't even notice that particular line.

Anyhoo, the tart with a hint of sweet adds a subtle, there is only a bit used, note. It's not due to laziness or sourcing, I have tamarind on hand, but I've been using the Brennan recipe for a couple of decades with good results.

If I recall correctly, there is a recipe in this same Jennifer Brennan cookbook for Thai fried rice that uses ketchup, and it was damned good when we made it lo these many years ago. I think she even acknowledges that the use of ketchup might seem a bit blasphemous, but that she got the recipe from a Thai cook.

Hmm, I may have to get this cookbook back from carpe caseum. That pad thai looks awfully good.

What is it between the lime wedges and the green onions?

Nghe wrote:What is it between the lime wedges and the green onions?

Looks like ground dried shrimp to me.

Christopher Gordon wrote:we're you to post your peanut sauce recipe(after my gentle ribbing), I'd like to read it

Chris,

Simple, yet tasty. Original recipe had less cayenne, which I recommend grinding fresh for best flavor.

Enjoy,
Gary

Peanut Sauce

10 tablespoons peanut butter, crunchy
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cup thick coconut milk*
1 tablespoon brown sugar, or palm sugar
2 teaspoon cayenne**
1 stalk lemon grass, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fish sauce, nam pla
1 tablespoon dark sweet soy sauce

In a sauce pan combine all the sauce ingredients and bring to a simmer, stirring, until you reach the desired consistency. (5 to 10 minutes) If mixture is too thick, thin with reserved coconut water. Remove from the heat and serve in small bowls as an accompaniment.

*Often referred to as coconut cream. This is the thicker, whiter less watery portion of coconut milk (unsweetened).

** I often use three teaspoons of freshly ground cayenne. This can be made by grinding crushed red or whole dried red peppers in a coffee grinder, there is a significant difference in taste and heat.

Adapted from:
The Original Thai Cookbook
Jennifer Brennan
Page 81

Dmnkly wrote:Looks like ground dried shrimp to me.

Dom,

Yes, exactly. I purchased dried shrimp at Thai Grocery and ground them in a spice grinder. Thai Groceries ground shrimp are excellent quality light and fluffy when freshly ground and tasty eaten out of hand.

Dried shrimp


Freshly ground dried shrimp


Enjoy,
Gary

Thai Grocery
5014 N Broadway St
Chicago, IL 60640
773-561-5345

Monday night I made pad thai. After I left work, I headed to the Indian market near my house to hopefully pick up some tamarind paste or concentrate but they were closed, and I didn't feel like driving all over Madison. Then it struck me! Didn't someone on LTH make pad thai with ketchup? So I went home and looked up this thread.

The recipe I use is out of Gourmet's big cookbook, and I have always really enjoyed the results, so I just modified it and used some ketchup.

The results were fantastic, maybe the best I have ever made. I don't know if it was because of the ketchup, or because I really took the time to get my mise en place ready to go. I also now cube up and stir fry my tofu by itself so that it holds it's shape better when I toss it into the stir fry at the end, I like a bit of a sear on it, and I just can't get that done with my burner and a pan full of food.


Anyhow, here are a few pictures to go with.

Most of the mise:


Cooking the egg first:


Then the shallot and garlic (eggs removed):


Shrimp and tofu added:


Remove all of that from the pan. Add the sauce (fish sauce, brown sugar, salt, water, ketchup, granulated sugar), bring to a boil, and toss in noodles.


Toss your already cooked parts back in, along with crushed peanuts, green onion, and bean sprouts:


Final plate with more sprouts, peanuts and lime wedges:



G Wiv - Thank you for the ketchup and pad thai inspiration. I'll have to look into getting some dried shrimp to up the shrimp flavor.

I made GWiv's exact recipe including the ketchup and my family was very very happy with the results.

I think ketchup is completely acceptable in a dish like this because of its comination of sweet and umami flavors. It worked really well. Yes, we could cook --and somtimes do cook --with very authentic ingredients in our asian dishes and it is a lot of fun sometimes to shop for obscure, use-once-a-year ingredients. But most often, we just need to get a decent dinner on the table seven nights a week. A wonderful recipe like this Pad Thai is perfect because everyone has a bottle of Heinz in their fridge.

I also liked Gary's recipe's method of combining the raw egg with the noodles. It reminded me a bit of carbonara. The Pad Thai turned out wonderfully.

THANK YOU Gary, as usual!

--Joy, fan of GWiv

Ditto. Didn't bother to take pictures because I was pretty busy with all the steps, but once the dish was complete, I have to say that this is the best recipe I've found for Pad Thai--and I've tried a lot of them. Matter of fact, I'd sworn off trying any more recipes because nothing ever seemed to work. I followed this one to the letter and I have to say that we were very happy with the results. Indeed, just last week, I was in a used bookstore, found a copy of Brennan's cookbook and bought it on the spot. Now I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from that book.

Thank you, Dr. Wiv.

I like Pad Thai fine, though it's by no means my favorite Thai noodle dish. Still, I seem to make it once every couple months since it's so easy to throw together (aside from bean sprouts and tofu, I have most the ingredients in my fridge/pantry/garden). And it reheats pretty well for lunch the next day. I'm not a huge fan of ketchup--I tend to use a generous amount of tamarind liquid instead.

Here's tonight's batch:

Pad Thai for the Bride and me, been a while, tasty and easy as 123. Lots of leftovers.

Purty, Gary!

Recipe?

Geo

Geo wrote:Purty, Gary!
Recipe?

Thanks and same as above.