Pad thai

Ingredients

• Rice noodles, 5 mm200 g
• Prawns200 g
• Firm tofu — diced100 g
• Eggs2
• Tamarind paste3 tbsp
• Fish sauce3 tbsp
• Palm sugar3 tbsp
• Garlic3 clove
• Shallot2
• Bean sprouts150 g
• Garlic chives50 g
• Peanuts — roughly chopped50 g
• Limeto taste
• Neutral oil3 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Soak the noodles in warm water for twenty minutes. They should bend but still feel firm when you bite one.

   20 min

2. 2

   Dissolve the palm sugar in the tamarind and fish sauce, warming them together for a minute. Taste it: sour, salty and sweet should all land equally.

   3 min

3. 3

   Get the wok hot, fry the tofu until crisp, add the garlic and shallot, then after half a minute the prawns. Cook until pink and push them to the side.

   3 min

4. 4

   Break the eggs into the cleared space, let them set and break them up with the spatula. Add the drained noodles and pour in the sauce.

   2 min

5. 5

   Fry, tossing constantly, for two minutes until the noodles drink the sauce and soften. Add the sprouts and chives, toss once and take it off.

   2 min

About the dish

Pad thai takes less time to cook than to prepare. Once the pan is hot there is no stopping: everything has to be cut, measured and standing within reach.

The sauce rests on three tastes — sour tamarind, salty fish sauce, sweet palm sugar. The proportion is roughly equal, and it is adjusted to taste before the frying starts, never during.

The noodles are not boiled. They soak in warm water until pliable but still firm, then finish in the pan by drinking the sauce. Boiled in advance they turn to porridge.

Worth knowing

• — More than two portions at once will not work in a home pan: the temperature drops and the noodles steam instead of frying. Cook in batches.
• — The sprouts go in at the very end — they are meant to stay crisp, not to cook.
• — Ketchup and soy sauce, often suggested in place of tamarind, make a different dish. Tamarind paste is in any Asian shop and keeps for years.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

690 kcal

Protein

34 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Thailand

• Tom yum goong — A hot and sour prawn soup where the balance is set at the end: fish sauce, lime and sugar go in to taste rather than by the recipe.