Pad Thai, Part 2

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For some time now, Brian and I have either been talking about Pad Thai or eating a crappy version of it, so it got us thinking about remaking Thai Table's Pad Thai recipe for our cooking date.

Armed with the knowledge from our first run of the recipe, we decided to improve on two things, one being the noodles, the second being the sauce... So essentially the entire dish needed to be improved. LOL.

Last time around, we didn't give the noodles enough time to soak, so we had to add a lot of water during the wok step to get them to soften up. This ended up diluting the flavour, leaving us with plain old rice noodles with a hint of tamarind. This time around, we were cognizant of both these issues and soaked the noodles pretty early on while we got to working on the other parts of the recipe.

Brian and I did a couple of things differently: He used chicken, and I used tofu for protein; he used store-bought tamarind concentrate (lucky guy), and I made my own tamarind paste; I also roasted peanuts for garnish.

When it came to putting everything together, I added an extra tablespoon of tamarind paste and a touch more fish sauce than before so that the flavours could come through even with all the water we potentially needed to add. I also added a generous helping of shrimp and peanuts so no one can complain they didn't have enough. ;) I still couldn't quite manage the heat for this dish or its speed for that matter. Everything happens so quickly for Pad Thai; if you are not careful, which I wasn't, you could end up burning the bottom layer of the dish.

In any case, our second run of Pad Thai was significantly better than our first. On my end, the noodles were better, the tamarind taste came through, and there were more than enough shrimp and peanuts to go around. It did lack a bit of saltiness, so I will be turning up the fish sauce on my next attempt. I will also be adding a bit more oil so that the noodles won't stick together as much. Overall though, a great second run. A far cry from Pai or Sukho Thai, but it's getting there. Slowly but surely. ;)