Pad Thai
Today I begin my first full time job. I will be working in digital marketing in a PR company and while four years ago, I wouldn't even think of this as a potential occupation, my experiences and degrees suggest otherwise. One of the things people have started telling me is that "Oh, Archit now that you have started working you will have no time." I found this constant opinion that in college I had time and now I won't, hilarious. College was hard y'all! I'm not going to lie, my last semester was a lot less busy but every other semester, I was constantly moving from a class to a meeting to working on homework. In fact, because I lived on campus I didn't even have commuting time which I could use as respite from constant engagement. In all this craziness, I also had to keep myself fed which meant either eating the same food in cafeterias or actually cooking. While I love cooking, it's a little time consuming: prepping, the actual act of cooking, and washing dishes all add up. Therefore, I had to think of recipes that needed less equipment and minimal prep time. Enter Pad Thai. All it needs is rice noodles, any (or all) of the veggies you have in your fridge, and a sauce with which to caramelize everything. The important thing here is the sauce. All the flavors are introduced by the sauce which means it needs to hit the three palette tenets of asian food- spice, sweet, and savory. The traditional pad thai recipe asks for tamarind paste but I substitute that with lime juice and rice vinegar which simulate the tang and acidity of tamarind.
I miss original thai food all the time. One of my favorite places to eat in college was a small thai restaurant called Royal Thai, which was run by this tiny but energetic woman that we called "Thai Queen." She used to love us and always gave us free refills of thai iced tea. I do miss college, but food like this keeps those memories alive. This week I had an unique opportunity to head back to Denison and begin a life there but I chose against it. I do believe that I made a good choice of starting a life in a country that does accept me but I guess only time will tell how smart of a choice this was.
Anyway, I hope you like recipe and give it a try. I have been hearing back from people who have been making some of the recipes and I am excited that you seem to like them. Send me pictures so that I can blog about them!
Ingredients
Serving Size: 2 people
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoons Sriracha
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic minced
2 red chillies or 3 green chillies
200 g of chicken breast or shrimp
2 well beaten eggs
15 large cremini mushrooms sliced thinly
1/2 red or green peppers
250 g of rice noodles (3 mins on boil)
6 Spring onions
handful of coarsely chopped cilantro
handful coarsely chopped peanuts
Preparation
Step 1
Boil noodles for 3 minutes or as per package instructions.
Step 2
To make the sauce: add sriracha, fish sauce, lime juice, rice vinegar, and sugar. Mix well.
Step 3
In a wok, add oil and heat on high until oil begins to smoke. Add Shrimp or chicken and cook a minute under it's done. Remove protein, and add garlic, ginger, and all the veggies. Cook well and add rice noodles. Add the Beat the egg whites in the center along with your pad thai sauce
Step 4
Reduce the heat and let the sauce caramelize. Mix well and serve with peanuts.
