I can’t believe we have reached the final week of the MeMeTales Readathon 2012! I hope you had fun. We sure did. What a whirlwind of a summer it has been thus far.
This week’s theme was global cultures. The book we chose this week was ‘Cora Cooks Pancit’. Immediately upon reading that book I knew what we were going to do! I have been wanting for a long time (but have been seriously putting off) to learn how to make Pad Thai. This seemed like the perfect time.
Full disclosure; Mr A has been spending the week with his Dad so while he did read the book, this Pad Thai project became more of a date night for the hubs and I. I also must confess that while I intended for this to be more or less “my” project, alas I am the baker in the family and hubby is the cook so I can not take total credit for the successful results we had. That said I will assume that my almost two hours of researching various pad thai recipes had something to do with our yummy dish. In the end it was just as good as many a pad thai we have ordered out. We will definitely be doing this again.
Chicken Pad Thai: this made enough for 2-3 servings
1/2 of a 16oz box of Thai rice noodles (the thicker kind that look like linguini)
fish sauce
soy sauce
sugar
rice vinegar
1 large or 2 thin cut chicken breasts (more if you like more chicken)
green onion (1 bunch)
3 cloves of garlic
1 small or 1/2 of a large shallot
chinese mung bean sprouts
unsalted peanuts or cashews (crush enough to equal about 1/4c)
1 egg
vegetable oil
wok
Start by soaking the rice noodles while you prepare everything else. We heated up a pan of water to almost boiling then turned off the heat and dropped the noodles in. You want them soft, but not fully cooked. Something slightly less than al-dente if you will. Ours probably soaked for 15-20min.
While the noodles are soaking cut your chicken breasts up into thin strips. Chop up your scallions (I cut ours on the diagonal in about 1/2 inch pieces), garlic, and shallot. Crush the peanuts and mix up your sauce. We prepared the sauce in a separate small bowl by mixing 2 Tbsp fish sauce, 2 Tbsp rice vinegar, 3 Tbsp sugar and 1 Tbsp soy sauce. (truth be told we could have used a little more sauce so next time I will up everything by about a Tablespoon).
Once all your prep is done continue to let the noodles soak and fire up your wok. Add just a bit of vegetable oil ( maybe a Tbsp). When it’s hot toss in your shallots and garlic and cook for 30 seconds or so. Then add the chicken and cook that until it’s no longer pink. Next add in your noodles and toss around to separate. Mix in your sauce and toss that all around until it’s good and coated. Push all that off to one side and add the egg and scramble it up a bit. Once that is cooked push everything back into the center of the wok and mix together. You will want to do a little taste test here to make sure your noodles are cooked enough and you’ve got enough sauce. Lastly throw in your green onion and toss again. That’s it! Plate it up and garnish with bean sprouts and crushed peanuts if you so choose. We actually ended up mixing in our bean sprouts while everything was still in the wok. Up to you! It tasted fabulous. We are still talking about it actually. It was just as good as much of the take out pad thai we’ve had.
Now, if you want to get the kids involved in this cooking experience there’s plenty they can do.
- Put the noodles to soak in water and check on them ( just like Cora did in the story)
- Older kids may be able to mix up the sauce while you prepare the other ingredients
- They could also garnish the final product with the bean sprouts and crushed peanuts
You can bet we will be revisiting this dish often (and I may even be able to cook it up myself next time)!