Pad thai - by Jae

This is a recipe for pad thai, which is a wok dish from Thailand and is very lovely.

Background

Pad thai is a dish from Thailand and is popular as a street food. It is very good but unfortunately can cost a lot, so I decided to make it at home. It also often includes peanuts, which this recipe does not as I am allergic to nuts. This recipe also diverges from many as it makes replacements for some things that cannot be found easily where I live.

Ingredients

• 200 g tofu
• 50 g spring onion
• 150 g bean sprouts
• 4 radishes
• 250 g rice noodles
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons cooking oil
• chili flakes

Sauce:

• 5 tablespoons soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 3 teaspoons sugar

Serving:

• 1 lime, cut in half

You can also replace the tofu with shrimp or chicken if you prefer that.

Cooking

Start by soaking the rice noodles in hot water for about half an hour, then strain them and put to the side. Mix all the sauce ingredients in a sauce pan with a bit of water and start boiling it until the water has boiled off. Cut the tofu and vegetables into small pieces and add to a wok or big frying pan with oil and put it to high heat. Let them cook a little and get some colour and then add the noodles to the mixture. Add the sauce from the saucepan and stir until all is coated in it. Then add as much chili flakes as you're comfortable with (this dish isn't meant to be very spicy). Finally add the eggs and stir vigorously so that everything gets coated evenly. Fry until the egg is cooked. Then it is finished.

Serving

The finished dish should be mostly brown noodles with vegetables and tofu mixed in and coated with egg. Serve it with some lime and squeeze out the juice onto the pad thai. If you want, this is also where you add peanuts to the dish.