It’s always heartening to be able to make something better than you’ve ever had it in a restaurant. Typically that “thing” is fairly simple, and depends on the quality of the ingredients rather than the skill of the cook. It’s easy to buy a filet instead of a rib eye at the grocery store, but not so easy to buy a box of culinary ability.
Pad thai was not one of those dishes I expected to turn out well. It’s a mess of different ingredients, different cooking times, and ingredients that behave differently than one might suspect. The rice noodles, for example, are never really boiled – they’re softened in cold water and then fried, during which they have a fantastic ability to stick to the bottom of the wok.
Add in the fact that the prep time for the multitude of ingredients was typically far more than I normally tolerate, and the odds of success really were not good. But now I’m hooked. I’ve made this dish twice, and will probably make it a third time soon. Why? It works. It adds diversity to my diet. It tastes good. Plus, it makes two dinners and a lunch.
It’s not all that bad for you either. Probably the worst ingredient is the amount of sugar; the sauce recipe calls for 1/4 cup, but only half of the sauce recipe goes into one wok’s worth of pad thai. I also use sunflower oil for frying, since it’s healthy and doesn’t impart any flavor as olive oil might.
The real pain of making this dish is shopping for and prepping everything that you need to make it. That’s something that I think I can handle. The recipe’s linked here if you want to give it a shot.
