Sadly, it is a noodle dish that I have so far failed to replicate at home.
We've tried many different methods: using peanut butter; crushing peanuts; mixing together so many different sauces. We've tried cheater methods and long-form methods. We've tried recipes from Thai bloggers and recipes from people who claim their recipes are so totally wrong but so totally delicious.
Still, so far, giant failure. Is it because we'll never replicate pad thai without fish sauce? I hope not, because that means the pad thai we get from our local is not suitable for us, AND the cheerful man there lied to me.
This one was okay, but still not quite right.
5 comments:
i like the pad thai recipe in vegan planet.
yours looks good in the photo
I think you just need a super hot wok, and the noodles need to be really not very cooked at all so they absorb heaps of flavour but are quite dry? I dunno. I experimented for awhile and came pretty close... lots of tamarind too. But very chewy noodles.
I'm sure he didn't lie!
Have you tried MSG? As you probably already know, it's the key ingredient in vegetarian versions of things like oyster sauce... (I was shocked yesterday to find out that my favourite mushroom sauce substitute for oyster sauce is composed entirely of water, cornstarch, sugar, soy and MSG! wtf. WHERE ARE MY MUSHROOMS.) If your pad thai is lacking a little fish sauce oomph, maybe MSG is the answer...
I never ate fish sauce before going veg so have never quite understood why people get excited about it or what taste it gives - but was happy with the pad thai recipe I posted, though I think I personalised it to my tastes - I found that tamarind paste was my missing link - your photo looks good anyway
Ok, so you need to make a sauce out of the following ingredients:
- tamarind water or tamarind paste
- soy sauce
- a little non-MSG-based stock powder kind of thing, that tastes chickeny without actually having chicken in it
- chili
Oh, and make sure you use preserved radish as well, that's a key.
And garlic chives, it's not pad thai without garlic chives.
Don't use peanut butter, that's just a bit wrong. Get chopped peanuts instead.
The real challenge with pad thai is getting it saucy enough, but also cooking the noodles to the right consistency.
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