Cooking at Home - Pad Thai

Recently, my wife picked up the America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook. Slowly, we've been trying it out. Last night we made Chicken Pad Thai.

It was summer break from college when my wife (girlfriend at the time) gave me a tour of her favorite places in Manhattan. One stop was a restaurant called Lemongrass; a little whole in the wall that was dimly lit and had a very authentic feel. This was my first experience with Thai food. We made numerous trips to Lemongrass in the following years until it was taken over by a more modern Japanese Fusion place. The food is still good but just not the same.

Ever since then, my wife and I always try out various Thai places and dishes but one of our favorites will always be Pad Thai. We had attempts making it once before while in college but let's just say that day ended with my wife spending a few hours in the ER. Thankfully, our second attempt went a lot smoother. The recipe called for shrimp but we swapped that out for a combination of chicken and tofu. We had to get some of the other ingredients from a local Asian food market such as the tamarind paste, rice noodles & fish sauce but some supermarkets do carry those items. Side note: If you've never used tamarind paste before, it is a very interesting food.

If you go to make this dish, be forewarned… prep everything first. The cookbook even warns that the dish comes together very fast once you start. So be prepared otherwise you'll be scrambling all over the kitchen. Now let's cut to the chase; how did it come out? Actually pretty good. I don't mean to sound so skeptical but I had over cooked the rice noodles and the overwhelming power that the rice vinegar was hard to shake. But my mom, wife and I all really enjoyed it and left the table quite satisfied.






You'll start to notice that a lot of the pictures of our dinners are in this big black bowl. That's frankly because we don't really have anything else that size. Plus, I think it adds a nice contrast against the food. Don't you? :-)