The road to Pad Thai…sort of

Right, have I mentioned that I am currently working in a very small town in SW Ontario? Well if I haven’t now you know. Well anything that doesn’t consist of meat and/or potatoes is hard to find here. Not that there is anything wrong with meat and potatoes, but sometimes I feel like something else. I suppose if I were to look at this in a positive light, the fact that I can’t find things like pad thai or sushi here has driven me to learn how to make them…case in point. (Stay tuned for a sushi lesson in the near future)

This is my 2nd attempt at pad thai, which was better than the first, but it’s still a work in progress. I’m not sure what’s missing, but I think I’m getting closer. What I’m trying to get at, is that this recipe isn’t exactly 100%, but I haven’t posted anything all week and really wanted to. So think of this as a base from which to begin your personal homemade pad thai experience. When I try it again, I will post a picture (I had eaten it all by the time I realized that I hadn’t taken a picture…oops!) So without further a due, the beginnings of a great pad thai recipe (one day!)

Here are the sites I went to for inspiration.

http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/recipes/Pad_Thai.htm

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/padthai.html

Ingredients: (Enough for (2) people or (1) very hungry person

1/2 package pad thai noodles

1/2 package firm tofu, cut into 1 cm strips

3 or 4 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 handful of bean sprouts

1 egg

3 or 4 tbsp. fish sauce

juice from 1/2 lime

pinch of sugar

chili powder and/or chili sauce to taste

cilantro, chopped

1. Get your noodles into a bowl of hot water from the tap. Make sure they are all nice and covered up in their bath and then leave them there for a bit.

2. If you have a wok, here’s it’s time to shine. If you’re in the same boat as me and wok-less, a big pot works too. So, heat up some oil and add the onions and garlic being sure to stir things around so nothing burns.

3. Next add the tofu. It tastes better when it’s a little crispy on all sides. Be careful when you’re mixing the tofu because it’ll break apart. So just sort of flip it on all of its sides until things are looking golden and pretty

4. Now take the noodles from their warm bath, drain them and add them to the pot. Stir things up quick to avoid the noodles from sticking to the bottom.

5. Add the fish sauce, chili powder and/or sauce, sugar and lime juice and keep things stirred

6. Here’s the tricky part. Slide all the stuff in the pot to one side so you have an empty space at the bottom of the pan. That’s where the egg is going to go and be fried. The first time I tried this, the egg jsut sort of stuck to the bottom of the pan and kind of burnt. This time, I added a little more oil and then added the egg. If you have a non-stick wok, you won’t have this problem, but I just thought I’d warn you about my experience.

So fry up the egg, and once you see the yok is pretty much cooked, gently fold in the rest of the noodles/tofu/onions/ garlic mix so that everything is well distributed

7. Add the bean sprouts and some chopped cilantro and turn off the heat.

8. Garnish with more cilantro, and some lime.

Sushi Lesson, as promised

So I promised a sushi post, and here it is. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, but that is probably because I had a good teacher (Thanks Clarence!). I made a night out of it, and invited some people from work too. It ended up being A LOT of fun and great way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the middle of winter. I should probably mention that we only made California Rolls, using veggies and cooked fish since I didn’t want to be blamed for a half a dozen cases of possible food poisoning. It was still yummy, especially since we all made it, and besides it’s better than what you can buy here, which is no sushi at all.

So onto the sushi lesson…Clarence, being the organized person he is, gave me a list of equipment and food I would need to make my inaugural sushi night a success. Here’s what you should have before you start:

Equipment:

- rice cooker

-bamboo mats (to roll the sushi)

- sharp knives

- cutting board

- big bowl

- wooden spoon and/or spatula

Food Stuff:

- short grain calarose rice

- nori (dried and roasted seeweed paper)

- rice vinegar

- sugar

- avocado

- large carrot

- English cucumber

- cooked jumbo shrimp (tails removed)

- crab meat (or imitation crap meat)

- other cooked fish (i.e. smoked salmon, canned salmon…be creative!)

- pickled ginger

- tube of wasabi

- block of cream cheese (goes really well with the smoked salmon)

Optional: sesame seeds, sesame oil, mayo.

Instructions:

First things first, rinse your rice a few times and get it in your rice cooker. You’ll need about 2 cups of rice to make about 4 sushi rolls, which, depending on how thick you cut, will work out to approximately 6 pieces of sushi per roll (~ 24 pieces of sushi in total)

In the meantime, you can start julienning all the vegtables. For the cucumbers that means, cut them in half (long wise), then cut them longwise again (into quarters) and then cut longwise a third time (into eighths). It’s the same idea with the advocado; cut it longwise and carefully remove the stone and skin. Then cut it longwise into eighths or sixteenths if you can. The carrots are the most work since you want to end up with carrot pieces the thickness of matchsticks. Just make sure you have a very sharp knife and no where to go in a hurry! Here’s a link with an animated tutorial http://makemysushi.com/carrot.html

Next, in a large bowl mix a tbsp. of rice vinegar, a few splashes of sesame oil and a few pinches of sugar. Once the sugar is dissolved, add abuot 1/3 of the cooked rice and mix well. You want to coat the rice with the mixture and then spread the rice onto the sides of bowl (using your wooden spoon) so that it cools.

Next take once bamboo roll and place one sheet of nori in the middle of it. Now take a heaping spoonful of the rice and place it in the middle of the nori and spread it evenly.

Now you add whatever you want in the roll on top of your rice. In this case, it looks like cucumber, advocado, carrots, strips of cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Now for the rolling. Take the bamboo roll, while holding the stuff on top of the rice, roll the whole thing into a long tube, being sure to tuck one end of the roll under the other. Once you have a roll, start compressing the roll so that the ‘insides’ stay inside. The trick is to be as uniform as possible when applying pressure. Be patient, it does take practice!

Now its just a matter of cutting the roll and dipping it in some good soy sauce and wasabi.

Here’s another link that will show you an animation of how to roll http://makemysushi.com/how_to_make_sushi.html