Tofu Pad Thai

Paul and I have been talking about making pad thai forever. We decided to just bite the bullet, and give it a whirl. We even upped the ante (during an eventful Saturday night out) by inviting two friends over to partake with us. I usually make it my rule not to invite people when we are trying something that is really new or challenging for us, just in case things go wrong. Apparently, a couple beers made us forget this informal rule.

Deep breath. You can do this. 

After reading about 900 pad thai recipes online, I finally selected one from my boy, Mark Bittman. I had picked up the rice noodles, but could not find some of the ingredients I kept seeing in all the recipes -- tamarind paste in particular, and also bean sprouts. I did see some recipes without the tamarind paste, so I figured it would be okay. 


The rice noodles are cooked differently than pasta noodles. Instead of boiling water, and cooking the pasta in the boiling water, you boil water and then pour it over the rice noodles (i.e. it does not need to be continuously boiling/cooking). The noodles soak until they are tender enough to eat, but not mushy. I think ours sat for about 15 minutes or so? I just kept tasting them until they were softened through. We then drained the noodles, and stirred in a bit on peanut oil to keep them from sticking to one another. 

Easy enough.

In a small saucepan, combine the fish sauce, (tamarind paste if you were able to find it) honey and rice vinegar. Heat over medium-low heat until it simmers. Add red pepper flakes, and set aside. 

Have we talked about how bad fish sauce smells? Yerg. I tried to reassure our guests that it would be okay (I hoped I wasn't lying). 

Since we weren't sure how the pad thai was going to turn out, I had a backup plan. Frozen P.F. Chang's Beef and Broccoli. I wasn't going to take the chance that we'd have nothing to eat at all, or that we'd run out of food. 

Plan B.

We went the matchstick route for the tofu. Looking back, I probably would have cubed it for this recipe. 

The tofu continued to dry out on the cutting board. Wet tofu does not make for easy stir-frying.

Put the remaining oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil shimmers, add the scallions and garlic, and cook for a minute. Then add the eggs to the pan.

Once the eggs start to set, scramble them until they are just done. 

Add the cabbage (and bean sprouts, if you can find them) and continue to cook until the cabbage begins to wilt. Then add in the tofu. 


Here's where it started to get dicey. I had a hard time keeping the tofu from becoming a giant crumbly pile as I mixed everything together. You are to cook the tofu until it begins to brown, but I had a hard time doing that. It was mixed in with the egg mixture and didn't appear to be changing color as it cooked. 


Once it is browned, you add the drained noodles and the cooked sauce. For us (with our non-browning tofu) I chose to mix everything once I realized our friends had already had a bottle of wine, and it was getting late. 

Maybe they have had enough wine that they'll like this, even if it is missing tamarind paste. 

I tasted it here, and thought it was bland. Then I realized, I had cooked the entire package of rice noodles, and not the 4 oz suggested in the recipe (essentially double the noodles with only one batch of sauce). Oops. We opened up another bottle of wine and quickly made another batch of the sauce. That helped a LOT. I am not always so good with the ratios...or the reading of the recipes. 


Serve the pad thai with lime wedges, chopped peanuts and cilantro. 

Plans A AND B. They both made it on the plate. Woohoo!

The pad thai actually turned out pretty good. The flavors were pretty close to the pad thai you'd get at a restaurant. You got both sweet and sour flavors, and the cilantro, peanuts and lime really added a nice touch to it. I think having the correct noodles helped as well, vs. substituting some sort of pasta in place of the rice noodles. You could tell a little something was missing -- and I'm guessing it was that tamarind paste. I'll have to do a better job of hunting it down at the store, and we'll try it again!