Easy Pad Thai

I was inspired to try a pad thai recipe recently. Could it be because I spotted a jar of tamarind juice at Central Market, and my mind was flooded with memories of past Indian/Thai recipes that involved tamarind and failed miserably? Probably, yes.

Store-bought tamarind comes in many forms. There's whole fruit that you can pick up from the Hispanic markets, or the pre-packaged fruit pulp. And then there are the containers of tamarind juice that come in all sorts of concentrations. I've tried a couple of recipes with tamarind, and they were annoyingly vague about how much tamarind to utilize.

Imagine my disappointment the first time I tried tamarind with a scratch Vindaloo curry recipe. The tamarind juice I bought was so concentrated that it wasn't quite compatible with the original recipe. My first indication of failure was that the curry was dark as night and thick as sludge. The first taste was beyond sour, and borderline inedible.

After that, tamarind was dead to me. Fast-forward about 3 years, I've been on a Thai stir-fry kick lately, and I saw this guy on the market shelf.

Tamarind Juice Concentrate

Add some sugar, fish sauce, and a dash of soy, and you've got the main ingredients for the sauce in pad thai. After a few iterations, I've managed to get the procedure down to where the noodles weren't practically disintegrating on me, and the finished product wasn't a dried out mess at the end. And fortunately, I diluted the tamarind enough that you can pick up its signature tangy flavor but not be horribly overwhelmed by it, like I've had in the past.

I can't believe I forgot the wedge of lime

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb of dried rice stick noodles

- 1 cup of bean sprouts

- 2 Tbsp of tamarind juice, mixed with 2 Tbsp of water

- 2 Tbsp of Thai fish sauce

- 3 Tbsp of sugar

- 1 lb Gulf white shrimp, shelled and veined.

- salt

- 2 Tbsp cooking oil

- 4 Thai chili peppers, diced, with seeds and ribs removed

- 2 eggs, lightly beaten

- 2 scallions, sliced thinly

- 2 Tbsp of peanuts, coarsely crushed

- 1 lime, quartered

Procedure:

1. Soak the noodles in warm water for 10-15 minutes. When time is up, they should be pliable, but not really softened. Drain the water and set the noodles aside.

2. Boil a few cups of water in a small pot. Blanch the bean sprouts for 1 minute, then drain the water and set the sprouts aside.

3. Thoroughly mix the tamarind juice mixture, the fish sauce, and the sugar. Set it aside.

4. Lightly season the peeled and veined shrimp with salt. In a non-stick pan or wok, bring 1 Tbsp of the oil to medium-high heat. In 2 batches (so as not to drop the pan temperature too much), add half the shrimp to the pan, and cook them all for 1 minute per side. When they're done, set them aside and wipe the pan clean with a paper towel.

5. Add the other 1 Tbsp of oil to the pan over medium-high heat. Add the chopped Thai chili peppers, stir fry for 30 seconds, and then add the eggs, stirring constantly. As the eggs are beginning to solidify, pour in the tamarind/sugar/fish sauce mixture and stir well. Let it heat up for 30 sec.

6. Add the bean sprouts, noodles, and the shrimp. Toss it all well enough to coat the noodles in the sauce. Top it off with the sliced scallions. Serve it with the crushed peanuts and a squeeze of a wedge of lime.

Once you have your procedure down, this recipe takes about 45 minutes to an hour, from peeling the shrimp and making your mise en place, down to cooking and plating. Yields about 3 servings.