Night + Market Pad Thai

Cooked by Vivian -
Inspired by Nick's Spaghetti Kee Mao, I also decided to turn to the Night + Market cookbook my friend Andi gifted for my birthday a few years ago, to find inspiration.

If your pantry includes some East Asian/South East Asian staples, you probably already have all the ingredients in your pantry/fridge to make the best Pad Thai in your kitchen. This was my small revelation when I looked at the simple ingredients list and thought, on a "normal" day, this is a good recipe...on day ??? of self-isolation, this is the perfect recipe.

I basically followed the recipe with two modifications: in lieu of fish sauce (as Brian is a vegetarian), we would normally go for the homemade vegan fish sauce that we made (and if you have the time, I highly recommend making it, because it's kind of fun and also, time consuming). However, the homemade version we made is chilling in Brian's fridge so I had to go with my third choice: a mix of soy + rice wine vinegar to sub. TBH, it was still very tasty but I will try it alone with fish sauce, too, once I get the hankering for Pad Thai again, for comparison.

For protein, I ran out of pressed tofu a few days ago but had some shiitake mushroom, so threw that in which gave it more umami, which I will never say no to! Plus, Kris Yenbamroong notes that the noodles are the star of the show here, so protein should take a backseat.

Toss it with crushed peanuts, chili flakes, and lime juice, and you have a savory/acidic/lightly sweet/umami dish on one plate in 15 minutes (8 of which to cook the noodles beforehand--although your brand of dried rice noodle stick may have a different prep time!).

Go forth and noodle it up! Recipe found in the Night + Market cookbook or in this GQ piece.

Comments

  1. stenoteJune 8, 2022 at 10:28 PM

    Interesting blog, it reminds me of Myeongdong Night Market in Seoul , in the dense grid of streets in Myeongdong, the food stalls lined-up in the middle of hotels, skin care shops, restaurants, cafés and night clubs.
    I tried to write a blog about it, hope you also like it in https://stenote.blogspot.com/2019/11/seoul-at-myeongdong-night-time.html.

    ReplyDelete

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