Monday 20 February 2012

Week 7 - Pad Thai

So I've finally caught up and I'm writing this in real time, I suddenly feel a bit apprehensive as if I'm performing to a live audience! 

I've already had some constructive feedback, so especial thanks to Mr Gem who, after seeing my attempt at food-styling for today's recipe, has offered to be my creative director because I (and I quote) 'don't have the eye for it' - but the below images are of my own doing so judge for yourself.

Also I should mention the lovely Sam Brown who told me my content was good but my apostrophes need work - (does apostrophes need an apostrophe?!) so I'll bear that in mind for all my future posts.

Anyway - onto the main event. This week's new dish was Pad Thai, I found the recipe in a Good Housekeeping recipe book that I've never used before so my new years resolution is already paying off!

Fancying my skills as a food stylist (before Mr Gem brought my dreams crashing around my ears) I thought I'd photograph the ingredients as a sort of 'before' shot:



As you can see, noodles, eggs, red chilli, spring onions, sugar snap peas, soy sauce, sweet chilli and peanut butter (random I know but it worked) and then a meat or veg of your choice - I went with prawns. 

The recipe looked to be quite easy but I hit a stumbling block quite early on - peanut butter and sweet chilli was actually a recommended substitute for peanut pesto (which I've never heard of) however the first step was to fry the pesto with the sugar snap peas. Immediately the peanut better started to overheat and I got a bit flustered. However, once I got all the other ingredients in the pan it was fine. 

This recipe couldn't be simpler, all you need to do is put all the ingredients in the wok pretty much at the same time and cook until its heated through - obviously if you're using chicken you'd need to make sure the chicken is cooked through before serving.

The one thing I would change next time would be that on this occasion I used Straight to Wok noodles, however, I discovered they have a tendency to break up in the wok leaving the recipe looking more like rice than noodles! Next time I'd cook regular noodles separately and then add them to the wok cooked. 

Aside from my initial panic with the peanut butter it was a really easy dish to make and actually I was quite surprised to find that it tasted like a real Pad Thai, and it didn't look too bad either!


The only other thing I'd say is that this is a dish that needs to be eaten immediately, Mr Gem was working late so I had to reheat his and he thought it was a bit dry, whilst fresh out of the pan I thought it was delicious! Overall score out of 10 would be a good 8. 

I've found a link online to this recipe here so give it a whirl if you fancy.

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