Pad thai

I miss Thailand with all my heart. I miss walking past street food carts. I miss cozy restaurants with friendly staff. I miss the lemongrass and coconut and peanut flavours.

Ironically, the only time I had pad thai was in Sri Lanka, when a friend treated me to lunch. But we had rice noodles at home and Amma had put some mung beans to sprout. So we decided to make some pad thai for dinner.

The recipe I used is this one over here https://www.recipetineats.com/chicken-pad-thai/ and, of course, I did make some changes.

Tamarind puree: I soaked around five flesh-covered seeds (not sure what they are called) of tamarind in a bit of hot water. I let it sit for thirty minutes, got rid of the seeds, and pushed as much of the pulp as I could out of a strainer. I used this instead of the tamarind puree. It was watery but didn’t seem to affect the dish in a significant manner.

Sauces: I only had regular soy sauce and dark soy sauce at home, so I used them instead of the fish and oyster sauce. I also added a bit of ketchup.

Sugar: I used maybe 2 tbsp white sugar.

The only other changes I made was to omit the tofu because we don’t have tofu at home, use shredded chicken from the baked chicken I made the day before, and use one egg instead of two because I didn’t read the recipe correctly.

I didn’t expect the dish to come together within such a short time and it tasted amazing without being too heavy or rich.

The only changes I may make in the future is to use fish sauce and may be add just a pinch of chili powder.