Pad Thai

Pad Thai
8 oz dried rick stick noodles
4 Tbsp Thai fish sauce
6 Tbsp white vinegar
6 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp ketchup
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
8 cloves garlic, pounded to a mash or crushed and chopped
2 eggs4 green onions/scallions, including green tops and white bottoms angle cut into 1.5 inch pieces
1.5 bean sprouts
1/3 cups of finely chopped peanuts

1. Soak the noodles in a large bowl of hot water until they are soft (about 30 minutes). Drain and set aside.
2. In a small bowl, mix the fish sauce, vinegar, sugar, ketchup until the sugar is dissolved.
3. Set a wok over medium-high heat. When it is quite hot, add the oil. Rotate the wok so that the oil coats the sides. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and stir fry until golden (1-2 minutes). Stir in the sauce mixture and bring to a boil. Add the noodles and gently toss them in the sauce. Stir fry until the noodles absorb the sauce.
4. Break the eggs into the wok, breaking up the yolks a bit, the mix the eggs down under the noodle mixture. Cook without stirring for 15 seconds, then stir fry until ingredients are well balanced.
5. Add the green onions and stir fry for a couple minutes until cooked through but still crisp. Stir in the bean sprouts and peanuts until well mixed. Serve immediately.
   

Sweet Pork
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
6 cloves garlic, pounded to a mash or crushed and chopped
3/4 pound pork tenderloin, cut crosswise into thin medallions
2 Tbsp fish sauce
4 Tbsp golden brown sugar
1/2 tsp pepper

1. Set a wok over medium-high heat. When it is quite hot, add the oil. Rotate the wok so that the oil coats the sides. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and stir fry for a few seconds then add the pork. Stir fry until cooked through. Add the remaining ingredients and stir fry for 1.5 minutes.

I got these recipes from my husband's cousin (would that make her my cousin-in-law?), Denita. She sent it to me months ago and I finally got a chance to try it this week.

Aside from the move, my main obstacle to making this sooner was finding the rice noodles. I don't know why but I couldn't find them anywhere. I tried big markets and small but had no luck. Finally I ended going to an Asian market near Chinatown (you'd think with not one but two Korean senior centers within 5 blocks of our apartment we'd have one closer but no). The market was filled with all sorts of interesting products, lots of smells I'm not accustomed to and a vast array of rice noodles. Hooray!

I realize you should make the pad thai before making the meat but I didn't notice that you needed to soak the noodles for 30 minutes before stir frying so I switched them.

The sweet meat sauce ingredients. I decided to switch out chicken for the pork (because that's what I had already) and it seemed to work well.


The chicken and garlic stir frying.

The sauce cooking down.

Pad thai ingredients (minus the soaking noodles).

The first time around I burned the garlic. This just proves you should never cook while distracted. Can I get a redo?

Much better. Here is the sauce stir frying after a more successful garlic stir fry.

The noodles after they soaked up all the sauce.

The eggs cooked up nicely but made the noodles really sticky. I had a lot of difficulty stir frying the scallions because the noodles didn't want to separate at all. I'm not really sure what caused this so if anyone has any advice, I'd be thrilled.

The final product: this was really good. Tyler and Addilyn both ate this willingly and seemed to really enjoy it which is quite the feat. I will definitely make this again (and not just because I still have half a pack of rice noodles). Next time I need to either cook the pad thai first or figure out a better way to keep the meat warm but it was a little dry and chewy.