This lunch is my entry into the My Easy Cooking Thai themed first blogging event. After my success with nut butter in the last Daring Cook’s Challenge I though I might try my hand at making satay from scratch, but after picking up a small brick of tamarind pulp at the New Asian Spice Supermarket in Sea Point I finally decided on Pad Thai. For inspiration I turned to Chez Pim and her method of making Pad Thai.
Today’s Lunch:
- Pad Thai with
- chopped peanuts seasoned with a little chilli powder and
- a wedge of lemon
The first step is to prepare the Pad Thai sauce, but before I could do that I had to process my brick of tamarind pulp. For 250g of tamarind I used two cups of warm water letting it soak for a little while, then working the seeds and fibres from the pulp and finally straining the soaked tamarind to catch any bits I might have missed. This is the fun messy part 🙂
Once I had my tamarind paste I heated a 1/4 cup each of fish sauce, tamarind paste and unrefined brown sugar and 1 tsp chilli powder over a low heat until the sugar melted. This was enough for three portions. Now the sauce was completed I could move on to preparing the rest of the ingredients.
Ingredients (per portion):
- prepared Pad Thai sauce
- 1 tsp peanut oil
- 1/2 a chicken breast, thinly sliced
- 1/2 a clove of garlic, chopped
- 1 egg
- 60g rice noodles (approx 1/6 of a 375g bag), soaked in water till pliable
- 6 prawns, cooked and shelled
- 6 sugar snap peas, cut in half diagonally
- 2 ears of baby corn, cut in half lengthways and then into thirds
- 1/4 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
- 1 spring onion, sliced diagonally
- chilli powder (for serving)
- Thai basil (for serving)
- chopped peanuts (for serving)
- lemon wedges (for serving)
Method:
- Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan.
- Add chicken, garlic and a spoonful of prepared sauce. Stir-fry until chicken is nearly cooked.
- Add noodles and another few spoons of sauce. Continue stir-frying until noodles soften.
- Push chicken and noodles to the side of the wok/pan, crack egg into empty side and quickly scramble till cooked.
- Add prawns, sugar snap peas, baby corn and yellow pepper. Stir-fry all ingredients together until vegetables are just cooked.
- Serve immediately, sprinkled with chilli powder, spring onions, torn Thai basil, chopped peanuts and spritz of lemon.
Posted in Packed Lunches, Recipes
Tagged baby corn, chicken, egg, garlic, lemon, Pad Thai, peanuts, prawns, rice noodles, spring onion, sugar snap peas, Thai basil, yellow pepper