beef pad thai

Sorry for the late post!

For this week's cooking adventure, I decided to use up some of the stuff I had in my fridge/pantry by making pad thai (or something like it).

I figure the basic requirements are rice noodles, egg, a sweet-sour-salty sauce (with tamarind!!), stir-fried veggies, and another protein, if you want... Bittman has a recipe but to be honest I didn't really follow it. I sort of just made it up. And I don't have a wok, but I do have a cast-iron pan, which I adore and use for almost everything. In spite of those two things it turned out pretty well.

This makes it look more complicated than it actually is. If I were better at planning my blog posts I would have photographed the sauce ingredients separately, but alas...

And how could I forget the eggs and cilantro??







The first thing I did was make the sauce.To do that, I had to thin out some tamarind paste (which I only have because it was pawned it off on me when a friend moved. Good incentive for making pad thai!). I mixed a spoonful with hot water until it was a good consistency.

Strain out the seeds. Best not to eat those.

To that, I added dashes of rice vinegar and soy sauce, red pepper flakes, a drizzle of honey, a wedge's worth of lime juice, and a spoonful of peanut butter.

Next thing I did was slice up the beef (WHOA meat in my kitchen, whaaat. In a past life I would have used tofu but not today!) and brown it, which I did with oil, garlic, and more red pepper flakes. This was in the hope that it would absorb some flavor, and it sort of worked.

What's that? Iron deficient? I got you COVERED

When that was done I pulled it out of the pan and threw in the veggies I was using--carrots, red cabbage, and (reconstituted) dehydrated shiitake mushrooms!

I just bought a package of those dried mushrooms last week and thought I'd put them to use, I'd never cooked with them before. I do have a feeling fresh ones are better.

Little sponges!

To the lightly cooked veggies I added the eggs--which I scrambled first--and let that cook just for a minute or so, until the eggs set. Then I put the beef back in the pan with everything else, poured the sauce over it and sprinkled it with cilantro.

While all this was happening, my rice noodles had quietly been cooking on the back of the stove. I decided to just toss them in with everything else so they'd be coated with all the other wonderful flavors.

Not the most pretty-looking dish, but it tasted good I assure you! I think if/when I make this again, three things will be different:

1. Shorter cooking time for the meat (I erred on the side of over- rather than under-done and it got chewy)

2. No dehydrated mushrooms...

3. More sauce. Always more sauce.

That said I'm pleased with it and now I have lunch for the rest of the week!