Strictly speaking, there's no such thing as "pad thai sauce" – at least, you're unlikely to find one in an oriental supermarket, but in Thailand, you will see many vendors using a pre-prepared brown sludge. Not only is the flavour out of place here, but it stops the noodles absorbing the pad thai sauce. Stein tosses his noodles with sesame oil in what's presumably another attempt to forestall the clumping problem. Experts may be able to feel the change through their spatulas, according to Punyaratabandhu, but I'm assuming that, like me, you're at the beginner stage here.
It's vitally important to test one before deciding the dish is done. The best solution seems to be to add a splash of water to the pan before adding the sauce, as Rosemary Brissenden suggests in South East Asian Food. The problem I have, however, is cooking the noodles: three or four attempts end up inedibly chewy. Soak the noodles in cold water until, as Punyaratabandhu says, they're soft enough to wind easily around your finger – "like very al dente pasta" as Techamuanvivit puts it. The best way to stop them doing this is to keep them moving, and make sure they don't dry out in the pan.) (They're prone to clumping whatever you do. He reckons it prevents them from clumping together, but Punyaratabandhu claims this is the "most guaranteed way of getting to clump up", and I agree. Any kind of hot water is apparently a no-no where the purists are concerned, even blanching the soaked noodles as David Thompson suggests in Thai Street Food. Rick Stein uses boiling water, which counts as cooking in my view. Which, it turns out, are incredibly difficult to cook properly.įirst of all, they require soaking before use. These are of paramount importance – pad thai is a noodle dish, after all, and as Punyaratabandhu observes: "When the noodles are badly cooked, they invariably drag everything else down with them." You need what are often called "rice sticks" – dried thin, flat noodles known as sen lek, 3-5mm wide.
0 kommentar(er)
