Pad Thai

Tuesdays I have an evening telecon, so the lovely husband takes over the reins in the kitchen. I find the best results are achieved by giving him a detailed recipe, and placing all of the ingredients out where he can find them. And giving him about twice as long as I would need ;) Tonight he absolutely excelled with this recipe, again from taste.com.au. Although we halved the proteins, this was still a generous quantity of food, and I took some to lunch the next day. So cut down on the noodles if you're not super-hungry.

Ingredients:

• 250g packet flat rice noodles
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 chicken breast, thinly sliced
• 250g prawns, peeled, deveined
• 3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally
• 1/2 inch of small red chilli (or more, to taste), deseeded, finely chopped
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, finely chopped, optional
• small bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• lime wedges, to serve

Place noodles into a heat-proof bowl and cover with hot water. Stand until nearly tender - you still want a little bite to them, so that they stand up under stir-frying. Drain and rinse under cold water.Combine lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar in a jug. Heat a wok over high heat, with a little oil. Add the chicken.and stir-fry for 2 minutes until golden. Add the prawns, onions and chilli, and stir-fry for a further 2 to 3 minutes or until the prawns turn pink. Add the part-cooked noodles and stir-fry for another 2 minutes.

Add the lemon juice mixture to wok and toss to combine. Pour the beaten eggs over the noodles and stir into the noodles as they cook. Turn off the heat, add the bean sprouts and half the coriander, and toss well to combine everything together. Serve on plates topped with the remaining coriander leaves, peanuts, and lime wedges.

"Thai" Beef Salad on Deep-Fried Rice Noodles

I already covered my "Thai" Beef Salad in another post; tonight was very similar but with a whole bunch of fresh long radishes instead of tomatoes, and sweet chilli sauce instead of a real chilli as the SO has a painful mouth ulcer. One thing I finally got right was deep-frying the rice vermicelli. Often I just soak this in some hot water and then toss around in a stir fry, but I've had some success frying it and getting it to puff up. However as I don't usually have many litres of oil lying around the kitchen, I'm always tended to use less oil than I should, and usually in a wok since that's what a lot of recipes recommend.

Tonight I thought that the main thing that's made it difficult in the past is the shallow level of oil, as some parts puff up and push other parts out of the oil, so you end up frying them longer than you should, the oil burns, and some parts fry shut before puffing up. So... why am I using a giant bowl of a pan with a flat gradient? That's crazy!

So I heated up my smallest, heavy-based saucepan, and added about 200ml of vegetable oil. I flattened out a handful of loops of vermicelli and the SO dropped them into the pan. The first nest fried so quickly, that the entire pan was suddenly full of puffed rice noodles, all in a big nest that could easily be removed. Success! They were absolutely perfect, very light and crackly, and the oil was completely clean afterwards so we'll happily use it again. One day maybe I'll own a proper deep-fryer, but until then, I'll use a deep layer in a hot pan, set well back on the stove :)

"Thai" Beef Salad

In honour of my local, which uses the words "Authentic Thai" to qualify its Cuisine, and therefore implies neither. This is a salad I vary every time I make it, using whatever ingredients are to hand and have the right balance of flavours in my head. There are thousands of variants of this recipe on the internet; I've seen ingredients that look authentic, like bean sprouts and coriander leaf, and ingredients that look crazy, but probably aren't, like aubergine and tomato. Tonight I try the latter for the first time and I'm surprised by the result... in a good way. Oddly I don't think it would be quite right with cherry tomatoes, and its certainly a good idea not to overuse them.

For the dressing, fish sauce is absolutely key. Lime juice can just about be substituted by lemon, and while you'd miss the umami of soy sauce, you could just about use salt instead. But nothing substitutes for fish sauce - it hits all the right notes here. You can use any kind of toasted nuts; I prefer the salty ready-roasted kind for this, but toasted cashews or macadamias would be tasty too. Alternatively you can omit them and put a few tbsp of peanut butter or tahini in the dressing; it's amazing. Chillies are optional for the faint-hearted.

Ingredients:

• 1 tasty rump or sirloin steak (or 2 if you're feeling greedy)
• juice of 2 limes
• soy sauce
• a large bunch of bulky, mild greens, like English round lettuce, Chinese leaf (napa), young chard, or a very light spring cabbage, or a small cucumber, seeds removed
• a small handful of bitter greens, like rocket, radicchio or chicory, or a handful of sugarsnap peas
• a ripe red tomato, a handful of grated carrot, some beansprouts, or a few red radishes
• a small bunch of mint
• a small bunch of fresh coriander
• 2 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin sesame or rapeseed oil
• 1 red chilli
• a handful of roasted peanuts

In a very hot pan with a bare smear of vegetable oil, sear the steak on each side for 1 1/2 minutes, so it is browned on each side but still rare in the centre. Put in a bowl or some foil, and juice over one of the limes and add 2 tbsp of soy sauce. Marinade for at least an hour; ideally for 24 hours.

Roughly chop the greens, and strip the leaves from the herbs and finely chop. Slice the tomato or radishes into bite-sized pieces. Finely chop the chilli (remove the seeds if you like a milder heat) and whisk with the juice of the remaining lime, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, the fish sauce, and the oil.

Toss the salad ingredients with half of the dressing. Remove the steak from the marinade and slice against the grain as thinly as you can. Serve the salad with a portion of sliced beef and some peanuts on top, pouring over the rest of the dressing as you do so. Goes well with rice or noodles and extra soy sauce alongside. (Tonight we made coconut rice by adding a few tbsp of coconut cream, 1 tsp sugar and 1/2 tsp of salt to the rice's cooking water... yum! And the sneaky SO snapped a photo of me slicing the beef...)