I've written a post about Pad Thai before, but this version is so quick and easy that I decided to post it anyway. This was a fab Sunday treat, fulfilling a need for spicy noodles, brought on by the atrocious weather and a shopping trip to Korea Foods.
So, first of all you need to soak some flat rice noodles in a bowl of cold water. There are loads of brands if you have an Asian supermarket nearby, otherwise you will probably be able to find a box of "Thai Taste" brand in most general supermarkets.
The other bit of prep you'll need to do, unless you've bought pre-made tamarind paste, is to cut off a peice of tamarind and soak it in a little water.
While the noodles are soaking, prepare the vegetables and meat. The essentials are the red chilli, beansprouts, spring onion and garlic, other than that any mix of veg, seafood and/or meat will do. I had some greens, mushrooms, boned chicken leg meat and king prawns. Once everything has been sliced and diced, sprinkle corn flour over the chicken until lightly coated.
Put a frying pan on the heat with some oil and let it get really hot, before popping the chicken in and the garlic. Cook until browned then chuck in the prawns.
When the prawns are cooked, throw in all the other veg along with several squirts of fish sauce (nam pla), a slosh or two of soy sauce, a couple of spoons of palm sugar and the strained tamarind juice. Adjust the amounts to your taste.
When the veg are almost cooked, add in the drained noodles. They won't be completely soft from the soaking but don't worry that they feel uncooked, a few minutes cooking in the pan and they'll be perfect. Finish up with some fresh coriander and chopped peanuts.
Singapore noodles are an old family favourite but they are a bit hit-and-miss from takeaways. The ones I've made contain fairly average veg that a Uk fridge is likely to contain, rather than any specialist (expensive) ones, so they aren't exactly like ones from a good Chinese but they are tasty.
The guideline recipe I used is from "Chinese Food Made Easy" by Ching He Huang - a great book if you love a Chinese takeaway, but hate the heart-thumping, water gulping after effects.
I like to pre-prepare all of the spices and veg, so that the last thing to touch the chopping board is the raw meat. For the spices, you need a chopped red chilli, a few cloves of chopped garlic and a couple of generous tablespoons of turmeric. The garnish is chopped spring onion and a sprinkle of dried chillies. In addition to the veg, you're also going to need 2 tbsp light soy sauce, 2 tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tbsp of rice vinegar, some chicken and some bacon. Or use prawns if you have / like them.
The veg I used (and by no means feel bound by these, because I certainly didn't choose these ones based on any recipe!) were: one green and one red pepper, spinach, a cob's worth of sweetcorn and a carrot sliced into thin batons. I also had a jar of mushrooms preserved in olive oil which needed using up, these were really good in it.
Then you can chop up your chicken - this was the meat off two legs, as they are cheaper than buying a pack of four thighs or two breasts, and I always feel the breast is less tender anyway. The sad water-injected legs you'd get off a battery/poorly treated chicken won't cover this, at the very least a free range bird is needed, but I'd recommend organic for too many reasons to cover here. There are some notes on choosing chicken in this earlier post.
Pre-cook the chicken with nothing more than a little seasoning and some oil, then put the peices to one side. You also need to soak your
rice noodles, hot water from the tap will do, for about 5-10 minutes
depending on what the packet says.
In the same frying pan, heat up a little more oil and add the garlic, fresh chilli and turmeric (and mushrooms if using). Cook for at most a minute, then add the bacon and cook for a minute more. Tip all of the veg in and cook until tender, then add the soaked noodles, light soy, oyster sauce and vinegar.
Mix it all up, add the dried chilli and spring onions, and serve.
