Who remembers Domminick’s? For those that do not know what it is that it was the name of a grocery store here in the Chicago area. Safeway bought them out then they went out of business. I used to by the pad Thai kits but however you had to come up with your own meat to add while you are cooking. It came with the rice noodles and the pad Thai sauce.
However I made my own sauce and I bought the noodles because I have everything else to make the sauce with. It is 1 kg or 1 lb of lamb, goat, chicken, veal, beef and fish or 1 kg or lb of mince of goat, lamb, chicken, turkey, veal, fish, shrimp or other sea foods. You can even add your choice of vegetables too. These get fried in a wok after you wash off the meat and clean the fish in 1/4 cup either peanut, corn or canola oil. Add 1 drop of chili oil. Fry on low until your protein or vegetables of choice are done. When this is done, chop 1 handful of green onions and lightly toss around.
If you want you can use a sprializer to get real fancy by adding carrots or even zucchini in this manner. The type of vegetables I prefer are Chinese vegetables like bok choi, peapods, beansprouts, bamboo shoots or water chestnuts. When this is done, set aside with lid on.
I had also spotted some rice noodles which are suited for making pad Thai. The ones I bought was black and red. As you see I have used the red ones. I filled my pot up and it was 1 gallon or 4 liters of water and put it on to high heat with the lid closed. This will bring the water to a rapid boil sooner about 15 minutes at the most. This is depending on the type of stove you have. I know in UK and other places they would say cooker.
Place the noodles gently in to the boiling water and let it boil for 5 minutes and shut off the heat and let it sit in the hot water for another 5 minutes. These noodles can be quite starchy. Drain the noodles in a colander place them back in the pot and place cold water over them and make sure the water covers the noodles. Place this and set this aside for 20 minutes and drain again and place the noodles back in to the pot and place the cover back over the pot and set aside.
This is to cool the noodles off and keeps the noodles from sticking together and stops the cooking process. The noodles are at an aldente stage when you drain them the first time. While this is going you can do either the meat or even vegetables for this dish and also start making the sauce.
The way the sauce is made is by first in a blender with 1/4 cup of water for ease of processing, 1 small piece of ginger peeled washed and cut in to small pieces, 2 cloves of garlic chopped 1 shallot chopped, 3 Thai chilies which can be either red or green, either 3 lime leaves or lemon grass which can be bought at any Asian store. 1 pinch each of basil and cilantro which are optional. These get blended together.
In a small pot add 1 cup of water, the contents of the blender, 1 pinch each of tamarind, white pepper powder, 1 bullion cube crumbled 3 dashes of maggi or knorr aroma, 1 dab of either shrimp or crab paste or 1 dash of fish sauce, 3 dashes each of either tamari or soy sauce, black strap molasses, 2 tsp of either agave nectar or turbinado sugar. This gets cooked down until it becomes like a syrup. The sauce has to be thick.
Drain the noodles one final time that has been soaking in cold water and make sure the water is all drained out of it. Place the noodles back in the pot. The vegetables or proteins of choice that fried in the wok gets added to the noodles. The sauce comes next and lightly fold it in to the contents of pot of the noodle mixture. Clean the wok that the meat or vegetables was fried in and add 1 handful of raw peanuts, almonds or cashews, and roast them over high heat and when they have a little bit of a black mark on them remove and add to mortar and pestle or food processor and grind until it is pretty well chopped.
Add this to the incomplete pad Thai dish to finish it. Stir to mix a little and serve. If you are wondering why I said either cashews or even almonds, it is because there are people who are allergic so I want to address this issue.
I hope you will love my version of pad Thai. We really enjoyed it immensely.
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