WASABIMAYONNAISE: 2011

Pad Thai with shrimp, lap xuong and cucumber

Pad Thai is known in the West as a typical Thai noodle dish, it's name in fact just means fried Thai style. It's a dish that has a balance of savory, sweet, sour, and salty flavors, soft, crunchy, and mild textures. It's fairly cheap to make, and has become wildly popular in the west in last decade or so. Pad Thai lends itself to a lot of adaptation, and the recipe that follows is my own interpretation of the popular dish. For this recipe I added lap xuong, chinese sasauge purchased at a Vietnamese market in Berlin, it has a different flavor than chinese sasauge, so I will assume the lap xuong I used here was more of a Vietnamese take on the sausage, it came pre-cooked and it had a lot more fat to it and a sweeter milder flavor that I'm used to. I also chose to use cucumber instead of mung bean sprouts for texture and a fresh flavor. However I would recommend adding them after serving, to make sure the garnish stays cold, unless you enjoy tepid cucumbers.

Above, I created an interactive map of the ingredients used for the recipe, the items without gradients are the items I got out of the fridge, expecting to use, but ended up not using, cooking and tasting along the way intuitively looking for the right flavor and editing those ingredients out of my initial idea of the dish. A lot of the dishes I make involve multiple permutations as I am trying to either replicate dishes I enjoyed or tinker with them. I also have step by step photos, best as I can, showing the way in which I cook.

Step one (Kitchen Prep): Mince shallots, cilantro and garlic (not pictured), slice the lap xuong, and julienne cucumbers. set aside.

Devein and shell shrimp, if necessary, save shells aside, they'll add some flavor, better if the shrimps come with the heads!

Soak the Banh Pho, or rice sticks in a shallow dish with water for about 10-15 minutes

Step two: Heat some oil in a wok on medium high heat and add your minced garlic, shallots and shrimp shells

Step three: drain and add the pre-soaked rice sticks to the wok and turn down the heat slightly so the noodles don't immediately stick to the bottom

Step four: adding the tamarind sauce, I added about a 1/3 cup of tamarind to my dish after cooking the noodles slightly. A quick note about tamarind, it is difficult to find in most grocery stores, but should be widely available in most Asian groceries, especially those specializing in South East Asian groceries. Mine came in a small block of paste to which I used a 2 Tb chunk and added hot water to, to get 1/3 cup of sauce. Stir!

Step five: add the shrimp at this point, figure about 4 or 5 per person, mix the noodles so the shrimp get to the bottom and cook well. Stir!

Step six: add a little dollop of sriracha hot sauce depending on how hot you want it, (small ammount like that below for mild, and 1/4 cup for nicely spicy). Stir!