I think there are two keys in Thai food.  One, never read the list of ingredients.  Look at a finished dish and see if you like the presentation and aroma, or get a recommendation from a friend you trust.  Now clearly if you grew up in Southeast Asia, you may be comfortable with all of the ingredients central to Thai cooking, but if you grew up in the heart of the midwest, chances are you’ll need to broaden your horizons.  The second key to Thai food is to use real ingredients.  Minimize substitutions and seek out the ingredients you need.  The other day I was talking with some fellow food bloggers about how baking is still not intuitive to me.  Meaning, I can’t just whip together some dry ingredients with some wet and come up with a fabulous dessert without planning and prep work.  Thai food, along with all kinds of other food I’m sure, doesn’t use the traditional Italian or French cooking staple ingredients you’re used to, so minimize experimentation and seek out a great source for recipes and ingredients.

I love to shop for and use new ingredients.  Everything for this recipe can be found in Central Market in Dallas, but if that’s not an option seek out an Asian grocery in your locale.  Here’s an ingredient tour for this Pad Thai Recipe.

Starting in the front and working our way counter clockwise, the ginormous anemic carrot looking thing is a Daikon Radish.  Clearly, since barely any is gone you don’t need that much for the recipe.  I treated it like a carrot so I washed it and peeled it, then took to it with a microplane to grate about 2 teaspoons for my recipe.  It seems sort of like an onion, both in the way it grates, it’s high water content, and the fact that when eaten raw it is spicy, but becomes milder and sweeter with cooking.  Next is the palm sugar, which is super thick and sticky, kind of like the texture of a drier praline.  It is a sugar made from the sap of the coconut palm.  Normally I’m not big on anything coconut flavor and you couldn’t get me to touch a pina colada with a 10 foot pole, but like I said, Thai food is not the place for experimentation so I’m using what was recommended.  Palm sugar has a lower glycemic quality than regular sugar, hence, better for diabetics or pre-diabetics.  The next is tamarind concentrate.  Tamarinds pods are sometimes sold in the grocery store, I bought some once, but then threw them out as I had no idea what to do with them.  Central Market also sold a sticky black block of tamarind paste that looked like a block of homemade fruit rollup as well.  I took the easy route and went with the concentrate, which was paste mixed with water then strained.  This adds the sour component to your dish.  The flavor is also central to Pickapepper sauce from Jamaica.  And finally is the fish sauce – the salty component to the dish.  Something that comes from fermented fish, that has a very strong odor but is central to Southeast Asian cuisine.  It’s also said to contribute the umami element to dishes – *umami or savoriness – has been proposed to be added to the basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty*.

If pad thai at home sounds like too much of an adventure to you, try it out at a restaurant!  The flavor is very unique and now something my family craves.  Be prepared to order a custom level of spiciness.  Thai chilies can be extremely hot!   But the dish can easily be prepared mildly.

Pad Thai Recipe – serves 6

adapted from thaicookingwithjam’s recipe

14 oz. dried rice noodles

10 oz. extra firm tofu

grapeseed oil

5 tbsp palm sugar

2 tbsp white sugar

2 and 1/2 tbsp tamarind concentrate

2 and 1/2 tbsp water

4 tbsp fish sauce

2 tbsp grapeseed oil

4 skinless boneless chicken breasts, rinsed and trimmed

2 shallots, minced

4 eggs

1 tsp diakon radish, grated

red pepper flakes

2 bunches chives, rinsed and chopped into 2 inch segments

1.5 c. bean sprouts, rinsed and drained

crushed roasted peanuts

In a 9 x 13 glass casserole, cover the dried rice noodles with water, then soak for one hour. Fill a small saucepan with about an inch and a half of grapeseed oil, then heat to 375 degrees.  Meanwhile, cube tofu into 1/2 inch dice, and dry with a paper towel.  Fry tofu in 375 degree oil in small batches, removing with a slotted spoon to a paper towel.  Repeat until all tofu is fried, then set aside to reserve.

In a medium sauce pan, combine palm sugar, white sugar, tamarind concentrate, water, and fish sauce.  Heat at medium heat on stove until bubbling, then stir to combine.  Remove from heat and reserve.  Split chicken breasts in half like just as if you were butterflying the breasts.  Then slice again into 1 inch strips.  Season with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.  Place wok on stove over medium high heat for 3-4 minutes, add 2 tablespoons grapeseed oil and continue to heat for 1 minute.  Swirl wok to coat sides.  Place chicken strips in wok in a single layer, stirring occasionally with tongs until gently browned on all sides.  Remove chicken to a plate to rest.  Add one more tablespoon of grapeseed oil and the shallots.  Stir with a wooden spatula, heating for 1 more minute.  Add eggs, and scramble in wok.  Add radish, reserved chicken, reserved tofu, and 1 tsp red pepper flakes to stir fry.  Use wooden spatula to turn occasionally and cook until tofu is warm.  Drain noodles and add to wok.  Continue to stir occasionally.  Noodles will soften, shrink a little and begin to warm in color.  Pour sauce over top, stir, then cook for 1 minute.  Add chives and beansprouts, cook an additional minute.  Plate and top Pad Thai with a small bit of the crushed roasted peanuts.

The inspiration for this recipe came from my mamas group back in Austin.  I’d sent a request to the group looking for new ideas in the form of, “If you could order anything from any restaurant tonight, what would you pick?”  The answers were inspiring and unbelievably international.  Stuffed Fried Avocados were recommended by a couple friends, it seems they are the newest food fad in South Texas. They are found stuffed with a variety of fillings from shellfish to chicken to beef.  Mine are stuffed with a spiced chicken and Monterey Jack cheese.  The chicken is very easily spiced with a Cutters Cross Tex Mex Dry Rub Seasoning.  I received my first batch of these spices as a gift five years ago, and highly recommend you get a set of your own.  I was so pleased with the way this chicken turned out I sent a set to my sister, Amelia, because I just had to share.

If you’re feeling slightly less adventurous, but want to try out the flavor combo, try serving the chicken topping on a bed of avocado wedges.  A foodie friend Shizuoka Gourmet had posted an article on fried avocado back in January.  You could skip the relleno batter and just fry the straight avocado then serve the shredded chicken and cheese on top.

Chicken and Monterey Jack Stuffed Fried Avocados (serves 3)

3 ripe avocados – they work best if they are just slightly on the firm side – ripe but not squishy

flour for dusting

3/4 c. flour

2 egg yolks

3/4 c. beer

2 tbsp canola oil

1 and 1/2 tbsp kosher salt

2 egg whites

3 large chicken split breasts

2 tsp Cutters Cross Tex Mex Dry Rub

1 tsp kosher salt

Monterey Jack Cheese, shredded

Two hours before you want to eat, halve the avocados and remove seeds.  Use a spoon to scoop out a little of the flesh making a larger hollow for stuffing.  Peel skin from outside, then dust in flour.  Wrap each half in Saran wrap and place in freezer.  In a large bowl, add flour followed by egg yolks, beer, canola oil, and salt.  Whisk together to combine.  Let batter rest for about an hour and a half.

In a large saucepan, cover chicken breasts with water and add 1 teaspoon kosher salt.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour and fifteen minutes.  Remove chicken from broth using tongs.  Remove skin and bones and discard.  Shred chicken using two forks into a clean bowl.  Return shredded chicken to broth and simmer another 30 minutes.  At this point, turn high heat on sauce pan containing frying oil.  After the 30 minutes has elapsed, strain chicken from broth, then season with Tex Mex Dry Rub and salt.  Set aside.

About 15 minutes before you want to eat, whisk egg whites to stiff peaks.  Delicately fold egg whites into batter.  Remove avocados from freezer, unwrap and use a slotted spoon to gently dip in batter then place in heated oil.  Fry until lightly browned, then stuff with spiced chicken and top with shredded Monterey Jack cheese.  Serve immediately.

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All these headaches aside, I was still foolishly considering trying to pull of this absurd feat, but reason prevailed and I let Marti talk me out of it.  Of course, her solution of buying frozen to be oven baked fries wasn’t good enough, since, well, I’m a masochist and all.  Since I’d already mentally committed to using my mandoline (yep that site’s in french but at least the picture will give you a glimpse if you have no idea what I’m talking about) to prepare the fries, it was an easy leap to consider for Oven Baked Chips.  The recipe for Rori’s Potato Chips can be found on page 77 of the Barefoot Contessa Parties Book.  The problem is – the picture is on page 72.  So foolishly, I failed to glance back at the picture prior to setting up my mandoline.  I also didn’t have a ruler out, but now that I’ve pulled one out, I feel fairly confident that my slices were pretty close to 1/16th of an inch, they certainly weren’t anywhere close to an 1/8th of an inch.  My advice would be to use the smallest setting on your mandoline, getting your slices as close to paper thin as you can.  So this is where my timeline suffered irreparable damage.  The recipe calls for 26 minutes total cooktime at 325 per batch.  Mine took closer to 32 minutes – and that was after I raised the oven temp 75 degrees.  So if your potatoes are paper thin, follow the recipe.  If they’re any larger – cook at 400 and cook the first side for 12 minutes, turn pans cook 12 minutes, and then the second side for 10 minutes.  It’s actually very easy to tell the timing.  They will not be crisp unless they’re brown, and they’re ready to come out as soon as you start to see browning.

At the end of the day, I think these chips added at least two hours to my timeline.  Two hours that could have been recovered if I had a double oven.  On the upside, I discovered and embraced a couple of perks of my older urban home.  I can make it to the liquor store, purchase a handle of sweet tea vodka, a bottle of creme de cacao, and a Black Box Cabernet, run into and chat with a neighbor, then make it home and back inside in four and a half minutes.  Take that dry neighborhoods.  I can make it to the grocery, purchase 2 bottles of horseradish, 16 sandwich rolls (most of which would later be burned) then be back at the stove inside 9 minutes.  That is true convenience.

Rori’s Potato Chips from Barefoot Contessa Parties Cookbook – page 77

Good Olive Oil

4 Baking Potatoes

Kosher Salt

Fresh Ground Pepper

Preheat the oven to 325.  Spread each of 2 baking sheets with 1 tablespoon of oil and put them in the oven to preheat for 10 minutes.

Slice the potatoes on the narrow side lengthwise on a mandoline so that they are paper-thin and flexible.  Place slices on the hot sheet pans, making sure that they don’t overlap at all.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Bake the chips for 10 minutes , rotate the pans in the oven and bake for another 10 minutes.  Flip each chip and then bake for another 5-6 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove the chips to a paper towel to cool.

Repeat with the remaining potato slices.

To store the chips, cool completely and place in a plastic zipper-lock bag.  They will stay crisp several days.

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