A Scientist in the Kitchen – Pad Taiwan – my take on that famous Pad Thai

It was supposed to be Pad Thai for lunch with my friends. But I couldn’t find any rice noodles so I settled for these vegetable noodles from Taiwan. Hence this dish is now Pad Taiwan. For one thing, the noodles were green probably because of the vegetables added such as green peas to the wheat flour in making the noodles. They’re a bit thicker than the rice noodles but works as well if your craving for Asian style sauted noodles.

I actually learned to cook Pad Thai with Thai friends who were students at the university. The funny thing was, they made me be the taster even if I hadn’t tried it before. I like it so much that I started cooking it at home, all the while texting my friend if I’m doing it right. It’s no longer Pad Thai, even if I used the same ingredients and combination of salty, sour, hot and sweet tastes as I vary noodles I used. Vermicelli, rice noodles, wheat noodles, vegetable noodles…

For this latest version, I used vegetable noodles made in Taiwan. Look how lovely they looked like after cooking. These are dried noodles and I cooked them like pasta, till you have that al dente consistency. Drain and cool with water, as the directions for cooking said.

We don’t have tamarind paste so I used tamarind powder which is commonly used for a Filipino dish called sinigang. Chez pim has good recipe for Pad Thai which I just followed. It is easy to understand. I actually got the idea from her to mix all the sauce ingredients to get that combination of sweet, salty, sour and hot taste of Pad Thai. Just head over to Pad Thai for beginners for the recipe.

Aside from the noodles and the sauce, I also included tofu, ground peanuts, beansprouts and cilantro. Depending on the mood, I add meat or simply tofu if I want to go vegetarian.