I'm still experimenting with various breakfasts, and one that occurred to me
was Phat Thai, usually misspelt
(clearly by people who can't
speak Thai) as “Pad Thai”. A
couple of weeks ago I bought various pastes, and on 24 November 2017 I tried one from
Valcom:
I don't really understand Thai food well. Some of it is similar to Malaysian food, which I
do understand, and in principle Phat Thai should belong to this category. But in case of
doubt, why not follow the recipe?
Here's how I interpreted it. This will change.
Ingredients
quantity
ingredient
step
130 g
rice sticks
1
80 g
chicken thigh
2
120 g
Phat Thai paste
3
20 ml
fish sauce
4
10 g
sugar
4
2 g
chili powder
4
80 g
tauge (bean shoots)
5
30 g
spring onions, chopped into 1 cm lengths
5
Preparation
Boil noodles for 6 minutes, then drain and rinse, to be ready just in time for step 4.
Cut the chicken into thin slices and fry in oil.
Add the Phat Thai paste and mix well.
Add noodles and other ingredients, mix well and heat. Serve.
The recipe specifies 100 g of the paste for an unspecified number of portions. That's a
strange proportion (41.67%) of the jar size (240 g). I found that I could easily go to 120
g (half a jar) for a single large portion.
Mixing the paste is almost impossible. It's gelatinous and doesn't soften with heat. The
result is lumps that carry over into the finished dish (the darker spots here):
I think it should probably be mixed with water and then evaporated.
The instructions on the package of the noodles (“rice stick”) that I chose were to boil for
3-4 minutes, not longer. After 4 minutes they were still very hard; I had to boil for 6½
minutes, after which they were OK.
