Cafe Liz

Pad thai

When I discovered the Thai House‘s recipe for pad thai, I felt like I was discovering the dish anew — with a sauce of only soy sauce and sugar, this recipe was amazingly simple, produced way better results than any other pad thai I had ever made in the past, and tasted great. In fact, the pad thai I was making at home was so good that I didn’t even bother to order the dish on my first few days in Thailand — after all, I knew how pad thai was supposed to taste, so I might as well try other things, right?

So I was all the more surprised once I finally got around to trying the Thai version of “Thai stir-fry” to discover just how different it was from what I made at home. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that Israeli pad thai is made from ingredients available locally, while the Thai version has a base of fish and oyster sauce, and often contains garlic chives, bean sprouts, different kinds of Thai tofu, shallots (I’d put shallots in everything, too, if I could get them for 50 agorot a kilo), Thai garlic (sweeter than the garlic we use in the West), tamarind, lime juice, palm sugar and shrimp.

OK, so maybe this version isn’t authentic, but it brings rave reviews and recipe requests whenever I make it, and it quickly became one of my (and my friends’) staples. Plus, you can expand on the basic concept to add some more “Thai” ingredients, if you can find them. Continue reading Pad thai …

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