Archive for June, 2010
The Lovely Noodles I Ate in Thailand
(Pad Thai from a Bangkok street)
This is a bit of a left over of ‘What I Ate in Thailand‘ series.
We Thais love our noodles. Although we never really invented any of our own noodle dishes, we have managed to bastardise a few. And they are really genuinely good. One of the ones that Thais will proudly claim as their own is the pad thai (above). It’s not really. It’s still bastardised Chinese dish but with some distinct lovely Thai touches.
(a pad thai is usually served with fresh banana flower, lime, beansprouts and garlic chives)
A pad thai needs to have relatively bitey noodles (so soak these rice sticks in warm water for longer, don’t boil them) with a good complex sauce made of fish sauce, tamarind, palm sugar and other goodies. I have a pad thai recipe on this blog somewhere but I’m quite embarrassed by its half-arseness.
While we’re on the scale of Thai-ness, this is a yum – or a salad. The word yum really doesn’t translate into salad quite nicely but it is indeed yummy. This noodle salad is made by blanching seafood, fish sticks, Vietnamese sausages, a pack of instant noodles (yep), a bit of vegetables and some herb (in this case Chinese celery leaves) and pile on the really hot dressing made of chilli, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and naturally a heap spoon of MSG. I have had some really good yum mamaa (instant noodle salad) but this one was truly awful. But you can’t really tell from the picture, can you? Read the rest of this entry »
