Lets Relax with a Bowl of Pad Se Ew...

Lush green and elephants to boot err ride!

Please do not club me. I beg of you, yes you, the Thai mamas, papas, grandpas, grannies and all the rest of you down to the chubby little Thai baby (how I adore you, sweet baby, coochicoo). Ah yes not to be left out, the lovers of all things dinkum Thai. This recipe I am going to share with you is not authentically Thai (so I have read in some places).

My defence is weak and I feel wobbly. I blame it all on my gluttony. No actually on second thoughts, on the yummy taste of this hybrid noodle dish called Pad Se Ew. I have read that this dish does not even exist in Siam of yore, that it was developed by some bored Thai chef out to wow his Western clientèle. What can I say, take a bow bored chef.

The sea and those gorgeous colours!

On a serious note, cuisines do get distorted or shall we politely say influenced by the place where they are being served. Take the instance of Balti cuisine. I am sure by now non UK folks are frowning darkly thinking I am cracking odd jokes cos Balti means bucket in Hindi and Bengali. No sadly it is no joke, there is a whole cuisine under this Balti genre, which they pass off as Indian. And in one word the Balti food is HORRIBLE. Now if we, the Indians living in the UK can digest the unpalatable Balti cuisine, your Pad Se Ew is a million times better. No make that a trillion times. I am know at this stage you must be thinking 'but you have not yet tasted our authentic food'. I agree hundred percent, but you see beggars cannot be choosers and the yearnings of a gastronomic slut* have to be satisfied.

I love Thai food or whatever version of it we get here in the UK. I am sure that if and when I do visit this tropical paradise I will love Amazing Thailand too. But for now lets go back to the food, shall we? So in the  Thai restaurants in the UK we get this noodle dish called Pad Se Ew which I have read means noodles stir fried in Soya Sauce. I do not know how original it is, but we, i.e. my husband and me, we lurve it. Yes we lurve it, me a little less, he a little more. You see I lost my heart to Pad Thai long ago and remain ever faithful to it. So since whenever we visit Thai restaurants (which is often) I always order Pad Thai and my husband Pad Se Ew. Okay so he sometimes orders Thai Red Curry, Green Curry, Jade Curry (Jade curry? Yes I remember it was Jade Curry and no, it was not jade in colour), but that is besides the point. To get back to the Pad Se Ew, I err sneak away some of the noodles from his plate and I love what I sneak off. It was getting to the point where I was almost finishing off half of his plate, much to my husband's growing horror. Of course such a situation could not be allowed to continue and since I refuse to order anything other than  Pad Thai (hey I also go for variety, sometimes I order chicken and other times shrimp), I settled on the second best option. I decided to learn how to make Pad Se Ew at home. Went through several video demos in the youtube (may you live long), finally found this video by a young Thai American or will it be American Thai? Oh well whatever. He was precise, concise and knew what he was doing. Decided to follow him and now I can make Pad Se Ew at home and it is finger lickin' good.


Sadly the video is no longer on youtube, but I had the recipe jotted down, sharing it. The photographs I have shared here are of course  of authentic Thailand, taken by a friend on their trip.

Tribal Performance....

The photos are beautiful, aren't they? I especially love this last photo....what a space...a balcony is such a beautiful place. Back home, the balcony of my parents' house is my most favourite part of the house.

This place looks perfect for an al fresco meal, doesn't it? Why not sit back and relax with some Thai iced tea, while I quickly fix us some Pad Se Ew.

But I hate working in the kitchen alone, so I will keep the windows open and we can chat while I put the noodles together. What? Oh you want me to tell you about the ingredients that I need for this.

To make this noodle dish you need:

• 300 gms of boiled, boneless chicken, shredded
• Thai rice sticks around 250 gm, prepared as per instructions on the back of the packet
• 3 eggs, beaten
• Veggies-- carrots, bak choy, bean sprouts, kai-lan....whatever your heart fancies....
• 1 fat chilli chopped
• Juice of half a lime
• 4 cloves of garlic pods
• 2  tea spoons of dark soya sauce
• 1 tea spoon of oyster sauce
• 1 tea spoon fish sauce
• 1 tea spoons of brown sugar
• 2 tea spoons of vegetable/sunflower oil
• Few drops of sesame oil
• Crushed peanuts, cilantro, bean sprouts, lime wedge & chilli flakes for garnishing

Once you have assembled all of this, chopping all those veggies takes a wee bit of time. Time to switch on the gas.

Take a wok, heat the oil, add the garlic, once they sizzle, and & fry the shredded chicken pieces till light brown, move all of it to one side, add the beaten eggs and scramble them, now add the veggies, fry them for a couple of minutes, add the sauces and the sugar, mix well. Then add the noodles, a little at a time, mixing well as you add. Mix everything well, check the taste and adjust according to taste. Switch off the heat and add the lime juice, a final toss and the noodle is ready.

Garnish with cilantro, chilli flakes, cilantro and bean sprouts and serve hot.

* Borrowed the phrase from a friend!