Pad Thai, perhaps Thailand’s most infamous noodle dish, has dozens of incarnations—including several regional variations—each one a slightly different take on the mouthwatering combination of sweet, salty, and sour flavors. Some are super spicy, and some—like this recipe—are very mild. Regardless of your recipe, this is one of those dishes that’s all prep and very little actual cooking.

Pad Thai: The winner of our first Reader’s Choice Recipe Poll

Back in the beginning of June, we asked you all to vote for your which delicious-looking recipe from Cookstr.com you’d like to see demonstrated in The Hungry Mouse’s signature, step-by-step style.

This Pad Thai by Australian chefs Victoria Blashford-Snell and Brigitte Hafner won our poll, with 55 of the 273 votes cast. You can also find it in their book, The Illustrated Kitchen Bible.

Deborah Madison’s Spring Rolls came in second, and Nick Malgieri’s Challah came in third. Look for step-by-step walk-throughs of those recipes in the weeks to come.

A little history about pad thai

One of Thailand’s national dishes, Pad Thai typically consists of rice noodles stir fried with a combination of eggs, another protein (shrimp, tofu, or chicken), peanuts, fish sauce, chili pepper, bean sprouts, and lime—along with any number of other ingredients, including tamarind juice, coriander, cabbage, banana flower, and preserved turnip.

Many hold that the dish is actually Vietnamese in origin, and was adapted to the Thai palate. A popular street food, vendors would wrap the noodles up in a bundle of banana leaves to feed hungry folks on the go. It was officially promoted by the Thai government during World War II, as part of an effort to reduce wartime consumption of rice (one of the country’s biggest exports at the time).

It continued to be a staple in the lean times that followed the war, with rice noodle shops and factories popping up all over the country as a way to help the people get by.

Ingredients in pad thai

Most larger supermarkets should carry some version of these ingredients. To track down these specific brands, your best bet it to hit up a big Asian grocer (or order them online). In the Boston area, we head to Chinatown or hit Super 88.

Rice Noodles—For this recipe, you’ll need wide, flat rice noodles. Think fettuccine.

Fish Sauce—Also known as nuoc mam. Like soy sauce, the fewer ingredients in fish sauce, the better. Look for bottles made only with anchovies, salt, and sugar.

Fish sauce is pungent stuff. It should be a rich brown color and as thin as water. (Looks a lot like my vanilla extract, doesn’t it?)

We like Golden Boy brand fish sauce a lot. If you can’t find it in person, you can order a 24-oz. bottle of the stuff here for just under $4. (I can’t imagine ever going through such a big bottle. But, the good news is that it doesn’t need to go in the fridge, so you can just stick it in a cabinet. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing it keeps forever.)

Oyster Sauce—As with fish sauce, look for an oyster sauce whose first ingredient is, well…oysters. Oyster sauce is thick and syrupy.

We like Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Flavored Sauce (order it online here for about $8). Steer clear of their Panda brand, whose first ingredients are water, sugar, and salt.

Shrimp—I don’t mind shelling and deveining shrimp myself. Click here for step-by-step photo instructions on how to clean the little beasties. Try cleaning shrimp under cold running water. It makes the whole operation a lot easier. (Or, if you’d rather skip it and save a little time, just buy them already cleaned.)

Tips on cooking Pad Thai

• Prep all the ingredients in advance. The whole dish takes about 5 minutes to cook, if that, so there’s no time to chop as you go.

• Cook it when you’re ready to eat. The leftovers are still tasty, but they pale in comparison to the hot-out-of-the-wok experience.
• Use the largest wok or frying pan you have. All the ingredients, including the noodles, go into the pot and get tossed around.

Pad Thai

12 oz. (350g) flat rice noodles
boiling water
4 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. cilantro, chopped
1 small hot red chile, seeded and finely chopped
9 oz. (250g) large shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 shallots, finely chopped
4 large eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. oyster sauce
1 Tbsp. Thai fish sauce
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
9 oz. (250g) bean sprouts
4 scallions, white and green parts, sliced
1 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
1 lime cut into 4 wedges, for garnish

Serves about 4

Pad Thai: Prep all your ingredients

No, really. Do this all in advance.

Cook the rice noodles

Set a kettle of water on the stove over high heat to boil. Grab your rice noodles and toss them in a large mixing bowl.

When your water is boiling, pour enough into the bowl to submerge your noodles.

With a pair of tongs, scoot the noodles around to loosen them up and separate them.

Cover the bowl with some aluminum foil and let them soak for about 15 minutes, or until soft. (Give one a taste to see if they’re ready.)

Drain the noodles and set them aside.

Mix the pad thai sauce

In a small bowl, add the lime juice, oyster sauce, and fish sauce.

Mix together to combine well. Set aside for a few minutes.

Stir fry the pad thai ingredients

Don’t start cooking until you can give it your full attention for 5 or 10 minutes. Once you start, the whole thing comes together really, really fast.

Heat a wok or large frying pan on the stove over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil, and the chopped cilantro and chili pepper.

Toss in the shrimp. Stir to coat with oil, cilantro, and chili. Stir them around constantly—making sure to flip them over on both sides—for about a minute, until they’re just opaque.

You want them to look about like this. They should be opaque on both sides, and will only be about 1/2 cooked through at this point.

Yank them out of the pan and set them aside for a minute on a plate.

Keep the heat on high (or drop it a little if your pan is starting to smoke).

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil to the hot pan. Toss in the chopped shallots. Stir fry for 1 minute.

Pour in the eggs.

Toss in the sugar.

Begin to stir the eggs immediately so they break up into bits as they cook. Cook for about 1 minute, until the eggs are totally scrambled.

Pour in the mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, and oyster sauce.

Stir around to distribute the sauce. Add the noodles to the pot.

Toss in the bean sprouts and shrimp.

Stir fry for another 2 minutes. This will help the all the flavors marry together and finish cooking those shrimp.

Sprinkle in the sliced scallions and half of the peanuts. Stir fry for another minute.

Pour the whole pan out into a large serving bowl. Garnish with lime wedges and the rest of the peanuts.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Thanks again to our friends over at Cookstr.com. Look for our other Reader’s Choice winners soon! (And maybe I can even convince The Angry Chef to share his top-secret recipe for Pad Thai with us…)

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We’ve been pining for summer weather here in Boston. It’s been cold, dreary, and drizzly for days. This pasta salad is like a little dose of summer—it’s cool, creamy, and an absolutely fabulous thing to bring to a picnic or barbecue. Assuming, that is, that the sun ever comes out.

Here’s how to put this pasta salad together—as well as a step-by-step guide for how to clean and de-vein fresh shrimp. My recipe calls for about a pound of fresh shrimp, but scale the amount up or down to fit your budget and what looks good at the fish market.

I like to make it with fresh fettuccine, but use any kind of pasta you like.

For the fresh goat feta, I used cheese that I picked up on a recent adventure to Sweet Pea Farm in Connecticut. (More on that to come soon.)

If you can’t find goat feta, swap in any fresh goat cheese you can find—you may just need to add less of it, depending on how salty the cheese you choose is. (Fresh goat feta is very mild.)

On to the recipe!

Pasta Salad with Shrimp, Goat Feta, and Basil

1 lb fresh fettuccine (or other pasta you like)
3/4 – 1 lb. large fresh shrimp
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp. fresh rosemary, minced
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 cup fresh goat cheese feta
1 cup basil, loosely packed
freshly cracked black pepper
1 Tbls. chives, minced
kosher salt

Serves 4-6

Cook and drain the pasta

Bring a large pot of water to boil on the stove. Add your pasta.

Toss in a little salt.

Cook until it’s done to your liking. (I shoot for a little on the al dente side.)

When your pasta is cooked, drain it. Then rinse it well with cold water until it’s cold to the touch. (That’s important, and will help keep your pasta from getting gummy and clumping together.)

Transfer the pasta to a large mixing bowl when it’s drained.

Set it aside while you deal with the shrimp.

How to clean and de-vein fresh shrimp

Now, technically, you can eat the whole shrimp—shell and vein and feet and all. (We just saw Duff Goldman from Charm City Cakes raving about fried shrimp heads on TV, in fact.) Most folks however, like to remove the vein for aesthetic reasons.

So! Grab your shrimp. Keep them cold while you clean them by setting them in a bowl of ice. (To make this operation even easier, shell and de-vein your shrimp in the sink, under cold running water.)

Pull the shell away from the body of the shrimp, including all the little feet, if they’re still attached. Pull the tail off gently, so you don’t rip off much of the meat.

Your shrimp should look about like this:

Flip him around and take a look at his back. You should see a black line running down the center. This may be fat or thin (so thin that it’s barely visible), depending on the shrimp.

Make a shallow slice along the black line with a small, sharp knife.

Your shrimp should look about like this:

Spread the shrimp apart. You should see that icky, black line.

Scrape or pull it out with your knife, so it’s totally gone, like this:

Repeat with your other shrimp. Keep them on ice as you finish them to ensure they stay cold.

How to cook the shrimp

Shrimp are easy to overcook. But they don’t have to be. For this dish, I use gentle heat and don’t walk away from the stove while they’re in the pan.

Put the olive oil, garlic, and rosemary in a large non-stick pan. Give it a stir. Set it on the stove over medium heat for a minute or two to help release the flavors into the oil.

Add the shrimp.

Cook them for maybe 2 minutes on this side.

After a minute or two, your shrimp should be a rosy pink underneath. They should also be opaque on that side. When you see that, flip ‘em over.

Cook them on this side for another one or two minutes.

They should be slightly curled at this point—but not tightly curled.

When a shrimp is cooked, it’s opaque. (See on this one, the top half of the shrimp is opaque, but the bottom is still kind of translucent because it’s not done yet.)

When the shrimp are pink and opaque on the bottom, take the pan off the heat.

Let them sit in the pan, off the heat, for another minute to finish cooking through to the center.

Transfer them to a dish or plate and set them aside. Reserve the oil from the pan. That’s going into the pasta salad.

(Mmmmm, shrimp. Better give one a nibble, just to…you know…be totally sure they’re done.)

Assemble the pasta salad

Fluff up your pasta a little to be sure it’s not at all stuck together. (If it is, rinse it again in cold water, then drain it well.)

Pour the oil and juices from the pan into the bowl with the pasta.

(Mmmmm, garlic.)

Toss in the basil. Then add the goat feta.

Chop the shrimp up.

I like medium-sized pieces, like this:

Toss the chopped shrimp into the bowl.

Toss in the chives. Grind on some black pepper. Squeeze on the lemon (pick out any seeds).

Now, you can mix this up with tongs or a few wooden spoons. I tend to use my hands, especially with a long noodle like fettuccine. It’s gentler on the pasta.

You want the ingredients to be evenly distributed. Give it a taste, and toss in a little salt if you think it needs it (and depending on the type of cheese you used).

I don’t like to keep cooked seafood for more than one day, so I usually make this no earlier than the night before I want to serve it.

If it needs it when it comes out of the fridge, you can toss in a little extra olive oil to loosen it up.

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