kaffir lime
it all started when my old roomie innocently asked...
"hey! have you ever made pad thai before?"
oh man. she never realized what a snowball she set in motion with that one little question.
as always, my quest started with a lot of internet research. why is it that every website with a pad thai recipe claims to be "authentic"? how do i know who to believe? man. this going to be harder than i thought!
a few hours later i finally settled on a recipe from thaitable.com and then i sat around for another couple of hours contemplating the ingredients. the list didn't seem too bad... hmmmm... tamarind paste, kaffir lime leaves, and *scratches head* isn't there lemongrass in pad thai? wait! what does kaffir lime even look like? better print out a picture of it before i head out, cause they probably don't speak english at the store...
i headed out to Sontepheap Market in east oakland. i had been there once before when i was on a thai food kick and knew it to be fairly well stocked (as well as close to my house). after purchasing all my ingredients i set to work...
my taste tester and i looked at the dish curiously. isn't it RED in the restaurants? why is my version BROWN? hmmmm... it tastes a little different too...
so after further research (aka actually READING the recipe that i selected) i discovered that "Compared to the red, oil coated version you normally find in western restaurants, this one is drier and more tastes fresher and more complex. I've never seen oily, red pad thai in Thailand."
so the quest for the restaurant AMERICANIZED version of pad thai continues (i've already picked out a couple of new recipes to try out) but apparently i now know how to make the kind of pad thai actually eaten in thailand! =)
5 comments:
was it good?
i liked it once i got over the shock of it tasting completely different. lighter, fresher, and sour(er?). pretty good. i'd make it again.
Hey your blog is crooked! There must be some big ass photo tilting your sidebar.
hahaha... i thought so! it was weird because it's only like that when i look at the blog at work. oh wait. i don't look at the blog when i'm at work! i'm working! hahaha...
Ok, I think I fixed it. Internet Explorer is painfully slow, though, and I also feel annoyed that there are such big margins on the blog in the first place, but I have no idea how to change that. I don't even remember which template we're using. Oh well.
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