Thai Food: Pad Thai: Pad Cha!

Thai Food: Pad Thai

 

When I think of Thai Food I like many people think of Pad Thai first. Pad Thai is one of the most popular Thai dishes around, perhaps only second only to Tom Yum Goong soup. So this week I decided that I am going to be making Thai Food! I know that many of us eat out at Thai restaurants all the time and have eaten and just love Pad Thai and it is for that reason that this week I'm making a dish called Pad Cha! Pad Cha you say! Yes! Pad Cha! A seafood Pad Thai dish.

Most people are familiar with dishes such as Pad Thai when they eat Thai food and this week I was doing my research to find something a bit different and I came across a Pad Thai recipe called Pad Cha! It's not made with beef or chicken as in other Pad Thai dishes. Pad Cha is a Pad Thai made with seafood or fish.

One of the things I love the most about Thai Food is that you can make it what you wish it to be. This Pad Thai dish can be made with fish fillets, or squid as in Pad Cha Muek or with any kind of seafood mix that you have on hand and this week that is what I had on hand was a 2Lb. bag of really good seafood mix containing shrimp, cuttlefish, oyster, squid, clam and mussels. All the delicious seafood that would make a really good seafood Pad Thai dish.

So this week it's Thai food. Usually this Pad Cha dish is served on rice like sticky sushi rice or Thai jasmine rice. This week I will serve this dish on rice noodles! Remember! "There are no rules in cooking." I thought it would be a nice change of pace to have this Thai Food on rice stick noodles rather than on plain rice which is how it's done all of the time.

This Thai Food dish starts out with a very spicy and pungent mixture of red chilies, shallots and garlic. Then as this Pad Thai cooks I will add lemongrass, kaffir lime, and brown sugar. I can smell it already. The sauces usually used to make this Pad Thai is fish sauce, soy sauce and oyster sauce. In this case I am going to make this Pad Thai with a sauce called Nam Prik Pad or Nam Prik Pao. I am using this particular sauce in my Thai Food because this is a seafood Pad Thai and when I made Tom Yum Goong soup some time back the sauce that is used to impart that Tom Yum Goong special flavor to the Thai Food is Nam Prik Pad or Prik Pao! Since my Pad Thai is seafood based I wanted to add that little something extra to the taste and leave the saltiness of the oyster sauce out of my Pad Cha!

Like I said Thai Food or Pad Thai are very versatile indeed. In my opinion the best way to make Thai Food like Pad Thai or Pad Cha is to have certain things made in advance so that you don't have to fumble for things as you make one serving at  time. It's always good to make more of something that you need in case you end up Jonsing later on.

In Thailand I am told from friends of mine that live there the street vendors have their sauces made in advance so that they can just cook and not worry about measuring out one serving of Thai Food at a time like Pad Thai.

This is the way I make my Thai Food and in this case my Pad Cha. I made my flavor base of red chilies, garlic and shallots hours ahead of time to allow the flavors to marry and then I made my sauce of fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar and Nam Prik Pad ahead of time for the number of servings I planned to make and in this way I don't have to worry about grabbing a bottle of this or a pinch of that to make my servings. So let's watch my Thai Food video and see how Pad Thai: Pad Cha is made. Enjoy!


 

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