Liz's leftovers: March 2014

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Pad Thai - and oodles of noodles

I've had a break from blogging of a few weeks - after my magnum opus of the last year, I felt I needed a rest and time to gather inspiration again.

Well, I'm back now - and I hope readers haven't deserted me.

I've had some lovely meals in the interim and it's time to start recreating some of them.

I ate in a Thai restaurant last month - and had a tasty pad thai for my main course. I thought it would be a great way to use up leftover cooked chicken. I looked up the recipe and had a go- and here is my version. Apparently the tricky part is the rice noodles which can clump together- but using 'straight to wok' packs avoids that problem.

Ingredients:

2 poached chicken breast fillets - finely sliced
a handful of peeled cooked prawns
1 pack of rice noodles (straight to wok)
1 egg (beaten together with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce)
1 small onion finely chopped
1 tsp each of minced garlic, chili and ginger
1 tbsp rice wine (or white wine) vinegar
2 tsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp tamarind paste dissolved in a little warm water
1 lime
a small pack of peanuts (finely chopped)

Soften the onion in some oil in a wok and add the garlic, chili and ginger. Stir fry quickly.
Now add the vinegar, fish sauce and tamarind and bring to a high heat. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved then shoot in the chopped chicken and prawns.

Stir quickly, add the noodles and heat through.
Finally add the beaten egg and stir until the noodles are coated and the egg is cooked.

Serve with chopped peanuts sprinkled over and with wedges of lime for squeezing.

Pad thai

I served this with stir fried broccoli (stir fried with 1 tsp garlic paste, 2 tsp ginger and 1 tsp chili paste).

ginger stir fried broccoli

I often feature noodle recipes on the blog- so here are a few more. (Link to the blog page underneath) They are a cheap and tasty way to bulk out leftovers - so always have some packs in the larder.