Day 24: Tofu Pad Thai from Vegan for Everybody
I’ve been taking my sweeeet time with this 30 recipe challenge. I hope I haven't disappointed my many devoted readers with my lack of posting over the last few weeks. Truthfully, I picked a really bad time to start a project that was based on me having motivation to cook and being excited about food. Lately I have just wanted to subsist on food that is as easy as possible with little risk of making me feel sicker than I already do. So I’ve given myself permission to take my time with this as needed but not to give up on it. I have already incorporated a few of the previous recipes into my regular cooking repertoire, which is great since that’s the main reason I’m doing this. The one I keep going back to is the Thai Baked Sweet Potato from Minimalist Baker. I’ve also made the berry pie and brownies from previous posts a couple of times.
Pad thai: everyone seems to love it. I’ve had it a couple of times, and it’s pretty good. When it comes to Thai food I would pick a creamy red curry over pad thai any day. The majority of my experience with pad thai is from frozen Trader Joe’s vegetable pad thai, which is delicious, not very healthy, and probably not authentic. So what is authentic pad thai? And how many times can I write “pad thai” in one paragraph?
Authentic pad thai, according to an internet search, includes: rice noodles, bean sprouts, tamarind paste, lime, tofu, peanuts, egg, and fish sauce. And this recipe has it all. Just kidding, there’s obviously no egg or fish sauce. There is a recipe for fish sauce substitute in this book but eh…that seems like work to me, and I doubt that it really makes that much of a difference. I’m not a fan of recipes that have ingredients that require a separate recipe, and fish sauce substitute is not something I need on hand regularly, so I don’t want to go out of my way to make this for the small amount I’ll need. I just subbed soy sauce which seemed fine. This recipe produced a very tart dish, heavy on the tamarind and lime. Not exactly what I was expecting - maybe it was my lack of fish sauce substitute? Or does pad thai just taste really tart? Adding peanuts and cilantro made this a tasty dish, but I can’t say I would rush to make it again, especially considering the amount of oil and the overall nutritional profile.
