Pad the Thais
How much food, I wonder, would one have to consume for the fat contained therein to actually accumulate on one’s thighs whilst eating? Imagine if such a thing could occur? I’d never look at cheese the same way again, i.e. with lust and abandon. Anyone who knows me, knows that cheese is the one thing that I could never give up; when playing the What Would You Rather Give Up For The Rest of Your Life game, I always pick cheese over anything else. Cheese beats cookies. Cheese beats beer, chocolate, all forms of hard liquor and candy. Cheese narrowly, narrowly beats wine.
Anyway, the point is, it’s amazing that I like Pad Thai so much considering that it involves no cheese. In fact, considering that it calls for The Mysterious Fish Sauce (a.k.a. feet sauce), it is remarkable that I like it so much. Maybe it’s all the superbly fresh ingredients or the tamarind paste that is simultaneously bitter and kind of salty or the peanuts or the shrimpies –yum! Ultimately, who cares what makes it beautiful, as long as it is so? My only complaint is that it can be kind of finicky. Like, this time, we slightly under-cooked the noodles, slightly over-cooked the shrimp and added just a little bit too much tamarind paste. I still ate until I could eat no more but these points were duly noted for next time.
We should really make this for M & D when they arrive. It never fails that the first place we go when their plane lands is to the Vietnamese place next to the 7-11. They crave good pho and spring rolls and vermicelli when in Europe and so, before we do anything else – drop off the bags, have a drink, anything – we go straight for dinner. Because they crave Asian food so much, I suspect that they’d appreciate this Pad Thai. Especially accompanied by a few Big Rock McNally’s? Some Coors Light? Eh?