The other night, I decided to make Pad Thai (page 127 of Whining and Dining) for the family. This was necessitated by the fact that I had not been shopping and all I had was some Thai sticks (rice noodles) and frozen shrimp. I was also motivated by Doppleganger at 50 Books who said our recipe was the best Pad Thai she ever made. So I mix up the sauce (but I was too lazy to find the paprika which is hiding out on some high shelf -- knowing that if I got the chair out to stand on, my one and half year old would be perched right beside me trying to get into the cupboards and that just didn't seem worth it) and it tastes fine, but to be honest is really lacking a little zing due to the hiding paprika). I then decide to use broccoli, and some red pepper because I already had some sliced that had been rejected the night before. I don't have tofu or chicken but what the hell the kids like shrimp the best anyways.
I boiled up some water to soak the rice noddles and I let them sit. I saute the shrimp. I saute the broccoli, and the peppers. I pull out some broccoli for son number two without sauce, I pull out some shrimp for both sons who are allergic to sauce and then i throw few that i have left with the veggies, so far so good except there are hardly any shrimp waiting for sauce because I have to assume that the boys will eat more than they really will, but if they want more and they are all saucy -- then we get some attitude....
I turn to the noodles -- which are a bit thicker than normal pad thai noodles and they seem, a little bit hard but I toss them into the wok anyway. Throw on the sauce and wait....and wait...and wait, nope noodles still to hard to eat. Now I have to react as a professional -- Eshun and I often say that it is the ability to fix problems in the kitchen that makes us good cooks. So I add a little stock (yes, from the box) and put a lid on the noodles, veggies, shrimp and sauce. And let it steam, I also add the plain noodles to boiling water. And then ... everything turns to mush. My broccoli is brown, my peppers are just flacid strips with the inedible skin. The noodles are a morass of white -- blah.
But I didn't say anything negative (maybe they won't notice!) I just put it down on the table. The boys had their plain noodles and plain shrimp and plain broccoli. And the rest of us had mushy noodles, mushy broccoli and rubbery shrimp. YUM! And it tastes all the much better knowing that I am a cookbook author!
But it is a delicious recipe...which I unfortunately can't post because we are over our quota of postable recipes. But I will post something else that is out there in the stratosphere soon.
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