This weekend Iron Chef David, Jason and Robert and I had a challenge: to try and make one of our favourite Thai dishes, Pad Thai.

We headed down to Doncaster Shopping Town yet again for another tea at T2. We had about 4 different recipes to choose from, so we decided to go with the one that required the least about of hard to find ingredients. After a nice cuppa tea we went on the hunt for our ingredients. We weren't too sure how well we would go with no Asian grocers in the the area.

First stop was a massive deli / green grocer / butcher, yet we couldn't find any bean sprouts or noodles. The only thing we did find was tofu.
Second stop was the Coles next door which also did not have any bean sprouts!
So luckily there was a Safeway that had beansprouts and all the other weird ingredients we thought we would have trouble finding; for example - tamarind paste.

When we got back home, David and I turned into the wives and got busy in the kitchen, whilst the 'husbands' were busy fiddling with the TV.

David began with liberating the tofu from it's tofu juice and chopping it up whilst I began on the sauce.
We ended up doubling the sauce quantity but it wasn't enough, so after the noodles had cooked we ended up making more. The sauce was pretty bland until we found some sweet chilli sauce in the pantry, which helped bring the dish to life.

As I plated up the noodles, David turned into a head chef and garnished the dishes before they were sent out of the kitchen. Our garnishes include: extra bean sprouts, ground peanuts (which we also had problems finding), coriander, spring onions and a wedge of lime.
The dish wasn't too hard to cook, and it tasted pretty good for our first attempt at cooking Pad Thai. My compliments to the chefs!


Pad Thai (Vegetarian)
Recipe taken from: http://thaifood.about.com/od/vegetarianthairecipes/r/padthaiveg.htm

Eh Voila! Bon Appétit!