Pad Thai

After experimenting with several Pad Thai recipes, I've finally landed on a favorite. The sauce is based off Matthew Amster-Burton's recipe in Hungry Monkey.

Pad Thai Sauce
4 oz tamarind paste
1 1/2 c. boiling water
1/4 c. peanut oil
6 Tbsp. fish sauce
1 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1/4 c. white sugar

Note: It took several store visits, but I finally located some tamarind concentrate, which I'm assuming is the same as tamarind paste. Each grocery actually had shelf space for the item, but the slot was empty as if there had been a run on tamarind paste in the greater Cincinnati area. Weird.

Place tamarind paste in bowl and pour boiling water over it. Ignore the strange smell. Let sit 5 min, stir gently, pressing paste against the side of the bowl to break up. Let sit 5 min and repeat. Strain through a sieve into a bowl, pressing gently on paste and scraping the bottom of the sieve. Discard contents of sieve. Add remaining ingredients and stir until sugar dissolves.

This makes a decent amount of sauce. I guessed at an amount I would need per meal and portioned into ziploc bags to freeze (maybe 3-4 servings total). The freezing is key, because it suddenly makes this a viable weeknight meal option. Sauce can be refrigerated up to 1 week or frozen up to a month.

The rest of the meal varies, depending on what I have in the refrigerator. I cook a mix of the following ingredients and add the noodles, protein and sauce at the end.

Pad Thai
oil
chopped scallions
minced garlic
whole eggs, beaten
thinly-sliced cabbage
julienned carrots
rice noodles, prepared according to package directions
tofu, chicken or shrimp

Additional Toppings
chopped roasted salted peanuts
lime wedges
sweet chili sauce (essential, in my opinion)