Because I lived in Thailand for three years, friends assume I can cook Thai food. Wrong. My own cooking tends toward "American blendy." What shear delight it is to be back with the cuisine of my heart. (Yes, I know I complained about it endlessly when I was pregnant, but that was just my cells demanding home food.)
Pad Thai. The mac and cheese of Thailand. Fishy, salty, sweet (but not too sweet), crunchy and chewy. What more could you ask of a simple dish?
On my second long visit to Thailand, I spent a few short days living with the Thai nuns at a temple in Rayong. Everything in Thailand was a mystery to me then, and when I arrived in their little house, they were cooking, of course. Mer Shi, in her white cotton shirt and sarong, had her hands wrist deep in a metal bowl filled with brown liquid. After working it with her fingers, she pulled out veiny white matter and small kidney-red stones. I was horrified. Flora or fauna? I was sure it was snake guts.
On that visit, I never figured it out. Many visits later, I understood that she had been extracting the sweet, sticky, mahogany colored tamarind paste from the hulled pods which grow on this delicate tree. Tamarind paste is sweet-sour and the required ingredient for an authentic Pad Thai.
You will find American recipes which substitute ketchup. Feh... Luckily, I have a little tamarind paste in my frig in frozen New York. Yippee! When I get home, real Pad Thai is in our near future. Promise.
And, while we're at it, why not a little Plaa Tap Tim Taut? (Are you hungry yet?)
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