Good evening all!
When I first You may or may not know, but I am a huge foodie. I absolutely love nothing more than trying out new recipes,though the tendency to diverge away from the actual recipe is a must, different types of cuisine and researching different takes on old classics.
One of my all time favourite types of cuisine is Thai food, and there’s nothing better than a good ol’ Pad Thai. This was actually one of the first dishes I tried when exploring Thai cuisine, and it has remained an all time favourite for years now. Something, however, I have never been able to do is actually cook Pad Thai at home. It was always something that I thought would be super complicated, require a lot of technical skill or just a lot of ingredients – which I could not justify buying if it was A) going to be a complete disaster or B) I was going to end up storing a number of condiments in my cupboards that I would never use.
Luckily for me, however, I managed to stumble upon a perfect recipe – tried and tested of course, that would rival my favourite Thai restaurant (well close enough!). It’s super quick, and so easy to make, with ingredients that you may well have stored in your kitchen cupboards already.
Guilt free and pretty low cal, there’s no excuse! If you want to go even healthier, try alternating the chicken with tofu. Just remember though, the key to this dish is the Tamarind Paste, which helps flavour the Pad Thai.
Ingredients (Serves 2)
2 chicken thigh fillets, 4 tbsp soy sauce, 4 garlic cloves, 1/2 tsp chilli flakes, 1/2 lime, 3 spring onions, 1 tbsp tamarind paste, 1/2 cucumber, fresh coriander, 1 egg, 1 chicken stock cube, 1tbsp fish sauce, 200g rice noodles, 1 tsp sugar.
1) Start off by boiling some water in a kettle, just enough to cook the Rice Noodles. Once boiled, cover the noodles with the boiling water and leave to soak through for roughly 15 minutes, they should be soft, but not completely. Then drain the noodles, rinse through with cold water and set aside for later.
2) Cut up the chicken fillets into small, bite sized pieces. Then add to a bowl and pour in the soy sauce, leaving this to marinate.
3) Crush up the garlic, I used a garlic crusher for this, but you could easily just use a knife. Chop up the spring onions, ensuring the root is removed. Chop up the coriander, and then the cucumber into stick sized pieces. Leave to one side.
4) Dissolve the chicken stock cube in 200ml of boiling water.
5) Mix together the tamarind paste, sugar, chilli flakes and fish sauce. You can adjust the amount of chilli flakes used depending on how spicy you want the dish.
6) In a large frying pan, use 1-2 tbsp of vegetable oil and wait until it’s heated up. Once hot, add the garlic and leave to cook for a minute or so. Add the chicken with the marinade. Add 1-2 tbsp of chicken stock at a time, allowing the chicken to absorb the stock. Once all used, add the noodles, tamarind mix and stir well.
7) Move the noodles to one side and crack the egg into a free side on the frying pan. Scramble and mix through with the noodles. Finally add the cucumber on top.
8) Use the lime and squeeze onto of the noodles, serve with the spring onion and coriander sprinkled on top.
Enjoy 
