Chicken Pad Thai

I love pad thai! The first i've tried this stir-fried wonder is at Songkran (a thai resto along Aguirre Ave. in BF P'que). I find though that the Pad thai at that resto has changed when i came back. It was sweet... not at all how i remembered it. So anyways, i loved the dish so much i wanted to be able to cook it myself. Mind you this took longer than expected. I was busy and never really had the time to surf the net to check out some recipes and partly because there was quite a lot of dishes lined up that i wanted to try and cook. So i searched and found out that there's this essential ingredient needed - TAMARIND PASTE/JUICE. All i had to do was find this "magic" ingredient and viola, i will be cooking this noodle wonder in no time. When i found it, bought it and made my first attempt in cooking this... i was having a bit of difficulty in mixing the ingredients all together. It was quite a task! The noodles stuck together and well you can only imagine how that turned out for me. My petite frame against this giant pan with sticky noodles in it. I swore i got quite a work out of it! After that "failure" so to speak, i went online and searched for other recipes in cooking pad thai. Apparently, you soak the damn noodles in cold water. But i didn't really like the idea of having half-cooked rice noodles for dinner. So i thought i'd "make up" my own method. Without further ado, here it is. 

Here's what you'll need.

400 grams Ho fan noodles (rice noodles)

4 tablespoons of sesame oil

2 chicken breast fillets
1 cup baby bean sprouts

3 tablespoon tamarind paste

1/2 cup fish sauce (patis)

2 tablespoon sugar
8-10 sprigs of cilantro/wansoy

1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts

2 medium eggs

1 sliced red chili 

3 sliced shallots

3 cloves of garlic

cumin

salt

pepper

Soak your noodles in boiling water for about 20 minutes and drain. Let noodles sit in cold water to avoid them from sticking together. Don't worry if some of the noodles are still a little tough, they'll get softer once you start stir frying them. To make the sauce, mix the tamarind paste, fish sauce and sugar in a small bowl. Chop the cilantro/wansuy coarsely and mix into the sauce. Mix thoroughly until sugar is dissolved. You can adjust the ratio of the sauce ingredients to suite your taste. Set aside. Slice the chicken breast into thin slices. Heat a pan and pour in 2 tablespoons of oil. Once oil is hot enough start frying the chicken slices. Season with salt, pepper and cumin. Once cooked, transfer into a small plate. Pour one tablespoon of oil into the same pan. Saute the red chili and shallots until aromatic. Push the chili and the shallots to the side of the pan. Pour the last remaining oil and scramble the eggs. Continuously stir until you get a nice bright yellow color. Add the chicken, bean sprouts and drained noodles to the pan. Stir until ingredients are mixed together then add the sauce. Stir until noodles are completely covered by the sauce. Garnish with peanuts.

Enjoy!