pad see juju

A good friend of mine thinks that this blog is too girly for him to visit, so I'm blogging his favourite meal as an enticement. Except, with a twist. Pad See Ew is an absolute thai restaurant favourite - a dish with few ingredients and which packs a huge flavour punch. I decided to cook this for dinner tonight at the last minute, so had to source my ingredients from a local Tesco. Obviously, they didn't have everything so it's a bit of an improvised Pad See Ew. I can't believe how easy this is to make, from ingredients you would almost always have in the pantry.

You will need:

400g flat fat rice noodles (I used skinny pad thai type rice noodles), prepared to packet's instructions

3 tablespoons Kecap Manis (sweet, dark soy sauce)

6 tablespoons light soy sauce

3 tablespoons fish sauce

2 eggs, beaten lightly

3 schallots, chopped into 2cm pieces

6 cloves of garlic

Firm tofu (substitute your meat of choice)

Approximately 1/4 cup vegetable oil

1.5 cups loosely packed Chinese Broccoli, chopped in halves. I used long stem broccolini instead, and added 1/2 cup curly cale.

Ground white pepper

What to do:

Heat a wok with a couple of tablespoons of oil and add two cloves of garlic, finely chopped, then the broccolini. Fry for a few minutes. Season with fish sauce, fry for another thirty seconds, stirring constantly. Remove and set aside for now.

Use a paper towl to carefully wipe the inside of the wok, getting rid of any burned garlic. Reheat with another tablespoon of oil. Add the diced tofu (or meat), garlic, another tablespoon of fish sauce, and cook until browned. Remove from pan and set aside with the greens.

Once again, use a paper towel to wipe clean the wok. Reheat with another few tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add the noodles, another tablespoon of fish sauce and fry for a minute or two. Once it's started to brown slightly, add the 6 tablespoons soy sauce, 3 tablespoons kecap manis and 2 tablespoons sugar and fry. Stir until the noodles are coated in sauce and reasonably well cooked. Separate the noodles to form a well in the centre of the wok. Add the 2 beaten eggs and stir fast and furiously for 30 seconds, until the eggs are nearly cooked. Tip the cooked greens, tofu (or meat) and raw curly cale into the noodle pan. Fry until combined. Check the seasoning. Add sugar or fish sauce (in lieu of salt) as required.

Serve with extra ground white pepper.

It's important to do this in stages. Most absolutely definitely do not fry everything off at once or you'll get soggy greens, smooshy noodles and overcooked eggs. It takes around ten minutes from wo to go. Line all your ingredients up before you start in nice little bowls, just like on one of those cooking programmes. Delicious.