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***RECIPE, MAKES TWO BIG PORTIONS***
For the sauce:
1 tablespoon fish sauce (can use soy sauce instead)
2-3 tablespoons sugar
1/2-2 teaspoons tamarind concentrate (I used 2 and loved it, but Lauren thought it was way too acidic)
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 teaspoon soy sauce (very optional)
***It's possible to replace both the fish sauce and tamarind with 3-4 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. Not the same, but pretty good.
Everything else:
1 bunch green onions
1 thumb of ginger
3-4 garlic cloves
1 red chili (very optional)
4-8 oz (60-120g) mung bean sprouts (I like a lot of them)
4 oz (60g) Pad Thai noodles (narrow, flat rice noodles)
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (shrimp or tofu work great too)
2 eggs
a big handful of roasted peanuts (50g?)
picked cilantro leaves and lime wedges for garnish
salt
oil
Mix up the sauce and let the sugar dissolve while you do everything else. Put a big pinch of salt in the eggs and beat them thoroughly — let them sit and loosen while you do the rest. Coarsely chop the peanuts.
Thinly slice the green onions, keeping the greens and whites separate. Peel and coarsely chop the garlic and ginger, and put them in the same bowl as your onion greens. Thinly slice the chili and put it in with the onions and ginger/garlic. Pick the cilantro leaves and cut the lime wedges.
Cut the chicken into three sections and then into very thin slices against the grain. Separate into two piles. Get the bean sprouts open and ready, get your salt and a glass of water handy.
Fill a nonstick pan with water (not the water you have in the glass) and bring it to a boil. Put in a pinch of salt and the noodles. Cook, stirring constantly, for half as long as the package suggests (I did 2-3 minutes). Dump them in a strainer and pour cold water over them to stop the cooking and keep them from sticking to each other. Leave them in the strainer for now.
Wipe out the pan and return it to the high heat, and put in a thin film of oil. Season the first pile of chicken with salt. When the oil just starts to smoke, put in the chicken and quickly get it spread out to a thin layer. Let it brown without moving it for a minute.
When the chicken pieces are opaque 2/3rds of the way up, put in half of your onion/ginger/garlic/chili mixture and stir it aggressively. Push it over to one side of the pan (it's ok that the chicken and veg aren't fully cooked yet), then pour half of the eggs into the other side and get them spread out to a thin layer. Let the egg partially solidify before breaking it up into sheets with your spoon.
When egg seems almost cooked, dump in half the noodles, a third of the sauce (you can always add more sauce if you think it needs it), half the bean sprouts, a few chopped peanuts, and stir to combine. Finally, use a splash of water from the glass to help you get everything stirred up, deglaze the pan, and get the level of saucy texture you want.
Put it on a plate, garnish with the cilantro, onion greens, lime wedges and more peanuts. Wipe out the pan and cook the second portion. (It's possible to cook both at once if you have a wok or a really big nonstick pan with a really powerful burner, but I think this comes out better if you do one at a time so it can get the necessary intense heat.)
