Cookbook Challenge #7 - Asian Noodles

Time to head back to southeast Asia for another Cookbook Challenge!

Love those Asian noodle dishes

Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds is a cookbook that I have had for a number of years, and I have prepared several dishes from it.  It is a nice collection of recipes - soups, salads, stir-fries, entrees - all containing some variety of Asian noodles, along with explanations about the different noodle types.

I don't know that you would call them truly "authentic" recipes (as you will see with the dish I am making).  But they are clearly inspired dishes with approachable, easy-to-find ingredients, that can easily be made in the American kitchen.

The recipe I chose to make is the Pad Thai - the national dish of Thailand with its flat rice stick noodles, usually tossed with some kind of protein, eggs, and various garnishes in a light, sweet, yet tangy sauce.  It's good stuff.  And there are probably as many different recipes for Pad Thai as there are people.

This particular Pad Thai recipe (found here - this is the same recipe that is in the book) is made with shrimp, rice stick noodles, eggs, bean sprouts, and a number of different options for customization - scallions, chopped peanuts, crushed red pepper flakes, fresh cilantro, and a squirt of lime, if you so desire. 

One seemingly unusual ingredient is used to make the sauce - good old fashioned ketchup!  Traditionally, tamarind paste is used in the making of Pad Thai, which helps impart a particularly sweet, yet, sour taste to the sauce.  Pad Thai purists throw a fit at the notion of ketchup being used as a substitute to help achieve this flavor.  I am not saying it is right, but let's face it - you might not be able to easily track down tamarind paste, and virtually everyone has ketchup available to them.

Pad Thai from Asian Noodles

The Pad Thai was very tasty.  Plump, nicely cooked shrimp, bits of scrambled egg, and bean sprouts tangled around rice stick noodles is pretty hard to beat.  I went with all of the customization options - scallions, cilantro, chopped peanuts, crushed red pepper, and some lime.  I would recommend doing the same, as these ingredients add freshness, along with interesting flavors and textures.

If you didn't tell anyone there was ketchup in here, they would never know.  Sweet, tangy, salty, sour - the dish is delicious and balanced.  And even though the book didn't call for it, I would also recommend having a bottle of Sriracha sauce at the table for those (like me) who want some extra heat.  Good stuff!  

All things considered, this is a nice cookbook with a wide array of recipes, and it is a good introduction to cooking with Asian noodles.  I have made other successful dishes from this book, including Thai basil chicken with rice stick noodles, as well as the Singapore noodles.  It is a book I keep coming back to when I want to cook an easy, approachable Asian noodle dish.