May 8, 2017 New Recipe – Shrimp Pad Thai for Dinner. Lunch – PPI French Onion Soup

May 8, 2017 New Recipe – Shrimp Pad Thai for Dinner.  Lunch – PPI French Onion Soup

For lunch I heated the PPI French Onion Soup and name croutons for the top of the soup by toasting two slices of Sliced French bread from Pastian’s Bakery, laying slices of Swiss Gruyere cheese on the toast p, and then melting the cheese covered toast in the microwave for 21 seconds to melt the cheese.


Suzette called on her way home to tell me she was stuck in traffic on the I-40 frontage road and asked if she should stop at Lowe’s for milk.  I said, “Yes, and mung bean sprouts, please, because we have everything else we need to make Shrimp Pad Thai.”  The reason we had all the ingredients was because last week when shopping at Talin I found for the first time a one pound bag of fresh flat Pad Thai noodles for $1.10, so I had the proper fresh noodles.

When Suzette arrived home, with the mung bean sprouts we had all the ingredients.  I searched the internet and found what appeared to be an authentic, no shortcut recipe on Epicurious’ website.

Here is the recipe.  It is complicated, but worth the effort.

The recipe called for 6 oz. of noodles and I had a 16 oz. bag of noodles so I tripled the recipe.  I also diced and added two cakes of deep fried tofu, that I bought at Talin last week.

Making tamarind paste

When we began assembling the ingredients we discovered that our instructions to Loyda to clean out the refrigerator had given rise to the throwing out of the tamarind paste and juice I had made a few weeks ago, so I had to process additional tamarind pods into pulp and juice.  This is easy but a little time consuming.  Essentially, you remove the outer husk and as many strings that bind the seeds and fruit.  You then simmer the fruit in hot water until the fruit falls apart into its constituent parts, seeds, strings, a white membrane, pulp, and liquid.

You push the mixture through a strainer to separate the pulp from the white membrane, strings, and seeds, which you discard.  This leaves the pulp and liquid, which you use for cooking.  In this recipe I substituted tamarind liquid for the water.  Here is a photo of the dried tamarind pods that I bought at El Super for $1.99/lb. before processing.  Note the brown husk and the dark inner fruit bound together by the strings.

The dish was really delicious.  We did not put the chili sauce (shiracha) into the recipe because neither of us wanted the spiciness.

We each had seconds and there was enough for another meal.

Bon Appetit

We cooked the tofu with the shrimp that we had defrosted and peeled.