I've been reading Hungry Monkey, a great book about a Dad cooking simple, but wonderful, dishes with his little girl. There's a pad thai recipe in it that takes a bit of work to make the tamarind extract, but once done, the dish goes together in a couple minutes.
Whenever I make a dish like this I like to have a lot of room in the pan so the food doesn't suck ALL the heat from the pan. So, I got this heavy aluminum pan at Wasserstrom. It's killer. About $50, but we'll have it for life.
Ahh, Wasterstrom's, that's shopping I can get behind!
ReplyDeleteDid the tamarind extract come in a jar or a block? I've got a recipe that recommends using a block of tamarind, but all I could find was a small jar of extract. I'm going to give it a try this week and see how things go.
Hey Andrew. I got a block of Tamarind paste at Crestview Market (Crestview and N. High). Looks like a piece of fudge. I mashed up a 1/4 pounnd and poured boiling water over it (1.5 C) and let it sit while poking the insoluble mass. Then I filtered it using a flour sifter (odd but didn't have a sieve). The brown opaque liquid resulting was added to a mixture of sugar, fish sauce, rice vinegar and peanut oil. The resulting mixture can be frozen and portioned out per batch. I'll email you the recipe. I didn't want to post the recipe since it's not published anywhere yet. Don't want to give away the author's great work to all.
ReplyDeleteIndeed...I love, love, love Wasterstrom's! I had to go to an Asian market here in Dayton to find a block of tamarind when I made some Tamaraind BBQ sauce awhile back. I've used it a couple times and as I understand, the block has a pretty long shelf life...which is good, it's been sitting awhile.
ReplyDeleteI hope you love your new pan!
Dave - I would love to have that sauce recipe if you are willing to part with it. I love me some pad thai. Have you been to Nong's in Grandview? It is supposed to have the best in Columbus...
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