Next at Home: Tour of Thailand: Practice Pad Thai

Going into this menu, this dish is all I knew about Thai cuisine.  I had had this dish many times at a Thai restaurant during my time on Illinois' campus in college and loved it.  In researching the history of this menu, I didn't think it would be a part of the meal but I got pretty excited when I saw it in the cookbook.

There were lots of components to this dish and I started with the egg custard.  Heavy cream, fish sauce, salt, white pepper and eggs. 

All the ingredients were mixed together with an immersion blender and prepped for cooking. To cook the mixture went into a vacuum bag and into a pot of water to cook sous vide at 167 degrees for an hour.

Once cooked, I chopped up the now solidified egg mixture and reserved it for plating. 

One of the garnishes for this dish was fried garlic.  I took some canola oil and garlic slices until they were golden brown.

The completed garlic

The second garnish was fried shrimp.  I took some dried shrimp and put them in some oil as well.

The completed shrimp.

The final garnish is called a chili rock.  This being the second menu that Next ever did I believe that this is the first time that they went the molecular gastronomy route and it was only for a minor component of one dish that was only served to maybe 12 people a night when this menu ran.  I say 12 people because I'm pretty sure this dish was only on the kitchen table menu.  Anyway, this component is tapioca maltodextrin (yes I have this laying around in my pantry, yes I know I'm a nerd), salt, a little bit of chili oil from a component of another dish I've started, and a thai chili. 

I mixed the ingredients together and put them under vacuum and set them aside until I was ready to plate.

Pad Thai isn't pad Thai without noodles, so I started with rice noodles, grape seed oil, salt and water. 

The rice noodles were boiled off in some of the water. 

Once the noodles were cooked there were tossed with the grapeseed oil to prevent sticking together.

The final bit of raw garnishes include tofu which was cut down into cubes, Chinese long beans, carrots, beans sprouts and radishes.  The radish was cut into thin slices, the beans and bean sprouts were sliced into bite size pieces and the carrot was broken down into a zig zag shape.

The final piece of this puzzle was the sauce.  The sauce required, shallots, water, fish sauce, garlic, galangal, palm sugar, tamarind paste and thai chiles.

I fried off the shallots, garlic, thai chiles and galangal in some oil until cooked through.

Once the veggies were cooked I added the palm sugar until a form of caramel had been formed.

Once the caramel had been made, the fish sauce and water went into the pot and simmered for about 15 minutes.

The final garnish was the fried rice noodles which were fried off in some olive oil.

I tossed the boiled noodles in the sauce until they were coated.

And the finally, the final plating, a very composed dish and there are certainly some things that need to improve.  But overall, a very solid dish.