Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Dream of the 90s

Just a quick check-in tonight. I've been holiday shopping all evening, and I just got in. And I'm pooped. But I wanted to show y'all the Tofu Pad Thai I made tonight!


It's for my retro vegan cookbook, and I'm not 100 percent happy with the recipe just yet. It needs some tweaking. I made a homemade pad thai sauce using vegan fish sauce and tamarind paste (and some other stuff), but I used too much tamarind, and the sauce was really tangy. It mellowed out a little when mixed with the noodles, but the recipe still needs toning down. 

The tofu was tossed in cornstarch and dry-fried before adding the garlic, scallions, cabbage, carrots, and mung bean sprouts. Nothing beats that crispy texture of dry-fried tofu.

You might be wondering what's so retro about pad thai. Well, remember the 1990s? Thai food was ALL THE RAGE. It's still great and available all over the place. But in the 90s, Thai restaurants were popping up in big cities like weeds. I mean, really anything "ethnic" was huge in America in the 90s. It was also a big time for fusion cuisine, so the 90s chapter will have plenty of that too. 

Just a warning: You will see this picture again soon in a review of that red sauce on top. But more on that later this month.

4 comments:

Christina said...

What brand/kind of vegan fish sauce do you use?

Bianca said...

Christina, I can't remember the name of it. And I'm not at home right now. But it's a brand from my local Asian market. It's imported. Not sure if the name is even in English.

Susan said...

Thanks for that ear worm. ;)

Unknown said...

I don't like eggs but maybe I would like these (not vegetarian but I don't like eggs)