Pad Thai noodles. Well, almost. :)

So here’s the deal with me. Turns out, I don’t just like cooking for myself, I HATE it. But then, paapi pet ka sawal hain. And I must make something to fill this stomach, and especially after the evening walk, with the stomach rumbling in spite of all the fruits I had, I needed to eat something super fast, and it had to be interesting so that I don’t ditch it midway. So I really had to think long and hard this evening.
Quite sometime back, when I had freshly discovered cooking Thai food at home, I bought myself a pack of rice vermicelli Thai noodles. Along with many other groceries that I buy , this one was put in the pantry, and was hence promptly forgotten. Only last week when the maid was cleaning up the pantry, did we discover a whole load of items that I bought, all in good intentions to be cooked and eaten. But then, they followed the Life Cycle of Groceries in my kitchen!
Its like this – I see something interesting in the aisles in the mall, I buy it immediately, and resolve to make something delicious with it the same evening, or at the max, the next. So this item sits on the kitchen platform, waiting to be cooked. Weekdays are typically busy weeks, and considering the husband’s dislike for anything that is not Andhra food, this does not get cooked during a weekday. I then plan to cook it over a weekend, and like all other weekends, either we end up eating some place out, or I am too tired to make something and so end up eating rice-dal (always the husband’s suggestion!). So after a week of sitting on the kitchen platform, its location is changed to the pantry unit, which is where it will sit till it is rediscovered by chance.
Basically - in my kitchen, matter does not change its form or shape or even state. It just changes its location ;-)

I have been thinking I should make something with those noodles all weekend, and this evening seemed to be the right time. I quickly searched for some noodle recipe. Yeah yeah, I know its simple and all,but given the non-noodle-y (literally also ;-)) person that I am, this being my first time ever, and I needed some guidance from those awesome people sitting in my computer.
Pad Thai seemed interesting, but the procedure to make it seemed a little complicated for my at-the-verge-of-fainting-due-to-exhaustion-brain. Moreover, the dutiful wife that I am (Ha ha ha!) I was waiting for the husband to get to home before I do some decent vegetable shopping. The veggie compartment in the fridge just revealed bell peppers. That’s all! And the meal had to be healthy and veggie too, right? Phew! I just picked up the recipe for the Pad Thai sauce, read the instructions on the packet of the noodles on how to cook them, and got started.
Ingredients1/2 Onion – Chopped vertically
1/4 of a bell pepper – Red, yellow and Green – Chopped vertically
Handful of peanuts, De-skinned
8-10 cloves of garlic – crushed. (I use a traditional mortar and pestle for this.)
1 tbsp sunflower oil
100 gms Thai rice vermicelli noodles (or any Thai noodles)
Salt – To taste
Chopped Coriander leaves – For garnish

For the Pad Thai sauce 1 tbsp tamarind paste
1 tsp red chilli powder
4 tbsps hot water
1/2 tbsp soya sauce
1 1/2 tbsp sugar


ProcedureCook the noodles per the instructions given on its packet. Mine said I should soak the noodles in normal water for 5 minutes and drain it.

Mix all the ingredients for sauce, and keep it aside.

In a wok, heat the oil. Add the onion, crushed garlic and let it cook till the onions get soft, and pinkish. Now add the bell peppers, and let them all fry on a medium flame for 5 mins.

Add half the amount of the sauce to the wok now, and let the vegetables simmer in this sauce. Cook till the sauce gets absorbed into the vegetables, for about 5 mins on a medium flame. Add required amount of salt.
Now add the noodles to the wok and toss the contents. Add the remaining sauce (you can reduce the quantity if you are not greatly into tamarind) to this, and cook on a medium flame, till the consistency of the noodles is dry, the noodles look cooked, and the sauce is absorbed.

Note:

1. The quantities ingredients given here are to suit just one person, for dinner. You can easily increase the quantities
2. The instructions are suited to make almost-Pad-Thai noodles because the recipe I read over the internet for Pad Thai did not have peanuts, and I cannot imagine anything Thai without peanuts.
3. Bell Peppers are what I used. You can use any vegetables. Carrots, beans, sprouts, Chinese cabbage, cabbage. Anything.
4. If you are not as much into garlic as I am (I always double up the number of garlic cloves in any recipe!), feel free to cut it down. But trust me, it wouldn’t be as tasty without garlic
5. If you feel that your noodles could do with a little more tanginess, you can drizzle lemon juice on them before digging in. :)