Pad thai

• 8 ozflat rice noodles · 1/4 inch wide, sold as banh pho or pad thai noodles
• 3 tbsptamarind concentrate · the wet paste, not the syrupy sweetened sauce
• 3 tbspfish sauce
• 3 tbsppalm sugar · chopped, or light brown sugar
• 12 ozlarge shrimp · peeled and deveined, patted dry
• 7 ozextra-firm tofu · pressed 20 minutes and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 3 largeeggs · beaten
• 3 tbspneutral oil · peanut or avocado, divided
• 4 clovesgarlic · finely chopped
• 1 smallshallot · thinly sliced
• 2 tbsppreserved sweet radish · optional, chopped, sold as chai poh
• 3 cupsbean sprouts · divided, half cooked and half raw
• 1 cupgarlic chives · cut into 2 inch lengths, or scallion greens
• 1/2 cuproasted peanuts · coarsely crushed
• 2 wholelimes · cut into wedges
• 1 tspchili flakes · to taste, at the table

Method

1. 1

   Mix the sauce before you turn on the burner

   Three tablespoons each of tamarind concentrate, fish sauce and palm sugar, warmed together in a small pan until the sugar dissolves, then tasted. It should be aggressively sour, salty and sweet all at once, in that order of prominence. Adjust before it goes near the noodles, because once the pan is hot you have ninety seconds of attention to spare and none of it for balancing a sauce. Buy tamarind concentrate, not tamarind sauce, which is sweetened and will make the dish taste like the bad restaurant version.

2. 2

   Soak the noodles, never boil them

   Cover the dry rice noodles in warm tap water for thirty to forty minutes, until they are pliable and bendable but still opaque and firm at the centre with a definite chalky bite. That is the target, and it looks undercooked because it is: the last third of the cooking happens in the pan, in sauce. Boiled noodles arrive at the pan already soft and turn to porridge on contact with liquid. Drain them well and toss with a teaspoon of oil if they are going to sit.

3. 3

   Press and fry the tofu first, then get it out of the way

   Press the tofu under a plate with something heavy for twenty minutes, which is happening while the noodles soak, then pat it dry. A tablespoon of oil in a hot pan, cubes in one layer, and leave them until they release and turn deep gold on at least two sides, about six minutes total. Then remove them to a plate. Tofu added later, with the sauce, absorbs liquid and goes soft, and browning it in a pan that already has noodles in it is not possible.

4. 4

   Cook in two batches, and understand why

   Pad thai is a fast stir-fry and a home burner cannot keep a full four servings hot enough. Everything in at once drops the temperature, the noodles release starch, the sauce boils rather than reduces, and you get a sticky mass. Two batches with the pan reheating between them takes four extra minutes and is the difference between pad thai and noodle stew. Use your widest, heaviest pan and get it genuinely hot before anything goes in.

5. 5

   Shrimp for ninety seconds, out of the pan while translucent in the middle

   Dry shrimp into a hot oiled pan in one layer, forty-five seconds a side, then out. They will finish in the residual heat of the final toss. Shrimp cooked all the way through at this stage and then returned to a hot pan for two minutes is the standard route to rubber. This is the same logic as searing beef in batches: the protein leaves the pan early and comes back at the end.

6. 6

   The egg gets its own patch of pan

   Garlic, shallot and the preserved radish in a tablespoon of oil for thirty seconds, then push everything to one side, pour the beaten egg into the empty half, and let it set for twenty seconds before breaking it up. Scrambling the egg into the aromatics from the start coats everything in a thin film of cooked egg and you lose the distinct soft curds. This is a small technique and it is visible in the finished plate.

7. 7

   Sauce onto the noodles, not into the pan

   Add the drained noodles, then pour the sauce directly over them rather than into the bare pan where it will scorch on contact. Toss constantly with tongs for two to three minutes. The noodles will drink the sauce and go from chalky white to glossy and translucent, which is the doneness signal. If they are still firm and the pan is dry, add water two tablespoons at a time, not more sauce, or the dish goes over-salted.

8. 8

   Sprouts and chives in the last twenty seconds

   Half the bean sprouts and all the garlic chives go in right at the end, tossed just long enough to wilt slightly and no longer. The other half of the sprouts goes on raw at the table, which gives you the temperature and texture contrast that makes the dish. Then the tofu, shrimp and egg fold back in, off the heat. Peanuts, lime and chili flakes are all applied by the person eating it, which is how it is served in Thailand.

9. 9

   Time honesty, and what the 55 minutes covers

   The stove time is fifteen minutes. The other forty is the noodle soak and the tofu press, which overlap and require nothing from you except being in the building. If you want this on a weeknight, put the noodles in water and the tofu under a plate when you get home and do something else, then chop while they sit. What you cannot do is compress the soak, and boiling the noodles to save half an hour changes the dish.