Basic Bangkok

Everybody loves pad thai...it's tasty but it has a little too much going on for me.  I prefer pad kee mao (aka drunken noodles).  I've been wanting it for awhile but couldn't bring my self to spend $13 for a takeout order and I haven't been able to make it to Lemon Grass for the lunch price fixe menu. 

When I picked up the pancit noodles I also bought some extra large Thai rice sticks, thinking that I would eventually make something with them.  I did, tonight.  I found quite a few recipes on line, so I took elements that I liked and made my own sauce concoction AND I wrote it down.  I was just about to get started when I realized I was missing a key ingredient- Thai basil.  I certainly wasn't going to go back to Hmart, so I looked on Yelp for a nearby Asian grocer and found a Thai hole in the wall grocer (P&P) just a few blocks away.  He also had kaffir lime leaves so it looks like coconut milk soup (tom kha gai) might be on the horizon. 

I didn't have black soy sauce so I added molasses to regular soy sauce; mushroom soy sauce; oyster sauce; brown sugar; and rice vinegar.  I had planned to use anchovies in place of fish sauce but was nervous because the sauce seemed very pungent when I mixed it.  I stir fried my veggies (garlic, onions, sugar snap peas, cabbage) and seitan in chili oil...it was so hot that I was choking from the smoke, so I toned it down with a bit of rice bran oil.  Then I sauteed eggplant and Thai basil in grapeseed oil (I ran out of rice bran) while I stir fried the rice noodles in a separate pan (very sticky).  I mixed it all together with the sauce and was quite happy with the results - a very pleasant surprise. 

Of course, no Thai meal is complete without cha yen and yes I made THAI ICED TEA!