Pad Thai Remixed
8-10 oz. dry rice stick noodles
1 white onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 package extra firm tofu, drained, cut, and patted dry
(for the tofu) sprinkling of nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, white pepper, and salt
1/2 cup raw cashews (or already roasted)
1 bunch rainbow swiss chard
3 slices ginger For Sauce:
soy sauce
Asian sweet garlic red chili sauce (it looks like a thick clear sauce with red chili flakes and
specs of garlic - not the one in oil or the one that looks completely red)
rice vinegar
vegetarian fish sauce
lime juice
First, start boiling your noodles- keep an eye on them and don't let them get too mushy! When done, drain and rinse with cold water.
Next, prepare everything for quick stir frying. Drain the tofu and cut into small chunks- pat dry to remove excess water. Sprinkle with some salt, nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, and white pepper (set aside). Wash and cut up the chard, onions, garlic, and ginger. The trick here is to quick fry everything separately in a hot wok. I start with a little vegetable oil, and fry the onions until slightly tender, then add the garlic for a couple more minutes- constantly tossing.
Remove this into a bowl, and toast the cashews-turning constantly until toasty. Remove and add a little more oil to fry the tofu. Cook on each side until slightly crispy. Remove and add the last batch of oil and add the ginger slices and the chard. Stir fry until wilted, then remove and dispose of the ginger. Remove the chard and start making the sauce by adding about a cup and a half of the sweet garlic chili sauce. Add a splash of vinegar, splash of veg fish sauce, and splash of soy sauce. Taste and adjust.
Toss to coat with all the other ingredients, noodles last. Squeeze some lime juice over the top, and serve hot.
Garnish with: lime wedges, chopped green onions, and cilantro
Source of recipe: I wrote this recipe.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
This was really good! We did some substituting because we didn't have all the ingredients, but the ginger with the chard was delicious.
We substituted the rice noodles with linguini, which ended up tasting fine. We also substituted almonds for cashews because they were on hand, and it tasted great toasted. We also baked the tofu while we were chopping and frying everything else, same spices recommended, just added a little sesame oil and baked at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, turning once. Might try it for 20 minutes next time, they were baked pretty good by the time we took them out. We also didn't have vegetarian fish sauce, so instead we used peanut butter-- SO GOOD. Not 100% pad thai-y, but still delicious. Also our asian red sauce wasn't sweet, so we added some sugar at the end. And we used sesame and olive oils instead of vegetable oil, so tasty. Combined them all together and it was GREAT. Really yummy recipe, will try agan!