Vegan Pad See Ew
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 package (about 7 ounces) wide rice noodles (the slimmer noodles can be substituted)
1/2-1 pound firm tofu, chopped bite sized
1/2 head Chinese broccoli, chopped bite sized
3 tablespoons black sweet soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons regular soy sauce (or bragg's liquid amino acids)
1 tablespoon vegetarian oyster mushroom sauce
lime, for garnish
1. Put the garlic and vegetable oil in a large wok. On medium-high heat, cook until garlic is golden brown. In a sauce pan, boil the rice noodles in water (no need for salt or oil, you'll be adding both later).
2. Once garlic is cooked, add the broccoli and tofu to the wok and saute until the broccoli is still somewhat crunchy (leaves are wilted and stems are darker green, about 1 minute). If you want to speed up prep time, add about 1/4 cup water to the wok (or other pan you're using) and cover to steam the broccoli.
3. Once noodles have cooked to just under done (I typically taste test one to see if it's close to being fully cooked), drain and set aside. Once your broccoli is ready, add the sweet soy sauce (this can be purchased at an Asian market, or you can make your own by mixing a 2:1 ratio of molasses or sugar to regular soy sauce), mushroom sauce (can also be purchased at an Asian market), and regular soy sauce.
4. Let the broccoli and tofu absorb the sauces for about a minute, then add your noodles. If the noodles are sticking together, add a little more vegetable oil to break them up.
5. Saute until the noodles have fully soaked up the sauces and serve. If you're unsure about the salty/sweet factor, taste test before serving. I always remembered it being a rather sweet dish, but I tried to keep the recipe fairly neutral. Garnish with lime.
If you cannot find the mushroom sauce, don't fret! It's still great with the sweet and salty soy sauces! This is one of my favorite dishes and if you go to an Asian market, you can get most if not all the ingredients for around $10 or less and make several meals out of it! Keep in mind, this is not a spicy dish, but could easily become one with chili flakes!
Source of recipe: I researched what is typically used in the traditional Thai recipe and basically went from there!
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I made this for me and the wife, way past our dinner time. We were doing something, then something else and lost track of time. Anyhoo, she sez, "Yoo can't makes this - it's tooo darned late. It'sTooLate." I tells her that I most certainly can, that it just LOOKS like a recipe that takes a long time. She sez, "It'sTooLate. I gunna have cereal - go eat some cereal."
I tells her, "Woman. You married meh. You best believe me, I'm gonna make this verah, verah-fast."
When she got up to eats some cereal, I told her, "Sit down and read dat Facebock, I'mGonnaMakeDinahVerahFast, and shaddup."
You know what? I made it verah fast and we ate it and we was both of us pleased.
This was really tasty. I couldn't find any sweet soy sauce so I tried the idea of mixing soy sauce and molasses. The mixture was pretty close to how my local thai's pad see ew taste. I added some carrots to the dish as well.
Simple and tasty! This is the first Thai-style dish I've attempted, and it turned out very good.
I had never tried cooking rice noodles before. I used a kind that was labeled as "10mm rice sticks" and they turned out to be the right kind. I boiled them for about 7 minutes, at which point they were slightly al dente but pretty well cooked. Next time I may cook them just a bit longer, since the final dish was a little more chewy than I like.
I also left out the tofu and just used a heavier helping of broccoli.
Thanks for this!