Spring Vegetable Pad Thai

What could be better than a big bowl of vegetable packed Pad Thai. Pad Thai is a classic Thai rice noodle dish tossed with a sweet and sour sauce, scrambled egg, bean sprouts, scallions, and served with lime wedges. Usually, it is made with some kind of meat, such as pork or shrimp. Being a vegetarian, I omitted these two items, and instead used an array of fresh, gorgeous spring vegetables. Of course, tofu cubes could be used as well.

My husband and I love Thai food, and especially Pad Thai, but are to frequently disappointed when we are served rice noodles swimming in that hideous, fluorescent pink sweet and sour sauce that you find in cheap Chinese food places. That is not Pad Thai. Pad Thai sauce is sweet and sour in flavor, but is brown in color, and the final dish is usually quite dry. The sour component comes from tamarind, a tropical pod like fruit that is processed into a paste. Tamarind paste can be found at any Asian grocery store. There is a great Asian grocery on the corner of Monterey and Johnson streets in San Luis Obispo. Tamarind can be bought as a paste, or as a big block of dried fruit with the seeds. If you buy the big block, just cut off pieces, soak in a couple tablespoons of hot water, and then press through a small sieve to get all the pulp but no seeds. The seeds are large, you won’t miss them. The sweet component of the sauce typically comes from palm sugar, but I just used brown sugar in mine. Fish sauce is the salty element of the sauce, but again, being vegetarian I omitted this part and replaced it with an equal mixture of lime juice and soy sauce.

I packed this Pad Thai full of beautiful spring veggies I picked up on Saturday. The asparagus still looks and tastes great, but is getting thicker by the week. The snap peas are wonderful and I had to use them here. Red scallions are showing up at the market, as well as green garlic. I also used carrots to add some color. I used the best eggs you could ever buy; Farmer Jim’s eggs from Park Organics. His hens are laying generous amounts of eggs right now, so buy them while you can. They have the orangest yolks you will ever see (yolk color is a reflection of nutrient content and of what the hens are eating; greens, bugs, and all that good stuff hens are suppose to eat), and the cleanest egg flavor you will ever taste. These are the kind of eggs I feel are worth eating. Anyways, enough with my ranting, on to the recipe! Once everything is prepped, this dish goes quite quickly, so don't be intimidated by the list of ingredients.

Spring Vegetable Pad Thai
Serves 2-4 as an entree

Sauce

-2 tablespoons tamarind pulp

-2 tablespoons brown sugar

-2 tablespoons lime juice

-2 tablespoons shoyu or low sodium soy sauce

Chili-Vinegar Sauce

-1/4 cup brown rice or rice wine vinegar

-1/2-1 teaspoons sambal olek or chili flakes

-1/2-1 teaspoon sugar, or other sweetener like agave nectar

Pad Thai
-10 ounces dry Thai rice noodles

-2 tablespoons peanut oil or other high heat oil
-1 bunch thin asparagus, trimmed and
cut into ½ inch pieces
-15 snap peas cut into ½ inch pieces
-2 thin carrots, cut in half and thinly sliced
-2 eggs, whisked

-5 red scallions, sliced

-1 cup fresh mung bean sprouts
-3 cloves garlic, minced
-1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

Cook the rice noodles according to the package directions. Set aside.

Whisk sauce ingredients together and set aside. Whisk chili-vinegar sauce ingredients together and set aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the peanut oil, or other chosen oil, in a large wok set over high heat. When a whisper of smoke shows, add in the asparagus and snap peas. Toss constantly with a large spatula for 1-2 minutes. Add in the carrots and toss 1 minute more. Push the vegetables up the side of the wok and pour the whisked egg into the bottom. Stir the egg constantly for 1 minute, or until scrambled. Toss the cooked vegetables back in with the egg. Add in the mung bean sprouts, scallions, ginger, and garlic. Toss constantly for 1 minute more. Remove the vegetables from the pan and set aside.

Immediately re-heat the wok with the remaining tablespoon of oil. When hot, add in the rice noodles and toss constantly, pressing the noodles to the side of the wok to slightly brown and sear. Toss for about 1-2 minutes, add the vegetables back in along with the sauce, and toss 1 minute more to combine. Serve hot with lime wedges and the chili-vinegar sauce.

Lime and Peanut Bathed Soba Noodles

This dish is actually a soba noodle salad filled with crunchy vegetables, cooling herbs, and a tangy lime-peanut dressing. I just think it sounds nice to be bathed in lime and peanut! I have been making soba noodle salads for a long time, and there are so many ways to vary this one recipe. Use calcium packed almond butter or tahini in place of the peanut butter, and change the vegetables and herbs according to the seasons. Replacing part of the nut butter with a light or dark miso will give the dressing a more dynamic Japanese flavor, while leaving it as is keeps the dish on the South East Asian side.

Soba noodles are a terrific, versatile ingredient. They are Japanese in orgin, and are made from a mixture of buckwheat flour and wheat flour. Sometimes wild yam is also added. Soba noodles have a darker color and heartier flavor than traditional wheat and rice noodles, which also work perfectly in this dish. Using a thin rice noodle would be more traditional to the South East Asian flavors of the other ingredients in the recipe, but I like the additional nutrition and flavor that soba noodles offer.

Buckwheat itself is native to Russia, and the so called grain is actually the seed to the buckwheat plant which is weed like and related to rhubarb. Buckwheat is grown all over as a crop cover to replenish lost nutrients in soil. It thrives is cold climates. The sprouted greens are quite nutritious as well and make a great addition to any salad. They have a very mild, earthy flavor. The grain is very substantial and will fill you up fast. It also digests slowly, so is wonderful for anyone suffering from blood sugar imbalances. Buckwheat is particularly high thiamine, riboflavin, and other B-complex vitamins. It is also high in calcium and phosphorus, as well as other minerals, and boasts quite a high lysine content (6.1%), which is greater than any other cereal grain. Buckwheat is also considered a good blood builder, removes toxic wastes from the body, and is good for the kidneys.

Soba noodles can be used in many different preparations other than this salad. They are great anywhere that a rice noodle or wheat noodle would be used in any Asian inspired dish. I particularly love them in a hot broth with fresh basil, cilantro, and jalapeno slivers added right at the end, finished with a squirt of lime. Very tasty! For the salad, make sure your mung bean sprouts and herbs are as fresh as possible. I love mint and cilantro, but any kind of basil would also be fantastic in this dish. I use shoyu in this recipe, which is an unpasteurized, naturally fermented soy sauce, but you can use low-sodium soy sauce if you like. I also use agave nectar (a syrup made from the same plant as tequila) because of its neutral flavor and low impact on blood sugar levels. Agave can be found in any health food store or Trader Joe's, is an excellent substitute for sugar, and is much more of a whole food.

Lime and Peanut Bathed Soba Noodles

For this salad, slicing the raw vegetables thinly is very important. I suggest using a Benrinner mandolin, but a sharp knife will work just as well. I slice the carrots into thin planks on my mandolin, and them cut them into very fine strips with a sharp knife. You could also grate the carrots on a box grater, or even peel them into long strips with a wide peeler.

Salad:

-6 oz dry soba noodles cooked according to package directions and cooled

-2 small cucumbers, sliced thinly into half moons

-2 small to medium sized carrots, peeled and cut into fine strips on a mandolin

-1 1/2 cups very fresh mung bean sprouts

-6 leaves crunchy lettuce such as romaine, sliced into thin strips

-1/2 cup cilantro leaves

-1/4 cup thinly sliced mint leaves

-1/4 cup toasted and chopped peanuts (optional)

Dressing:
-1/3 cup fresh squeezed lime juice

-1/2 teaspoon chili paste, or more to taste (I personally like more)

-3 tablespoons agave nectar

-2 tablespoons shoyu (soy sauce)

-1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger root

-1 clove garlic, minced fine

-3 to 4 tablespoons smooth, organic, natural peanut butter (use more if you like a thicker, fattier dressing).

To Make the Salad:

Combine the cooked and cooled soba noodles with all of the vegetables, but not the herbs. Combine well in a large bowl and set aside. To make the dressing, whisk together all ingredients until completely smooth. Taste to adjust seasoning with agave syrup, shoyu, and chili paste if desired. More shoyu means more saltiness, and agave more sweetness. Pour the dressing over the noodles and vegetables and toss to completely coat. Add in the fresh herbs. Remove the salad with tongs from the large bowl to a serving dish or tray. Sprinkle with the chopped peanuts. Any dressing leftover in the bowl can be used on any other salad.

Ginger and Garlic Stir Fried Snap Peas

Stir frying is one of my favorite cooking methods. It is usually quick, tasty, and interesting, especially if you are a fan of assertive flavors such as ginger, garlic, and chilies. Snap peas, and also snow peas, are both great for stir frying because they hold their shape well during cooking, are easy to cook in whole form, and are the best when served crisp-tender (tender to the bite but with a little bit of crunch still left).

Here is a quick spring pea identification lesson: Shelling peas, or English peas, are thick, full pea pods with distinctive tender whole green peas inside. Usually these peas are shelled from the pod and then used, and the pod can be used for soup. Snap peas are pods that are a little less full, and a bit smaller than shelling peas, but still contain a whole green pea inside. Both the pod and pea are eaten together as one whole unit rather than separate, and usually the pods need to be de-stringed. Snow peas are wide, very flat pea pods with just the start of green peas forming inside. These too are eaten as one whole unit, and also need to b de-stringed. Snow peas are what we typically see in Asian stir frys. Any of these peas could be used for this recipe.

The issue with stir frying is that it needs to be quick and done over high heat. This can take some practice. My advice is to have everything that will be used in the stir fry cut and ready to go before the pan even goes on the burner. Have everything close at hand so that you can go straight from one step to the next without hesitation. This makes stir frying a whole lot easier. I also feel that a gas stove is the best for stir frying. The heat can be controlled easily, and gas stoves usually have enough power to keep the wok hot. When stir frying, add the ingredients to the pan according to how long they will take to cook. For dense ingredients, such as carrots, broccoli, and onions, slice thin or cut into small florets and add in the beginning. For aromatic ingredients such as garlic, ginger, and chilies, mince and add more towards the end to keep them fragrant and fresh. Eggplant, sliced peppers, cut green beans and peas, and summer squash can all be added in the middle of the stir frying process, again, depending on what ingredients are being used. Add delicate greens and herbs right at the end, along with any sauce ingredients. Most any vegetable can be stir fried, so try this recipe with any of your favorite seasonal vegetables. some of my favorites are summer squash with the addition of Thai basil, broccoli florets, sweet potato slices, green beans, and asparagus.

Ginger and Garlic Stir Fried Snap Peas

-2 teaspoons coconut oil or olive oil (I prefer an unrefined coconut butter or oil for stir frying)

-3/4 pound de-stringed snap peas

-2 whole scallions, sliced thin

-1 generous tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger

-1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic, about 4 cloves

-3 tablespoons vegetable stock or water

-1 teaspoon chili paste (optional if you like a little heat in your stir fry)

-2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

-2 teaspoons sesame seeds

-Salt to taste

Heat a large, flat bottom wok over medium high heat. Add in the coconut oil/butter and as it melts scoop the oil up the sides of the pan to coat. Add in the snap peas and stir fry continuously until the peas begin to turn a bright green and ever so slightly soften, about 3-4 minutes. Add in the scallions and again stir continuously until they begin to wilt, about 30 seconds to a minute. Add in the minced ginger and garlic. Stir fry continuously until the ginger and garlic become very fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Add in the vegetable stock, stir to coat the peas, and cook for about2 minutes more, or until the peas are a crisp tender. The stock or water will help to soften the peas just a little and to moisten the whole mixture. Add in the chili paste if using. Turn off the heat and mix in the sesame oil, seeds, and salt to taste.