The Perfect Peanut Pad Thai

Rob went away for the weekend, so I spent my time entertaining myself... I knit 2 neck cowls, an iPod sleeve, and am halfway through a case for my laptop cords. I also made my own Chai tea syrup, and my most recent triumph is the perfect Pad Thai.

There's a restaurant in Waterloo called Rain Tree Cafe, and I am obsessed (trust me, it's the only appropriate word for my love of this dish) with their Peanut Pad Thai. The sauce is spicy, creamy, peanut-y, and has this magic way of getting more delicious the more you eat it. You really should try it. Check out their website: http://www.raintreecafe.ca/index.html .

Ever since the first day I tasted it, I have been on a quest to find a comparable dish. I've tried about 10 different recipes and ordered it in at least that many restaurants, but to no avail. Nothing could be done to replicate the perfect deliciousity (I know it's not a word, but I'm a linguist and we're pretty much trained to make up new words!) of Rain Tree Cafe's Stirfry Pad Thai.

Until now. (cue triumphant music)

I was trying to think of what to make for dinner. We had bok choy in the fridge that needed to be used up. What had bok choy in it? RAIN TREE'S PAD THAI, that's what! But to go with it, I needed to make the perfect simple peanut sauce with what we had in the fridge. So, I Googled "simple peanut sauce" and it took me to this website and voila! I had almost all of those ingredients.

Here's the recipe the way that I cooked it.

Ingredients

1/2 cup hot water

1/3 cup peanut butter

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1/2 tsp salt (I didn't have any soya sauce, or else I would have used that, as per the recipe)

1 heaping tbsp diced garlic (from a jar)

1 heaping tbsp diced ginger (from a jar)

1/2 tsp of hot sauce

Directions

1. Mix all of the ingredients together.
2. Pour over stir-fried vegetables and/or noodles.
3. Prepare yourself to enjoy the simplest, most delicious sauce you have ever eaten.
4. Eat it.

I will need to do some tweaking - maybe more hot sauce, more ginger... Or maybe trying fresh ginger and fresh garlic. But this is pretty damn close to the deliciousness that they serve over at Rain Tree.

Try it out and let me know how you enjoy it!!