Duck Pad Thai

Rightly or wrongly this was one of tastiest and most colourful pad thais that I have made in recent times. Technically it is not a pad thai, it is more like a hot salad but I don't actually care about that. I couldn't get beansprouts separately so had to buy a pepper and peashoot salad pack from M & S. The original recipe source some iterations back is from Rick Stein's far Eastern Odyssey.

The origins of the dish are not very ancient, arising as it did in the 1940s driven by government and nationalism -not to mention a shortage of rice (hence noodles).

Ingredients

• 1 Pack Flat rice noodles

• 1 tbsp oil (see method)

• large piece of fresh ginger peeled and sliced

• 3 cloves garlic sliced

• 3 spring onions chopped into rounds

• good hand full of cashew nuts chopped small

• 1 red chilli pepper de-seeded and sliced

• 2 large duck breasts skin on

• 1 pack pea shoot and pepper salad (M&S)

• 2 tbsp tamarind sauce

• 2 tbps fish sauce (nam Pla)

• 2 tsps kecap manis

Method

Prepare the noodles

Bring a pot of water to the boil and add 3 of the noodle sticks to cook for about 5 minutes or until soft. Remove from the heat and drain. Then rinse with cold water to prevent them cooking further. Drain and set aside.

Prepare the aromatics

if not already done, peel and slice the garlic and the ginger and de-seed and slice the red chilli. Trim and slice the spring onions. Chop the nuts. Set all aside.

Prepare the sauce

Mix the nam pla, tamarind sauce and kecap manis together in a small bowl and set aside.

Pan fry the duck breasts

Heat a large pan without oil and then place both duck breasts skin side down. Sear for about 5 minutes before flipping over and repeating. The time allocated is dependent upon how well cooked you want the meat and how thick the breasts are. We prefer the centre to be pink and so we keep the cooking time short.

When cooked remove from the pan and set aside to rest for 5 minutes.

Assemble and final cook

Either remove the duck fat from the pan and use 1 tbsp sunflower oil or, better, keep the duck fat and use that to fry.

Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and fry for a couple of minutes on a high heat stirring to prevent burning.

Turn down the heat a little and add the sauce and stir well before adding the drained noodles ( which at this stage should be cool / cold).

heat and stir for awhile and then add the pea shoot and pepper salad and mix in quickly, allowing to heat for no more than a couple of minutes. Add the chopped nuts and give a final mix.

Slice the duck breasts thinly.

Serve the pad thai on warmed plates and top with the sliced duck breast.

Observations

Peanuts are more traditional than cashew nuts. Beansprouts instead of mixed stir fry vegetables. Duck breast is a lovely meat to have with this dish but alternatives are steak, chicken, prawn or tofu. A squeeze of lime juice would have aded a little extra flavour. Don't have too much sauce, it detracts from the overall flavour of the ingredients.