Pad Thai is often called the signature dish of Thai cuisine. There are several regional variations, indeed it has been said that Thailand has a different curry for every day of the year, but a different pad thai for every cook in Thailand! This is my wife's variation.

This variation uses a small amount of khao koor (powdered fried rice), which occurs as an ingredient in several other Thai recipes. You can make a small amount and keep it almost indefinitely in a jar with a tight lid.

You also need a cup of dry roasted, unsalted peanuts. We roast them in their shells on a charcoal brazier, but you can do it just as well in an oven, or even in a skillet. However, they should be freshly roasted to bring out the full flavor for this dish.

noodles or indeed any rice noodles will do). These should be soaked for a short while (perhaps 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the brand of noodles) until soft.

Method: Heat a little cooking oil in a wok and add the garlic and shallots, and briefly stir fry until they just shows signs of changing color. Add the remaining ingredients except the egg and the bean sprouts, and stir fry until the protein ingredient is nearly cooked. Continuing to stir with one hand, slowly "drizzle" in the beaten egg to form a fine ribbon of cooked egg (if you don't feel confident with this make an egg crepe separately, and then roll it up and slice it into quarter inch wide pieces, which you add to the mix at this point). Finely add the bean sprouts and cook for no more than another 30 seconds. Remove from the pan to a serving platter.

Garnish: Mix a tablespoon of lime juice with a tablespoon of tamarind juice and a tablespoon of fish sauce, and use this to marinade half a cup of uncooked bean sprouts, half a cup of chopped chives, and half a cup of very coarsely ground roasted peanuts. Sprinkle this mixture on the cooked pad thai. Cut several limes into segments and also slice up some cucumber into rounds then halve the rounds. Put the lime segments and cuke segments around the serving platter.

You can also sprinkle a quarter of a sliced up banana flower and some Indian pennywort leaves over the top as edible decoration.

Pad thai is served as above, but Thais add copious amounts of the four basic condiments (chilis in fish sauce, ground dried red chili, sugar and crushed peanuts) at the table, to suit their individual predilections. Colonel Ian F. Khuntilanont-Philpott Systems Engineering, Vongchavalitkul University, Korat 30000, Thailand

Chile-Heads Digest V2 #246

From the Chile-Heads recipe list. Downloaded from Glen's Mm Recipe Archive, http://www. Erols. Com/hosey.