All you need is balance.
No, I’m not feeling particularly philosophical today. I am, however, hungry. For Thai. Specifically, gelatinous noodles coated in a creamy, salty, sweet, sour sauce.
Want to know a secret? It’s easy. It’s my go-to, last minute, bad grasshopper, “I haven’t thought about what to make for dinner and my house is empty” meal. The base is any kind of noodles: thick Pad Thai-style rice noodles, spaghetti, linguine, macaroni, penne – whatever you have. Then you add some kind of vegetable if you’ve got it, to dilute those sugars with some fibre. That could be thinly sliced carrot, onion, peppers, zucchini, eggplant chunks, seaweed, kale, swiss chard, spinach, arugula, parsnip…seriously, anything. They all need to cook different amounts of time, if at all (arugula, spinach and any other wilters), but when you really want pasta without the sugary carbs, there’s a trick.
There’s a recipe in “Beyond the Great Wall” for sautéed cabbage strands and it’s my favourite pasta replacement. The cabbage cooks down to almost soft, almost al dente. And you chew and chew and it’s not crunchy but it’s not mush either. And you end up eating SO much cabbage and loving it. Weird, right? Well, it’s all about the sauce. If you coat it in an addictive sauce you’ll never want to stop eating cabbage.
So this recipe is a mix of cabbage and pasta, since I wanted real noodles (well, gluten-free spaghetti – is that still real?) but also some crunch and colour. And boy did I get colour. The whole dish turns purple! It’s gorgeous! Kids might even like it, for goodness sake. Except it smells a little like cabbage. So maybe not. What do I know about kids?
Just try this recipe. It’s a bit like Pad Thai but way healthier.
Sweet-and-Sour Pad Thai-Style Pasta with Cabbage
1/2 package spaghetti noodles (I used gluten-free brown rice spaghetti)
2 tsp peanut oil, or other high heat oil (canola, vegetable, coconut)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 purple cabbage, sliced into thin strips
3 tbsp water, or broth
Sauce:
1/2 cup sieved tamarind (from a golf ball-sized knob of tamarind pulp soaked in 1/2 cup hot water for 30 minutes and pressed through a sieve to remove the fibres. Or 1/2 cup tamarind concentrate. Or 1/2 cup chopped rhubarb)
1/2 cup fish sauce (or gluten-free tamari or soy sauce)
1/2 cup palm sugar or unrefined cane sugar (or 1/3 cup brown sugar, or 1/3 cup white sugar + 2 tsp molasses)
2 tsp chili powder, or 1/2 – 1 fresh chili pepper, stemmed and optionally de-seeded
1 lime, to garnish
Directions
Combine sauce ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pour into a small saucepan and heat over medium heat. Stir to melt the sugar. When it comes to a simmer, adjust the balance to taste (more chili pepper – diced or blended with a little water – more tamarind paste, more fish sauce, more sugar). Remove pot from heat and set aside. It’s better to err on the side of mild for now since you can add more chili pepper slices or flakes at the table, but do as you wish. It’s a meal, not a dictatorship.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add noodles. Cook until al dente, about 8 minutes for my brown rice noodle spaghetthi. If using Pad Thai style thin white rice noodles, soak only in hot water. Don’t oversoak (or boil) or they’ll get mushy and fall apart. Once the noodles of whatever kind are al dente drain them and leave in the colander until ready to use. If they dry too much in the colander return them to hot water before using.
Heat a large wok or pot over high heat until very hot, to the point of smoking. Add the oil, then the garlic. Stir vigorously for 10 seconds. Add the cabbage. Stir 1 minute. Add 3 tbsp water (or broth) plus 2 tbsp of the Pad Thai sauce. Stir to coat cabbage. Cover and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook 5-8 minutes, or until cabbage is soft enough that you want to eat it like noodles. Add the drained rice noodles and almost all the remaining sauce. Stir to coat noodles. If the sauce evaporates too quickly and the pan starts to dry out add a few tbsp of water or chicken broth.
Serve with lime. Don’t eat it all. That’s a lot of cabbage and a lot of noodles.
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