I'm not going to lie, cooking with rice noodles always freaked me out for some reason. Then again I have long consider most Asian wok style cooking outside of my abilities as a Chef. Part of this was feeling uncomfortable with the flavor palette, and some of it was my resistance to prep everything before cooking. I tend to cook my preparing and chopping as I go, which doesn't fly with wok cooking. But looking through recipes this weekend and faced with a serious and near constant craving for Asian and Thai food (I'm going to blame weekend chats with Brian that always involve a long discussion on what he's going to eat) I decided the time had come to put up or shut up.
So this is an approximation of Pad Thai. I must have looked through half a dozen different recipes for this. In the end I went with this one from Use Real Butter / Chez Pim because it seemed the most authentic, was scaled for one serving, and provided the most instruction and explanation. (In case there was any doubt the pickled turnips were omitted). Because of the snow i didn't feel like venturing to the Asian market (the Wegman's international foods isle had everything but taramind paste) so I was lazy and used a Pad Thai sauce. Worked pretty well, although the sauce is on the sweet side and needs some kind of spice to it. Aside from that the texture was awesome. And rice noodles totally not scary. It is jumping around the kitchen, king of the lab good. I will be making this all week. Fear conquered.
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