Pad Macaroni – Stir-fried Pasta!

This is bastardization at its best. It’s basically pasta with, um, tomato sauce. And when I say tomato sauce, I mean tomato ketchup. So I suppose a brilliant Thai person read about how the Italians eat pasta with tomato sauce and decided that ketchup should be used to flavour pasta! It’s one of those favourite childhood dishes simply because kids just love it. If you grew up in Thailand, you’ve had it. It featured in every school dinner.

We want to start off with some cooked pasta (macaroni, as the name suggests is generally the popular choice). As this being a bastardized Thai pasta dish, we want to overcook the pasta. No, I’m not kidding. I am suggesting you can forget all the al dente principle and just cook the hell out of the pasta the way the Thais generally do. This, after all, is a Thai dish. We also need half an onion, sliced. Half a carrot, sliced. A handful of sliced cabbage leaves and some chopped spring onions.

Just like my omuraisu, I used a hot dog (which is a very normal thing to do by the way) but you can used sliced chicken breast. Prawns are another popular choice.

So just like any other stir-fry, it’s a quick and easy thing. We start by frying off the hot dog in a bit of butter until it’s browned. Throw in the carrots, onion and cabbage. Toss around until the veggies are cooked (it might be a good idea to nuke the carrots for a minute or so in the microwave actually). Add the cooked pasta. three tablespoon of tomato sauce and a tablespoon of light soy sauce and stir around for a minute or so. Once it’s come together nicely, push the pasta to one side of the wok and crack an egg in. Scramble the egg around until it’s set slightly and toss the pasta over it (pretty much the way you would do to a fried rice). Fry until the egg is well cooked. Top with the chopped spring onions.

It may sound horrid but it’s really not bad. One has to wonder how one comes up with this. I have seen something similar at a Vietnamese restaurant but never got around to trying it (love the pho too much!)

And yes, I realise that I make a lot of pasta dishes.