[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Maya. Welcome to my kitchen. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada where we had some great Thai restaurants. One of my favorite dishes growing up was Pad Thai. So we had to find a way to recreate Pad Thai and had to find a way to make it gluten free for my little boy who can't have any wheat in his diet. It's very simple to make and I'm going to show you how. It's more like assembling things than actual cooking. The first thing we have to do is boil some water and pour it over these lovely rice noodles. And while we're assembling the other parts of the pad thai, those noodles are going to soak, but they're so thin that they don't actually need much time in there. The next thing we're going to do, we've got some nice wild prawns here, they're deveined and peeled, lucky for me. And I'm going to just basically heat up a little bit of sesame oil, and I'm going to saute some nice, finely chopped shallots. You can use white onions or shallots, and I'm going to saute these with a little bit of finely chopped garlic. We're actually going to add a little bit of Serrano chili. I know you think that my children won't eat this if I put chili in it, but if I put just a little bit in they don't even feel the heat and it just adds to the flavor. It's really nice addition. So I'm going to give the shalots and garlic a minute headstart, while I start getting the serano chili ready. I've taken one of these guys, and basically cut the flesh off, and removed the seeds, because the seeds are a killer, they make it really hot. And then I'm going to take a garlic press, so that no poor family member ends up with a big chunk of Serrano chili and I'm going to just squeeze my Serrano chili through this press and scrape off the little bits. There's hardly anything in there. Nobody is going to complain. I have to say sometimes authentic Thai cuisine is even a bit too spicy for me. So this is my own slightly modified version. Okay so we're going to just let those move around in the hot sesame oil. And once we see them going a little bit glassy I'm going to add the prawns. [MUSIC] Okay. And these prawns are really quick to cook. What you're looking for, they start out kind of translucent looking and you're looking for them to become pink and opaque. And while they're cooking on the one side, I'm just going to lightly salt a little bit, not too much because the sauce we're going to be adding is going to be salty as well. And I'm going to add a touch of pepper, just to bring out the flavor so I'm going to let these prawns cook for a minute on this side. I have my pan at a nice high temperature so that they'll cook quite quickly and they'll seer nicely and keep the moisture inside. [SOUND] And while those are cooking, I'm going to mix up my Pad Thai sauce. It's a simple sauce, it's got some fresh lime juice, some sugar to balance the sourness of the lime juice, and fish sauce. This is kind of odd smelling when you smell it on its own. But in this pad Thai it's an amazing taste. Okay, so I'm going to just mix that up so that my sugar dissolves. [MUSIC] And I'm also going to sprinkle a tiny bit of paprika onto my prawns once I flip them over to add a bit of color that nice orange color. This is a very quick dish you can make this in 15 minutes and it's flavorful, it's nice and tasty, it happens to be gluten free by the way. If you buy a fish sauce that's gluten free the whole dish is gluten free because the noodles are rice based. [SOUND] And you want each of the prawns to get a chance to be right against the hot surface of that pan. I bet they'll cook nicely. In the meantime I might give my noodles a little stir, make sure they're not clumping up. [MUSIC] Okay. So this is the moment where I'm going to sprinkle a little bit of paprika for color over our prawns. [MUSIC] I don't think paprika is a traditional Thai spice, either, but I could never figure out how they got the Pad Thai to be pink, so this was my solution. Okay, we're going to toss those prawns, and you can see now that they're all nice and opaque. The tails have gone pink [SOUND] and they're kind of bouncy when you push down on them with a wooden spoon. So that's how we know that our prawns are thoroughly cooked. [SOUND] Okay, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to remove my prawns from the heat, so that I can start preparing my other components of the Pad Thai. Okay, and the next thing we have to do is scramble a little bit of egg. So, I've got two eggs here, and I'm just basically going to use a fork to kind of break the yolks and scramble these very roughly, they don't have to be whipped until they're fluffy or anything like that. I'm going to add a little bit more of my sesame oil to the pan. And, I'm going to scramble my eggs. [SOUND] It doesn't matter if it gets some shallots and little bits of garlic in there. It'll just add to the flavor of your dish. Okay, eggs are lightly scrambled. I'm going to remove my pan from the heat and turn that down. And then I'm going to go and strain my noodles over the sink. I'm going to use some hot mittens because the bowl might be hot. Okay. [SOUND] Okay, so my noodles are drained and my egg has been scrambled. I'm going to put it back on the heat. And, now comes the part where we put all the pieces together. Okay, so I'm going to put my prawns in with the scrambled egg. And then, I'm going to pour my noodles on top. And now the magic, the sauce. And we're going to basically drizzle this over our prawns and our noodles, and the noodles are going to kind of continue cooking in the flavor of this sauce. I think this is the secret to a good Pad Thai. The sauce is actually going to absorb into the noodles a little bit so that they get a nice flavor. While all of that sauce nicely soaks into the noodles, we're going to get our garnish is ready, I have some freshly chopped cilantro. That's such a good smell. Some chopped peanuts, lime wedges, and some mung bean sprouts. And our Pad Thai is almost done. My sauce is nicely soaked into all the noodles. All that flavor is locked into the noodles. I'm just going to take it off and garnish it now. This is the fun part. This is where cooking and art meet. I'm just going to make sure that some of the prawns are visible on top. You can actually serve this in the pan that you cooked it in nobody will mind it's so authentic. I'm going to start with my mine bean sprouts and just sprinkle those around. On top and then my cilantro. You can be generous with the cilantro, it adds a nice freshness to the kind of soft comforting noodles. I'm going to take my lime wedges and just sink them in randomly. Okay and then finally my peanuts. And there you have it, my version of a Pad Thai. I'm Maya, thanks for joining me. Hope to see you again soon. [MUSIC] [SOUND]
