Join twowildtides on the country challenge. Each week, we’re going to be heading to a new country (in spirit). Primarily, we’ll be cooking a meal from each country; but we’ll also be watching travel documentaries, reading travel blogs, and listening to music. During the global pandemic, travel was largely inaccessible. We want to reignite our wanderlust, satisfy our travel bug as much as we can, and learn some new things along the way. I have a feeling our bucket list will have a number of items added to it through this experience as well. We created a simple alphabetical spreadsheet with all the countries of the world, and each week we will draw a random number that corresponds with a country on the spreadsheet.
Thailand is a country on just about everyone’s bucket list. I’ll let Linds tell you all about it:
Thai cuisine is one of the most popular in the world, expertly blending sweet, salty, spicy, and sour flavours. Bangkok is known as the street food capital of the world. Rice is a key staple and Thailand is one of the world’s leading exporters. With all of this in mind, we decided to try to make an iconic Thai dish (it’s right in the name): Pad Thai. We followed this recipe by Hot Thai Kitchen:
When I started preparing this dish, I was skeptical until the very end. For some reason, I didn’t think, based on the individual ingredients, that this would come together at all. I love Pad Thai and it’s a go-to order for me at Thai food restaurants, so I really wanted to get this right– how awesome would it be to make close-to-authentic Pad Thai at home?! I had never used cooking tamarind before and couldn’t buy it locally, so I ordered some from Amazon. I couldn’t get palm sugar, so I used a close substitute, coconut sugar. We also opted for chicken instead of tofu. While everything simmered on the stove, I prepped the toppings.
Despite my hesitancy, this dish turned out fantastic. The flavours were spot on and the textures were perfect. I can see this recipe becoming a staple in our house.
Let us know what you think!