Last week, my church celebrated Easter, which also included a potluck. I paired up with one of my roommates to make pad kee mao, using this recipe from RecipeTinEats. I’m a basil fiend so I was pretty into this idea. I’m more surprised at myself that I never made it before.

Since my roommate was busy hunting for Easter eggs with her students, that put me on duty of kitchen prep. This recipe also had to be scaled up because it was a potluck as well too so I ended up multiplying the amount by 7x.

Food Prep

There is so much garlic. Could I have used pre-minced garlic? Yeah. Could I have used peeled garlic? Yeah. Did I use either of those?

Nah. I instead decided to take the garlic bulbs we have, peel each clove, and mince them by hand.

The reasonable person would probably ask, “Bro why.” And I, unable to give an equally reasonable response or excuse, would say, “Because.” Mincing up all that garlic took me about 45 minutes and my fingers smelled like garlic for the next few days.

I have learned nothing from this.

The rest of the food prep was pretty straightforward.Out of mercy for those less resilient to spice, instead of the typical Thai birds-eye chilies, we decided to roughly chop 6 serrano peppers instead. I washed the pepper pieces in water a few times to get rid of the seeds. We also reduced the amount of cubed meat/boneless chicken thighs and added baby corn (cut length-wise) and a bag of Chinese broccoli. The rest of the prep of slicing up the onions and green onions and picking out basil leaves was also quick as well. The wide rice noodles just had to be softened and microwaved a bit. Making sauce was also pretty straightforward but upon initial taste test, it tasted more oyster sauce-y than I expected, giving me pad see-ew vibes more than pad kee mao. Nevertheless, I continued on.

I think I spent more time preparing the garlic than the rest of the steps combined, which probably speaks volumes of what my priorities and time management skills are like.

Cooking

At this time, my roommate came back wrecked from her Easter egg hunt and was ready to cook with me. We pulled out a wok and a non-stick deep skillet to cook two batches as once. It’s also worth noting here that these two types of cooking equipment do not cook the same. The wok tends to burn more easily and have stuff sticking on the bottom if you weren’t watching it constantly while the non-stick deep skillet was a bit easier to control but took longer to cook.

Honestly, this process proceeded very quickly and was slightly stressful, reminding me why I preferred baking over cooking to began with. The stress set in after I stir-fried the garlic/chilis and protein/veggies and started to stir-fry the noodles. Because of space, we modified the recipe a bit where we didn’t stir-fry the protein/veggies with the noodles but removed the former first to have more room to toss the noodles. I had to use two wooden utensils to keep stirring the ingredients around, especially the noodles which looked like they were about to burn or stick to the bottom of the wok at any time I wasn’t stirring. We also ended up using less sauce than expected, since it suspiciously started to look like pad see-ew. As we cooked it, the noodles naturally separated in the wok but started to fall apart the more that I tossed it. We then tossed the protein/veggie mixture, followed by the basil, at the very end to mix it properly.

What’s pictured below: Various stages of noodles being cooked

What’s not pictured below: Various states of panic, me trying not to burn/destroy the noodles.

My roommate also had the idea to blow-torch the noodles for a bit of wok-hei flavor. Honestly, though, I couldn’t really see that much of a difference in appearance or taste.

Verdict

Overall, it was decent. Not the pad kee mao I expected but it was good. The oyster-sauce flavor was predictably pretty strong and the noodles were wetter than we expected, resulting in a pad see-ew dish with basil overtones, rather than pad kee mao. Though the personal choices involved were chaotic, I think this would be a nice weeknight dinner dish. I would have added less sauce and also changed the proportions of the sauce to be less oyster sauce, and more fish sauce. I think we should have also cooked the protein/veggies with the noodles for longer, rather than separately and mix later for a better union of flavors.

I would have also added even more basil to this dish. Basil is the type of ingredient that I would add to any basil-containing dish with reckless abandon and an almost contemptuous attitude towards the original recipe’s amount.

Aight, cool.