Oh my lord, the rice noodles were great. My sauce wasn’t quite right; it lacked the depth and complexity of the sauce on the pad siew at The Thai Spice, but the noodles themselves were phenomenal. They were chewy yet light, springy yet yielding, crisped on the outside and tender on the inside.

Now I just need a really great sauce recipe. Anybody have any favorite Thai sauces? Generally I prefer the curry and basil type sauces to the peanut ones.

I was just poking around on allrecipes.com to see if they had any interesting variations on the pad siew recipe I plan to use. There were no hits on the search term “pad siew,” so I decided to try an alternate spelling I’ve also seen, “pad see-ew.” There were no hits on that either, but they did have an interesting suggestion:

No, as a matter of fact, I did not.

I love wide rice noodles. I’m talking seriously wide here, like 3/4″ to 1″. My favorite local Thai place (that would be The Thai Spice–my apologies to the aficionados of Thai Flavors; I acknowledge that the Thai Flavors people are superior human beings to myself and most others, and they do great community work, but when it comes down to it, the food is better at The Thai Spice) serves them. However, they are often unavailable, and I could never figure out why.

I talked to my foodie friend John about it, and he said it’s because they’re a fresh noodle, not dried, and they don’t store well. That means that they have to buy them in small quantities so as not to waste them, but unfortunately the demand often exceeds the supply. Therefore, sometimes I go there and am disappointed because their shipment hasn’t come in from Chicago. Also, The Thai Spice is a bit pricey.

So I set out on adventure to make my own Pad Siew, complete with homemade wide rice noodles. I made the noodles last night, and while it wasn’t difficult, it was a little labor intensive. I plan to cook them up tonight. If they turn out to be delicious, I’ll have to make them again for Denny (he’s out of town right now). If that comes to pass, I’ll have him photographically document the process, because it’s kind of interesting. It involves a jerry-rigged steamer made out of a big copper pot, four spoons, and a cake pan.

The most hilarious part is when you plop the contents of the cake pan out, and it looks like you have a squishy birthday cake made of rice paste. Delicious!