A Perfect Balance

One of my (underdeveloped) passions is cooking.  I like to create, but more importantly I like to eat!  I have however set myself the task of finding the perfect Pad Thai, a Thai noodle dish.  So far in New Zealand the best Pad Thai money can buy is at the little Thai place just back from Eastern Beach.  In Thailand, the best I have ever tasted was from a street vendor near my friend Yang's old place.  Needless to say the Thai version was better than the NZ version.

But now, I have set myself a new task - cooking the perfect Pad Thai.  Like most things in Thai cooking its all about balance - balancing the sweet, salty, sour and spicy...

In Pad Thai the salty is fish sauce which sounds disgusting and actually is if you know how its made...the sour is Tamarind which is not disgusting but is quite a strong flavour and hard to mask if you overdo it!  The sweet accent comes from palm sugar which has an interesting taste similar to brown sugar (which isn't a terrible substitute).  Pad Thai is not always served spicy but IMHO everything tastes better with chillies!  Getting the balance between these ingredients is key to making the sauce which coats the noodles.  Right now I have it about right...so working to refine it to perfection!

I'm sure its a metaphor for something, this balancing of extremes...