Like a lot of people around the world, I love pad Thai, with its intricate and craveable combination of flavors and textures.
But it’s because I love pad Thai that I stopped ordering it for delivery a long time ago. The stir-fried noodles were always gloopy and globbed when they arrived at my door. The flavors had dulled, and the contrasting textures that make the dish so delicious in restaurants had all slumped together. Like tacos, pad Thai is one of those foods that’s meant to be eaten the moment it’s assembled. Every minute after that, you’re looking at diminishing returns.
This is why I promise it’s better (and very easy) to make pad Thai at home if you can’t go to a great Thai restaurant to get it freshly cooked. In addition to a delicious pad Thai recipe that uses fresh shrimp, we have a new vegetarian (and easy to veganize) version below, along with four other great options for the week.
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I’m also making:
Extra-green pasta salad (again! It’s that good!); grilled steak and asparagus; stamped citrus shortbread; overnight oats.
1. Vegetarian Pad Thai
It’s tricky to make great pad Thai without fish sauce, an ingredient that delivers a distinct punch. But Hetty Lui McKinnon, a genius in the kitchen, has made it happen. Her new vegetarian version doesn’t exactly replicate the original, but she uses a combination of lime, soy sauce, maple syrup, miso and tamarind to make an alternative that strikes the right sour-sweet-salty chord.
2. Honey-Garlic Chicken
Chicken breast lovers, this one’s for you: Yasmin Fahr’s super-simple recipe with a pan sauce made from honey, soy sauce and butter. I’d eat it with rice and something green — bok choy, broccoli, green beans, spinach, asparagus and so on.
3. Slow-Roasted Citrus Salmon With Herb Salad
Even “slow” can be pretty fast when it comes to salmon, as is the case with Alison Roman’s recipe, which takes about 25 minutes in the oven. You can use individual portions of salmon, rather than one big fillet, though it’s not any more difficult to cook the one big piece and it makes the dish far more beautiful. And I’ve found you can get away with using a lot less olive oil and still have something delicious.
4. Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta
This simple, brand-new Eric Kim recipe — a gorgeous, vegetable-enhanced rendering of the classic — is starting to rack up the five-star ratings. Get in on this early!
5. Sheet-Pan Shrimp With Tomatoes, Feta and Oregano
This is a New York Times Cooking classic from Mark Bittman that really, truly can be made in 10 minutes. I’d use halved cherry or grape tomatoes this time of year; in summer, chop up any tomato that promises to be extra juicy and full of flavor.
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Emily Weinstein is the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking and Food. She also writes the popular NYT Cooking newsletter Five Weeknight Dishes.
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