Pad Cha Squid

Pad Cha (literally, stir-frying with cha cha sound or sizzling sound of burning food from the hot wok.) is a very popular stir-fried spicy dish and commonly is seafood. Pad Cha dish has many different versions from different kinds of seafood for example squid, fish, shrimp, crab and or clam. Each kind of seafood may have slightly different flavors from different herbs beside the kind of seafood itself.

This dish has a very nice and strong fragrance from herbs which is good as the herbs be able to cover the smell of seafood and at the same time the aroma and nice flavor delight the palate.

This dish is not complicated to make, and it doesn't consume a lot of time to make either, to create a nice real Thai meal at home.

*All the ingredients are available at Asian grocery stores.

For 2 servings

Ingredients

1                         Fresh squid (about 400 – 420g.)

3                         Fresh Thai chillies or Prik Kee Noo (adjustable)

3 cloves             Garlic

½ cup                 Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil

¼ cup                Fingerroot (about 3 - 4 roots), shredded or cut into stripes

2 tbsps               Young or green peppercorn

2 - 3 tbsps          Vegetable oil

1 tbsp                 Fish sauce (adjustable)

1 tbsp                 Oyster sauce

2 - 3 tbsps          Water

Garnish (optional)

¼ cup  Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil – for deep frying in oil until crisp.

You can also follow the instructions from the video.

Instructions

1. Cut the squid tube in half lengthwise. Clean and remove the quills. Cut into rectangle or square pieces and cut each piece a criss-cross pattern on the inside of the squid.
2. Pound fresh Thai chilli and garlic in mortar until break to be small pieces or you can use a knife to chop chillies and garlic.
3. Place the wok on medium heat with vegetable oil and swirl the oil to cover the bottom of the wok.
4. Add the mixture of chilli and garlic, stir-frying until its sends the fragrance and then add squid and stir to mix well.
5. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, young pepper corn, fingerroot and stir to mix well and add the water on the wok beside the food and so that water will be hot before the water mix into food.
6.  At last, add Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil and mix into the mixture and stir until Holy basil wilt and remove from heat.
7. Garnish with crispy Bai Ga Prao. Serve hot with hot steamed Jasmine rice.