For a typical restaurant plate serving, you would use about 1T of pickled radish per large serving. See recipe below. The Cook's Illustrated Pad Thai recipe is found in there Best Recipe book. It is fairly authentic. The interesting thing about Pad Thai is that many of the recipes for it were developed in the US before ingredients like tamarind paste were widely available. It is amazing the number of people who do not like authentic pad Thai as much as they enjoy the ketchup pad Thai, because so many Thai joints sell that version. A terrible problem with Thai food in the United States is the lack of skilled chefs practicing Thai cuisine (much like Chinese food here). Terrible thai food is pervasive here, from Manhattan to Mississippi. I have a much greater grasp of thai cuisine that I think most Thais, simply because nobody cooks in Thailand who is lower middle class or above. They simply purchase their meals on the way home from a street vendor or have their housekeeper cook. 99% of Thai immigrants to the US are not the poorer people who cook for a living. Most Thai restaurants are started on a whim by people who never cooked for a living in Thailand. Once after making a curry paste by hand with mortar and pestle, a pricey Thai restaurant owner/friend remarked, "oh just open a can, so much easier." If you are deeply interested in Thai food THE book to own is Thai Food by David Thompson ISBN: 1580084621. It is very heavy on text, but you will understand Thai food and it's history more than most Thais after reading it. Just don't go making your own shrimp paste, your neighbors will not be happy. I think my post with the recipe is deleted because it uses too many of Moulton's words. Here is a recipe I just wrote but haven't tested, since I rarely cook "Ketchup pad thai" these days, and never used a recipe when I did. If i have a chance to test this and refine it in the next few days I will post again. Cheap Thai Restaurant Pad Thai -Michael Strong Make sauce: 1:1:1:1:1 volumetric ratio of: Thai Fish sauce, Sugar (brown or white), ketchup, vinegar (apple or white), lemon juice. Adjust the taste of the sauce to be balanced in sweet, salty, and tart flavors. For each big serving (I cook most of this over med high heat): Heat 2-3 T oil in wok drop in an egg, scramble and chop at until cooked just firm. Throw in some pre-soaked rice noodles and enough sauce to give you a more wet or more dry dish. Stir briefly until noodles are coated. Add diced salty pickled radish 1T. Cook briefly, stirring constantly until sauce is reduced to your desired consistency (30 sec-2 min). Dump immediately into plate and top with chopped scallions, diced-fried garlic, quick blanched bean sprouts, chopped cilantro, and 1-2T of ground peanuts. Garnish with a lemon or lime. Serve with container of thai ground red chili (not finely ground cayenne, something closer to red pepper flakes if you're in a pinch). If you are fixing this for multiple people, it is really necessary to prepare everything in advance and possibly provide all the garnish at the table for individual service, then the pad thai can be cooked and served a la minute. It does not hold well at all.
