I checked the small Asian market around the corner from our apartment building, but didn't find anything. I asked the store owner just to be sure, and this is how the conversation went:
Me: "Excuse me, do you have thick black soy sauce?"
Store owner with a thick accent: "Black?"
Me: "Yes, thick black soy sauce."
Store owner: "Hmm... black... black... oh! Black! Yes! Here, black."
She pointed to a jar of black bean curd. I realized the language barrier was too high.
I thanked her politely, checked one more time, and headed home.
So anyways, my friend Melissa had told me about Ranch 99, a ginormous Asian market just a couple miles from my place, so one Tuesday night while Adam was in his night class, my friend Emily and I hopped in the car and took a field trip to Ranch 99 in search of the soy sauce.
We found more soy sauce than one could use in a lifetime... a whole aisle of every variety you could imagine! Including, I might add, House Wife Soy Sauce.
We found our thick dark soy sauce, and we also found some interesting kinds of ice cream, like this one:
If you can read that, it says "Corn and Cheese Icecream". No thank you.
So our search complete (I found the Chinese broccoli at a farmer's market a day or two before), we headed home to make Pad See Ew.
We went off of this recipe from Chez Pim.
Mmm... sauces.
I love that Emily chopped all the garlic. I dislike chopping garlic, but it's always oh so worth it.
Cookin' up a storm
The picture's upside down, but this is the final product. SUCCESS!!
Here is Pim's photo:
Her recipe is here: http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2008/01/pad-see-ew-for.html
Oh and by the way, this whole time I thought I was eating an exotic Thai dish, but Pad See Ew means "Stir-Fried with Soy Sauce". Haha! That's about as generic as it gets.
