Pad See Ew

I was telling a friend about my pad thai recipe over the weekend and she mentioned that she had given up on making a good pad see ew.  So of course, I decided to look around and find a recipe to try it myself.  I've made this twice this week (the noodles came in a two pound package) and it's a huge hit in our house.  The original recipe I found called for Chinese broccoli, but my kids liked it a lot more with regular broccoli.  If, like me, you have no idea what the difference between light and dark soy sauce is or which one you probably already have in your house, the soy sauce that you probably have is light soy sauce.  Dark soy sauce is a much more concentrated and thicker sauce, and it's a critical ingredient to this recipe.  You can find it online if you don't have a good Asian market nearby.

Pad See Ew

Ingredients:

• 1 pound Chinese broccoli
• 1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce
• 1 egg
• 1 pound Fresh Flat Rice Noodles
• 2 cloves chopped garlic
• 2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
• ½ cup thinly sliced pork
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions:

1. If your fresh flat rice noodles are not pre-cut, cut them into strips of ¾ inch wide. If your fresh noodles came out from the refrigerator, heat them up in the microwave first.
2. Cut Chinese broccoli into 2 inch long pieces. Halve the stems lengthwise because thick stems take longer to cook. You are going to want to cook them at the same time.
3. Heat a wok to high heat and then add oil. Drop in the chopped garlic and stir.
4. Add the sliced pork. Stir to cook the pork.
5. When the pork is somewhat cooked or turned from pink to light brown, add rice noodles. Stir to break up the noodles.
6. Add light and dark soy sauce and sugar. Stir to mix the seasonings into the noodles and pork.
7. Open a spot in the middle of the wok and drop the egg in. Scramble the egg until it is almost all cooked (not watery any more). Fold in the noodles and mix together.
8. Add the Chinese broccoli, stems first. I usually add half of the Chinese broccoli and stir until it wilts and then add the rest. But if you have room in your wok, you can cook all the Chinese broccoli at once. As soon as the Chinese broccoli is cooked, turn off the heat and serve.

Notes:
For a vegetarian version, skip the pork. Add firm tofu if you like.

If Chinese broccoli is tough to find where you live, try kale or regular broccoli.  You'll probably want to use less than a pound if you use broccoli, as it doesn't wilt down the way Chinese broccoli and kale do.