Pad thai gets a shot of authenticity

An Asian culinary immersion seminar for 14 Harvard University chefs spurred the makeover of one of the school's menu staples into a more authentic version. The intensive four-day workshop, led earlier this year by chef-instructor Shirley Cheng of the Culinary Institute of America, focused on Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisines, says Martin Breslin, Harvard’s director of culinary operations.

What Breslin and his team discovered was that they were doing some things wrong—especially with Harvard’s standard pad thai recipe. Through the CIA training, the chefs learned new techniques and ingredient combinations for this recipe and others that resulted in more authentic Asian dishes. “We designed an action station in our new cafe in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with two large woks and heated tables,” says Breslin. “Here, we are serving authentic pad thai and pho.”

Read on to see the changes they made.

One of the biggest changes was in the prep of the rice noodles. Previously, the noodles were soaked in boiling water (212 F) before stir-frying. “The water was too hot and caused the noodles to fall apart during cooking,” says Breslin. During the training, Cheng instructed the team to use 80-degree water for soaking—a change that softens the noodles just enough to keep them intact in the wok.

To give the dish a more authentic Thai flavor profile, the team swapped in the more intense dark soy sauce. Thai fish sauce added just the right amount of funk, tamarind paste some sour notes and roasted chili paste a little complex heat. The chili paste—called nam prik pao—was the only new ingredient Breslin had to source.

In most of Harvard’s dining venues, the pad thai is stir-fried to order in front of diners, who can specify their choice of vegetables and protein. In the works for a winter menu rollout is the addition of a make-your-own pho station in the undergrad dining halls.