Fun With Carbs

Chicken satay with peanut sauce

There was a time a few years ago that I would have chosen my favorite meal at Northampton’s Thai Garden for my very last.

If you asked my more educated taste buds that question now, that final meal would be an interminable buffet of lobster, oysters, Indian food, sushi, great pizza, baked mac and cheese and fresh French bread with olive oil and roasted garlic (and that’s just for starters.) But Thai Garden would certainly make it to that spread.

We ventured up to the very cool college town last night for dinner, having reserved a spacious and semi-private window booth at the restaurant.

Though the menu is expansive and includes several specials, we stuck to our time-honored favorites  – squid prik pow for Rob, crispy pad Thai with chicken and shrimp for me, with chicken satay and crab rangoons as starters. why mess with tradition? He ordered a 20-oz. bottle of the Thai beer Singha and I asked for a glass of fruity red Beaujolais, which I always associate with this time of year anyway.

squid prik pow

My husband was getting grumpy-hungry (about the only time you won’t see him in a good mood) so he was relieved when the crab rangoons came to the table almost instantly. But as the crab/cream-cheese center was still semi-frozen, maybe they should have spent a bit more time in the fryer.

The chicken satay more than made up for those, though – they’d been well-marinated in what may have been coconut milk and were so tender they fell off the sticks. The accompanying peanut sauce was perfectly velvety and sweet with a hint of red curry spice. We have a tendency to sweep the peanut sauce bowl to the far end of the table so it won’t be cleared away with the rest of the dishes, since we like to use it on our entrees.

The squid prik pow entree, which Rob ordered with sticky rice, is a colorful mix of chewy tubular squid pieces and nicely steamed veggies (carrots, peppers, broccoli, baby corn and mushrooms.) The broth-like sauce seemed to incorporate all the elements of Thai cooking – sweet, salt, sour, spice.

Crispy pad Thai

My own pièce de résistance, the crispy pad Thai, is a dish that’s often entered my daydreams. Made with very thin, snappy fried rice noodles and tossed with shredded chicken, small shrimp, cooked egg, peanuts, bean sprouts and green onion in a sweet tamarind-based sauce, it was everything I’d hoped for. I’m so wedded to this version now that I have a hard time eating regular (read: unfried) pad Thai noodles. I’ve been known to finish the whole bowl, but I restrained myself enough to have some leftovers for breakfast.

Thai Garden has a selection of native desserts (chilled lychee and rambutan, fried banana and honey, ginger and coconut ice cream, Thai custard) but we hadn’t saved room for sweets. Nor did we have the energy or appropriate outerwear for a hike to Herrell’s, Northampton’s famous ice cream. (Don’t worry. Herrell’s will earn its own blog entry when the weather warms up again.)

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