Faux Pad Thai

The truth always comes out. Eventually. At least that’s the case in my family, when it comes to food.

As a young dad, I cooked a lot for my kids: Breakfasts almost always and dinners whenever it seemed the fare was getting a bit staid. One of my go-to favorites was a bit of a southern riff on cold Szechuan noodles, made with peanut butter, soy sauce, scallions, cayenne, and sesame seeds, mixed in with spaghetti. I loved it. I was pretty damn sure my kids loved it as well. Nope. Years later, with the three of us drinking cocktails in our soul food kitchen, they shared their inside jokes about the cold noodle dish I remembered so fondly so wrongly.

Oh well. Their loss.

Fast forward to a recent visit from my vegan daughter. My objective was simple: Stock the refrigerator with a handful of vegan sauces and let her go to town cooking for herself or (ideally) jointly with me. There was a walnut cream sauce, to underpin perhaps a black rice risotto. There was a tamarind and lime glaze, for a favorite tofu dish of mine. And I also decided to do a vegan version of Pad Thai sauce, which disgorged all these memories of doing that earlier cold noodle dish.

I think it tasted great. Then again, how can you go wrong with lime, peanut butter, tamari, cayenne, tamarind paste, onions, and chives? My daughter seemed to love it.

It will probably be another 20 years before I discover the true story.