This Is The Bestest-Ass Pad Thai We’ve Ever Eaten

This week’s Foodspin takes us to Brooklyn. BROOKLYN! Pickled beards! Strollers made from discarded almond husks! Dickheads! You know the deal. Anyway, our cooking master for this episode is stoner food god and former Top Chef contestant Dale Talde, who served us a bacon pad thai that was the best goddamn pad thai we’ve ever eaten, with nary a pile of useless bean sprouts to be seen on the plate. This is easily our food-porniest installment of food porn yet, so feast thine eyes and then make it yourself.

Summarily inspired, Burneko and I made a soup and sandwich combination for Talde. The soup is a coconut oyster pan roast. The sandwich was a fried shrimp PO BOY (yes, we’re calling it a “po boy”, come at us) with pad thai glaze and bacon bits. Here’s how to make both:

COCONUT OYSTER PAN ROAST

4 slices bacon, cut up into little piece

1 stick butter

1 shallot, chopped

1 knob ginger, grated

1 Fresno chile, sliced

Zest of 1 lime

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup coconut milk

1 tsp fish sauce

8 oz. clam juice

2 cups dry sherry

1 lb. fresh oysters, shucked

1 pint heavy cream

Chopped cilantro

Sliced pink radish

Heat up a large pan and toss the bacon bits in, getting them nice and crispy. Remove the bits and drain all but a teaspoon or so of the fat. Toss the butter into the pan and melt it, then add the next six ingredients, stirring until they’re nice and soft. Then add a ¼ cup of the sherry and reduce it down. Then add the coconut milk and stir it until it’s nice and fragrant. Add the fish sauce, clam juice, and the rest of the sherry and simmer for five to ten minutes. Then add the bacon bits and the oysters (brine included) and cream and simmer for another five minutes. Top with the cilantro and a slice of radish.

SHRIMP PO BOY WITH PAD THAI GLAZE

1 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 cup corn meal

2 cups pad thai sauce (recipe at the link above)

Hot dog buns, toasted

Bacon bits

Lime wedges

Chopped scallions

Fill a deep pan with oil and heat it up. Dredge the shrimp in the corn meal and then place them gently into the hot oil, no more than three at a time. They should cook VERY fast, in and out in under a minute if the oil is hot enough. Remove the shrimp and dunk them in the sauce. Then put the shrimp in the rolls and drizzle them with more of the sauce. Top with bacon, scallions, and garnish with the lime wedges. Dunk that shit in the oyster roast when you eat it.