Thai food recipes range from fried rice recipes to noodle recipes, and pad see ew falls into the latter category. The name translates to ‘stir-fried soy sauce noodles’ and is one of Thailand's most popular street foods and a fixture on Thai restaurant menus everywhere. This noodle dish is the one people usually reach for right alongside Pad Thai, if not before it. Where Pad Thai has hints of sweetness and nuttiness, pad see ew is saltier and more savoury, with a bit of sourness, built around charred, caramelised noodles. This Thai food recipe is made with sen yai, wide, fresh flat rice noodles that are difficult to find outside Thai grocery stores. If you cannot source these or they're too expensive, go for dried Pad Thai rice noodles. These need to be soaked once cooked, according to the packet instructions, and they make a very good stand-in, as most home versions rely on them. The sauce is where a lot of the dish's character comes from. It uses dark soy sauce to add colour and depth of flavour, light soy sauce for seasoning, oyster sauce for savouriness, some vinegar to cut through the richness, and a little sugar to round out the flavour. What makes this Thai noodle dish irresistible is the caramelisation of the noodles that is achieved during the stir-fry stage. First, cook the protein and vegetables, then set them aside and cook the noodles with the sauce separately, in a nearly smoking-hot, decluttered wok. Clearing the wok before adding the noodles and sauce gives them room to actually sear against the hot metal for those crucial 60 to 90 seconds, picking up caramelised, slightly smoky edges instead of just steaming in their own moisture.