Imagine if there were a dish created to suit every need: a meal to celebrate first-date anniversaries, the last day of school or to help ease a potential hangover. Well, thanks to the genius of Thai cooks, a dish for the latter does exist in the form of today’s recipe for pad kee mao, or drunken noodles. These wide, flat noodles are coated in a hot, salty and sweet basil and tamarind sauce, which is brought into sharp focus by some bitter radicchio, broccoli and lime. They won’t stop you from doing anything silly on New Year’s Eve, mind. As far as I’m aware, there are still no recipes for that.

Drunken noodles with radicchio, Tenderstem and tofu

Prep 15 min

Cook 30 min

Serves 2, generously

200g wide flat rice noodles

6 tbsp dark soy sauce

2 tsp tamarind paste

2 tsp palm sugar

280g firm tofu, cut into 2cm cubes

3 tbsp cornflour

Rapeseed oil

4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced

3 bird’s eye chillies, finely sliced

300g Tenderstem broccoli, stalks cut into 1cm pieces at an angle, tops left whole

1 head radicchio (about 340g), trimmed and cut into ½cm strips

1 bunch Thai basil, leaves picked (around 20g)

1 lime, cut into quarters

Best eaten with a little firewater on the side. If you’d like to make it for four, just double the quantities, but go easy on the chillies.

Put the noodles in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Stir with tongs to separate, then set aside. Mix the soy, tamarind and palm sugar in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved, then set aside.

In a shallow bowl, coat the tofu cubes in cornflour. Put a large frying pan for which you have a lid on medium heat, and add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Tap off any excess flour from the tofu and, once the oil is hot, fry the tofu pieces, turning them regularly, for a couple of minutes, until crisp and golden all over. Using tongs, lift the tofu from the pan and transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper.

Drain the noodles in a colander, and shake off any excess water. In the same pan, and using the oil left in the pan (add more, if need be), fry the garlic and chilli for a minute, then add the broccoli. Cover the pan, leave to cook for two minutes, add the radicchio, cover again and cook for a minute more. Remove the lid, add the tofu, noodles, sauce and basil, mix well and cook, stirring, for three to four minutes more, until the noodles are tender and cooked through.

Finish with the juice of half the lime. Distribute the noodles across two plates and serve with the remaining lime wedges on the side.