Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Wok (carbon steel preferred), well-seasoned
• •Wok spatula
• •Fine strainer for tamarind

Instructions

1. 1

   Make the sweet-sour sauce

   In a small bowl, combine the strained tamarind water, palm sugar, fish sauce, and oyster sauce. Stir until the palm sugar dissolves. Taste it. Right now it should taste too strong, almost aggressive. Good. It's going to coat the pork and vegetables in a hot wok, which means it'll mellow and spread. If it tastes balanced in the bowl, it'll taste flat on the plate. You want sour first, sweet second, salty underneath. That's the architecture of this sauce.

   Use real tamarind pulp, not concentrate from a squeeze bottle. Soak a walnut-sized ball of tamarind in warm water for ten minutes, then squeeze and strain out the seeds and fibers. The paste should be thick, dark brown, and smell tart. Concentrate is too thin and too sour. It doesn't have the body.
2. 2

   Prep everything first

   Lay out your sliced pork, garlic, chilies, and all your cut vegetables within arm's reach of the stove. Once the wok is hot, you have about three minutes total. There's no time to reach for the cutting board. Everything is prepped, everything is in bowls, everything is ready. This is wok discipline.

3. 3

   Sear the pork

   Get the wok screaming hot over the highest heat you have. Add the oil. When it shimmers and a wisp of smoke rises, spread the pork slices across the wok in a single layer. Don't touch them. Let them sit on that hot metal for forty-five seconds until they get color on the bottom. Then flip. Another thirty seconds. You want browning. You want char at the edges. Wok hei starts here. If the pork is pale and gray, your wok wasn't hot enough. Pull the pork out and set it aside.

   Don't crowd the wok. If your wok is small, sear the pork in two batches. Overcrowding drops the temperature and the meat steams instead of searing. Steamed pork in a sweet-sour sauce is cafeteria food.
4. 4

   Bloom garlic and chili

   Same wok, still screaming hot. If there's not enough oil, add a splash. Slam the garlic and bruised chilies in. Two seconds of sizzle, the garlic going golden at the edges, the chili releasing its heat into the oil. That's your aromatic base. Garlic hits the oil first, always. That's Central Thai wok cooking.

5. 5

   Stir-fry the vegetables

   Add the onion wedges and toss for twenty seconds. Then the tomato wedges, another fifteen seconds. Then the pineapple chunks. Toss. Everything should be warming through but holding its shape. The tomato should barely start to soften at the edges. The onion should still have crunch. Don't baby them, but don't cook them to mush either. You're warming, not braising.

6. 6

   Sauce and finish

   Return the pork to the wok. Pour in the tamarind sauce. It should hiss and bubble the instant it hits the hot metal. Toss everything once, twice, three times. The sauce will thicken slightly from the residual heat and coat every piece of pork and vegetable with a dark, glossy sheen. Now the cucumber and scallions go in. These cook for exactly ten seconds, just enough to take the raw edge off but keep their crunch. Taste. More fish sauce if it needs salt. A squeeze of lime if the tamarind wasn't tart enough. Plate it over jasmine rice. Done.

Chef Tips

• •Tamarind is not interchangeable with lime or vinegar in this dish. Lime gives you a sharp, bright acid that hits fast and fades. Vinegar gives you a flat, one-note sourness. Tamarind gives you a round, fruity tartness with depth that caramelizes beautifully against palm sugar. Ajarn always said: match the acid to the dish. Pad preaw wan is tamarind territory.
• •The cucumber goes in last and cooks for ten seconds. That's not an approximation. Cucumber has high water content. If you cook it for a minute, it releases water, dilutes the sauce, and goes limp. A quick toss in the hot wok takes the raw chill off and keeps the crunch. The contrast of cool, crisp cucumber against the hot, sticky sauce is part of the design.
• •Palm sugar comes in hard discs or soft jars. For wok cooking, grate the hard discs or use the soft jarred kind. It dissolves faster. Granulated white sugar is not the same. Palm sugar has a butterscotch, slightly smoky quality that white sugar can't replicate. In a dish where sweetness is a defining pillar, the type of sugar matters.
• •Some Bangkok stir-fry stalls add a splash of Sriracha to this dish for extra heat and a vinegar kick. That's a modern street-level adaptation. Not traditional, but not a crime either. If you do it, add it at the very end with the sauce, and cut the tamarind back slightly to keep the balance.

Advance Preparation

• •Tamarind water can be prepared ahead and refrigerated for up to a week. Dissolve, strain, store in a jar. This actually makes weeknight pad preaw wan faster since the most tedious step is already done.
• •Pork can be sliced and refrigerated up to a day ahead. Keep it covered tightly.
• •Cut all vegetables and arrange in bowls before you heat the wok. Once the fire is on, there's no time for prep. Mise en place matters in wok cooking even if we don't use the French term.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 365g)