Improvised Asian Noodles

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I love noodles in just about any way you could think to serve them, but this time of year, hot as it’s been, what I really love is things in the genre of pasta salad. Pasta salads are usually pretty quick and easy to make, you only need to turn on the stove long enough to cook the pasta, you can make it ahead of time and you can eat it cold. All good things.

I’ve lately been craving cold Asian noodle salad, and had a recipe I’d found on Pinterest in mind when I declared one morning earlier this week that I was going to make noodles to go with our leftover chicken for dinner that night.

Alas, I didn’t have any honey, having used it earlier that morning in a batch of banana bread. I found another recipe in one of my books that called for tahini to up the sesame flavor but was worried the Bit wouldn’t like that (I needn’t have worried, she only took two bites anyway) so I thought I’d sub in peanut butter. But I don’t think I had enough peanut butter, either, but I did have peanut sauce, so that’s where this recipe began.

You could probably use any kind of long noodles — I just happened to have soba in the house — and salady vegetables you like in here, but this is a pretty good basic beginning. And it was yummy with the chicken. Bonus: soba takes 4 minutes to cook. Literally the longest part of this recipe is waiting for the water to boil.

What You Need

For the sauce:

1/4 cup peanut sauce
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
siracha to taste

For the noodles:

package of soba noodles or other long pasta
half a large cucumber
two carrots (or a handful of baby carrots)
two green onions

What You’ll Do

Fill a big pot with water and bring to boil. Do everything else while waiting for water to boil.
Chop up your veggies. Peel things with skin. I don’t have great knife skills so my dice is not a dice, but something along those lines is probably what you’re going for.
Clearly I did not plan to be taking pictures when I just threw all the veggies together.
In a separate bowl, mix up the ingredients for the sauce.
When the water boils, add the soba. Know that it will foam up like crazy, so be there with a spoon. Cook for 4 minutes, or until soft.
Drain and rinse the noodles, reserving a little cooking water. Allow to drain some more.
I added about 1/4 cup of water to my sauce, which helped distribute it better. You can do this or not.
My sauce after diluting it a little.
Put soba in a bowl, cover with sauce and stir.
Reserve some without vegetables for the picky person in your house to ignore.
Even plain the Bit would not eat her noodles. But they are really good!
Add vegetables and stir.
Cover and refrigerate until you need it. It was even better on day two.