My 100th post - and a Favourite recipe - Sesame Peanut Noodles

My 100th post - can you believe it ? What better way to celebrate with one of my favourite recipes - Sesame Peanut Noodles. The raw vegetables in this make it super healthy too.

As I venture further towards vegetarianism, and even veganism, this is a recipe that ticks all the boxes and tastes great too. It is, of course, from my favourite tv cook, Nigella Lawson, and is taken from her book - Nigella Express. 'The clue's in the name' as we say in my house, and this really is a rapid recipe. I buy my noodles fresh from the supermarket which makes things even quicker, but you could easily boil up your own, noodles don't take long do they... ? This is served cold, so you would want to chill your noodles before using them in this recipe, although secretly I think it would be quite nice with warm noodles too.

 I, of course, make my usual modifications  depending on what I have in the fridge, as I did here. Here is the original recipe with my changes in italics.

Ingredients

Serves 8 (apparently.. I think more like 4 as I eat this in HUGE mounds)

For the salad

125g mange tout    I substituted pak choi above
150g beansprouts
1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into small strips
2 spring onions, finely sliced
2 x 275 g or 1 x 550g ready-prepared egg noodles could be substituted with rice noodles or non-egg
20g sesame seeds I rarely add these, although it is lovely with them
4 x 15ml tbsp chopped fresh coriander  I don't usually add this either...

For the dressing

1 x 15ml tbsp sesame oil       This adds a most lovely taste to the salad
1 x 15ml tbsp garlic oil         I use olive oil, not garlic oil and probably half this amount,
1 x 15ml tbsp soy sauce      with a little more soy sauce instead

2 x 15ml tbsp sweet chilli sauce
100g smooth peanut butter    I always use crunchy, I love the little peanut bits
2 x 15ml tbsp lime juice        Sometimes I use lemon juice, but I'll admit, lime juice is better

Method

I love this, it's so easy, but you do need to find yourself a massive bowl otherwise, when you toss the salad with the dressing, the salad and noodles jump out of the bowl, so save yourself the flaff of having to switch bowls half way through (as I usually do), and get out your biggest bowl.

1. Whisk together the dressing ingredients in a bowl, not the huge one.

2. Put the mange tout / pak choi, beansprouts, red pepper strips, sliced spring onions and the noodles into a bowl, the huge one.

3. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix thoroughly to coat all of the salad in the dressing.

4. Put into bowls or lunchboxes, or some other serving vessel and sprinkle on the sesame seed and chopped coriander.

5. Tuck in !