Recipe: Soba Salad with Peanut Sauce

Here's something we had last night. We had a bunch of extra vegetables in the fridge, so I was trying to think of what to do with them.

Soba Salad with Peanut Sauce for 2

4 oz. buckwheat soba

about 1 Tbsp. black sesame seeds

2 sheets nori, cut into strips

4 scallions, washed, trimmed, white and green parts chopped

6 small-ish carrots, peeled, trimmed, julienned

1 long cucumber, peeled, trimmed, seeded, julienned

half of a really big daikon, peeled, julienned

1/2 C. sliced shiitake mushrooms (optional: stir-fry briefly in some peanut oil)

1 yellow bell pepper, seeded, diced

1 tsp. peanut oil

2 tsp. minced ginger

2 cloves minced garlic

1 tbsp. nama shoyu

1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. rice vinegar

1/2 - 1 tsp. red chilli powder (depending on how spicy you like things)

1/3 Cup natural smooth peanut butter (i.e., the only ingredient should be "peanuts" - or you're getting a bunch of unnecessary sugar)

1/2 Cup broth

1/2 tsp. salt

splash of maple syrup

splash of chilli sesame oil

juice of 1 orange
additional salt/chilli powder to taste

I cleaned, peeled, trimmed and chopped/julienned all the veggies and the scallions first, and put them together in a big bowl with the black sesame seeds and slivered nori.

Then, I heated the oil over medium high heat in a pan, added the ginger and garlic, and let those become fragrant, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Then I added to the ginger-garlic the nama shoyu, rice vinegar, chilli powder, peanut butter, broth, salt, and maple syrup (which I had pre-combined in a measuring cup and stirred together while the ginger-garlic was cooking, but I'm not sure that's important). I think I left the sauce simmering over low heat for about 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it thickened and became smooth. At that point I turned off the heat and stirred in the orange juice and chilli sesame oil, because I had tasted the sauce and felt it needed a little sweet citrus and more heat.

Meanwhile, I was boiling the water (with a bit of salt) for cooking the soba; I added the soba to the boiling water and let it cook for about 7-8 minutes. When the soba was tender, I lifted it out with tongs, let the water drain off (or, you could drain it in a colander - I was just using fewer dishes to avoid more cleanup), and added the hot noodles to the peanut sauce, stirred them together, then added that whole mixture of noodles-and-sauce to the big bowl with the veggies, scallions, nori, and black sesame seeds, and tossed everything together.

We added some additional chilli powder and a bit of salt at this point to taste (I had not wanted to salt the veggies earlier, since that would have caused them to leech out a lot of water).

You could definitely add/substitute all kinds of things to this: cubed tofu, fresh or pan-fried; chunks of cooked salmon; other veggies, like spinach cut into ribbons, or wilted and chopped, or finely sliced red cabbage or napa cabbage for a bit of crunch; strips of omelet or boiled crab; etc., etc.

(By the way, don't you think I'm already getting better at taking close-up pics of food? : ) I feel this one is a significant improvement over the tabbouleh pic.)