Roasted peanut salad

Roasted peanut salad is a very easy, satisfying, high protein, vegetarian, tasty snack!

Finely dice a red onion into a large bowl, then squeeze the juice of 1 lime over the red onion. Top with 1/2 a bunch of finely chopped fresh cilantro.
Take 1 lb. raw Spanish peanuts and either pan roast them or roast them under your broiler until they darken and the peanut oils release and give your whole kitchen a peanut smell. Be careful not to burn them.
Toss the hot roasted peanuts with the red onion, lime juice, cilantro, and added salt and red chilli powder to taste.

Recipe: Lemon Rice

Lemon rice is my favorite accompaniment for any Indian-style fish dish or South Indian-style dish. It's also a great way to jazz up leftover rice.

My South Indian nanny (who is now quite old, but until very, very recently could still shimmy up a coconut tree) used to make this a lot when she lived with us when I was 6 or 7, and she wrote out a whole notebook of South Indian recipes for us before she went back to Bangalore (where she still works with the blind). When I went to college, I copied out into my own recipe notebook a number of my favorites from hers, including this one.

Lemon Rice for 4

2 cups cooked brown Basmati rice (start with 1 cup uncooked rice)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
3-4 curry leaves
2 chillies, either green chillies slit lengthwise or whole dried red chillies
1/4 cup roasted shredded coconut
1/4 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts
1/4 cup roasted or deep fried chana dal
1/2 tsp turmeric
Juice of 2 lemons
Salt to taste
Optional: a handful of minced fresh cilantro (not traditional, but I like how cilantro brightens everything)

Heat the oil in a small pan and add the mustard seeds, curry leaves and chillies. Fry until the mustard seeds have all popped. Add the turmeric, remove from the heat, and toss into the cooked rice along with the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Recipe: Miang Kum Salad

In Thai cuisine, miang kum is a do-it-yourself appetizer. Spinach or other green leaves are brought in a stack to the table with little individual bowls of tamarind or chilli sauce, diced lime, dried shrimp, roasted peanuts, roasted shredded coconut, diced red onion or shallot, diced ginger, and sometimes minced chillies. You put as much of each filling as you want in your leaf, wrap it up, and pop it into your mouth.

On Saturday, I saw a dear friend and old roommate of mine who reminded me that I used to make a chopped salad with the miang kum ingredients when we lived together, and she asked me to post the recipe. So here it is!

Miang Kum Salad for 4-6

About 2 Cups spinach, finely chopped (other greens, such as young collards, would also work)

Thai chilli sauce to taste

1/4 Cup small dried shrimp

1/2 Cup roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

2 diced shallots (or half a red onion, diced)

a 2" piece ginger, peeled and very finely diced

1 lime, washed well, unpeeled and very finely diced

3/4 Cup toasted shredded coconut

Toss all of the ingredients together. Option - serve with lime wedges.

Diced ripe mango could be a sweet addition to this salad; diced green mango, a tart addition. For more heat, you could add finely sliced Thai chillies, with or without the seeds (leaving in the seeds is spicier).

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.)