PEANUT NOODLES

Chinese-style noodles with a spicy peanut sauce

This recipe is not authentic Chinese; it was created by combining readily available ingredients and double-checking against a Satay recipe. It's close to a Satay sauce but not quite the same thing. It's also similar to a recipe in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, by Mollie Katzen.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

Procedure

  1. Boil a lot of water for the noodles; this is the most time-consuming step.
  2. Rinse and trim scallions, then slice thinly.
  3. In a small mixing bowl, combine peanut butter and chili paste with a fork. Mix thoroughly.
  4. Add water to the peanut mixture. This is tricky, since peanut butter and water do not want to mix. Start with a tiny bit of water, mix thoroughly until it is homogeneous, and then add some more water. You can begin to add larger quantities of water as the sauce gets thinner. The water and peanut butter really will mix, if you are patient.
  5. Continue adding water until the sauce has the consistency you want; I make it about the consistency of ketchup.
  6. Stir in the nam pla.
  7. Once the pot of water is boiling, cook the noodles until they are just done, and not mushy.
  8. Drain noodles and immediately mix in the sauce. Toss until the noodles are evenly coated.
  9. Garnish with scallions, and serve.

Notes

The ingredients are readily available at oriental grocery stores. Substitute soy sauce if you can't find nam pla. For fresh noodles, you can substitute several packages of ramen noodles, discarding sauce powders.

This basic recipe may be varied by modifying quantities. Vary the chili paste to control hotness, and the nam pla to control saltiness (but the sauce will taste saltier before mixing with the noodles).

This will keep for at least a week in the refrigerator.

Serve with a good beer; it's too spicy for most wines.

If you use this as the main dish of a meal, it serves only two.

Rating


Difficulty: easy.
Time: 5 minutes plus waiting for the water to boil.
Precision: No need to measure.

Contributor

 
Jeffrey Mogul 
Digital Equipment Corp., Western Research Lab, Palo Alto, California, USA 
mogul@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!mogul
Recipe last modified: 12 Feb 88

Original header

Path: decwrl!recipes
From: mogul@decwrl.dec.com (Jeffrey Mogul)
Newsgroups: alt.gourmand
Subject: RECIPE: Chinese-style peanut noodles
Message-ID: <14256@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: 29 Jul 88 05:35:54 GMT
Sender: recipes@decwrl.DEC.COM
Distribution: alt
Organization: DEC Western Research, Palo Alto, California, USA
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