Spicy Peanut Noodles and Delayed Gratifications

Okay, so sorry about the delay. I know I promised frequent posts and then disappeared for nearly a week but all I can say is, I'll try to be better in the future and take pity on me, my left knee was mysteriously swollen to twice its normal size for no apparent reason and I was mildly preoccupied with this phenomenon. I am not above playing the sympathy card for physical injuries.

Now while I might not have come back to post about it, I did make the bread and pizza dough as promised last Thursday. Both were reasonable successes. I'll post more about the pizza this week as I will be repeating the adventure this Friday, hopefully to slightly more success. There was a moment where I forgot I was working with pizza dough and overworked it slightly resulting in a tasty, but almost personal sized pizza. Luckily there were two balls of dough and thus two pizzas or we might have had to forage for a second dinner in the pantry. Actually, come to think of it I'll post about the bread later too. I haven't gotten around to downloading those photos and I'm about to run out the door for a drink with Matt.

Instead, I'll tell you about the spicy peanut noodles I made for dinner last night. Mmmm, mmmm, tasty, but then I have always loved peanut noodles. Why wouldn't I, after all, they are peanutty, spicy, and involve noodles, almost always a positive.

I found the recipe in Joan Nathan's The New American Cooking. I was browsing, we had the ingredients , or close enough, and it struck my fancy. My fancy remains struck. It turned out we didn't actually have all the ingredients, but since I rarely have the discipline to stick to a recipe, I remained unfazed. You will have to check out the book for the actual recipe but I spiced it up with some garlic pepper chili paste and red pepper flakes and upped the peanut butter. It couldn't have been easier. You toss all the ingredients for the sauce into a food processor and blend until completely smooth and then combine with freshly boiled noodles. I must admit that after I boiled the noodles I did treat them to a little pan frying in peanut oil, but that still only added a minute or two to the cooking time.

I had to substitute Japanese rice noodles since we only had one serving of soba noodles. I would go with the called for buckwheat soba noodles next time, but keep the other changes. Matt was a bit skeptical about the added spice, but as I predicted, the noodles cut back on most of that heat. leaving only the tasty spice behind. Served with a simple romaine salad with tomato and avocado and it was the perfect mid-week meal.


While you can't taste it with me, you can take a look.




Shortly after this was taken I dropped the dish on the floor, but luckily nothing broke and all that bounced out of the bowl was the cilantro and scallion topping, easily replaced. I ate that serving though. I thought it only fair.

And so it begins...

By way of introduction let me just say that my orals are over and I passed. Now is the time to be buckling down and writing those pesky funding proposals so of course I decided to start a blog about food. Not exactly related to my current project, but not exactly unrelated to my work either and a great way to get back into the habit of writing daily, or at least frequently. I don't want to start off with promises I can't keep.

So welcome to my kitchen. It has always been the warmest room in my home and I would love to share it with you.

Tonight is all about the dough, both pizza and bread. I'm off to get them started. I'll post pictures tomorrow, but for now, here is a sample of some past loaves.

This is my first loaf of sourdough bread. The picture is somewhat overexposed but the bread itself was very tasty.

Orange-Cardamon bread from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. I treated myself to this book early one summer after my first year in grad school and I haven't looked back since.