Favourite recipe: Thai noodle salad

Do you have recipes you go back to over and over because you are guaranteed a happy feed? This recipe for a Thai (inspired) noodle salad is on high rotation at my place. It's particularly good in summer when my appetite plummets (too hot to eat) and it's got all the salady-y goodness without the depressing need to eat leaves dressed with vinegar.

Ingredients:

• Green beans (150, trimmed & halved)
• Cherry tomatoes (250g, halved)
• Lebanese cucumber (1, cut into 2cm pieces)
• Red onion (1/2, thinly sliced)
• Mixed lettuce leaves (2 cups/ 60g)
• Mint leaves (1/3 cup, coarsely chopped)
• Vermicelli noodles (120g)
• Coriander leaves (1/3 cup, coarsely chopped)
• Unsalted, roasted peanuts (2 tbsp, chopped)

For the dressing:

• Soy sauce (1 cup)
• Fish sauce (1 tbsp)
• Sweet chilli sauce (2 tbsp)
• Lime juice (2 tbsp)
• Sesame oil (3 tsp)

This recipe is from a Weight Watches Programme Cookbook. (Sorry I can't find a link to the book online. No, I'm not part of the programme but the book has amazing quick and healthy recipes and it was $10 so I had to buy it). The original recipe is with 400g lamb leg steaks (cooked to your liking). I often substitute this with chicken breast (cooked in the oven, with a sprinkling of paprika). Very often I omit the meat altogether. The salad and noodles taste great on their own.

My notes:

• I don't add the lettuce - I find it doesn't really go with the recipe
• I often substitute peanuts with roasted cashews and/or sunflower seeds. Tastes just as good. 
• I leave out the sweet chilli sauce (I don't like it) and add some chopped fresh chilli instead. 
• The coriander should be optional (I don't always use it - herbs are expensive!). The mint is needed for the flavour though

What to do:

• Cook lamb, chicken or other choice of meat to your liking. Slice it up into bite sized pieces.
  Boil or steam beans until just tender. Drain and refresh under cold water.
• Cook noodles as per packet instructions. Drain well. Using scissors, cut noodles into 6cm lengths (easier to eat and you don't get stuck with a never-ending noodle slurp)
• Place meat, beans, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, lettuce and mint in a large bowl. 
• Whisk together soy, fish and sweet chilli sauces with lime juice and oil. Add 3/4 of the dressing to the meat and veggies mix. Toss.
• Add remaining dressing to noodles and toss well to combine.
• Divide noodles among bowls, add meat and veggie mix and top with nuts and coriander.
• Eat and go yum!
  

This recipe serves 4. 

Some pictures from my latest attempt -

The veggies, chopped up and waiting to be dressed.

The dressing

The finished product

Yummy, fresh veggie goodness

#NaBloPoMo - New Recipe Saturdays

We've decided we're going to try and cook a new recipe on Saturday nights. Saturday nights without plans that is. J and I both love to experiment with new kinds of food. Unfortunately there aren't too many new and yummy restaurants on the Gold Coast that excite me enough to want to go out every Saturday night. Besides, going out would involve wearing a bra which sometimes is more effort than it's worth.

Cooking is something we both enjoy. The weeknight menu isn't always exciting because those meals are more about what is easiest and/or quickest. Saturdays allow us the luxury of time so why not try a new recipe while we're at it?

I bought a book on Spanish food almost 2 years ago to cook a surprise dinner for J's birthday and it's one of the best recipe books I've ever bought. So last night, we cooked up a Spanish-themed feast - steak with chimmichurri, bean salad, prawns and haloumi. I know, I know haloumi isn't Spanish at all but hey, it was the perfect addition to the meal. Of course we had some vino tinto to go with.

I'm no food blogger so the pictures aren't great :(

The books I used.

The end result :)

All ingredients are easily available at Coles or Woolies. The steak however we bought at The Gold Coast Fresh Meat Centre in Burleigh and it was really great quality meat. It was cooked medium rare.

To go with the steak, we made some Argentinian inspired Chimichurri. We first had some at an Argentinian restaurant in Melbourne and have been wanting to make some for ourselves ever since. It's really easy to make and tastes absolutely divine on the steak. I used this recipe. Mmm...garlic!

The Haloumi is available in the cheese section (Lemmos..Lemnos?) and we fried it off in a pan until brown and squeezed a bit of lemon over it before biting into it. (Heaven!).

The prawns (also known as Gambas al Ajillo) were a tiny bit of a letdown as they didn't caramelise the way I would have liked (still yummy thought). But, I think that's more to do with my oven and less the fault of the recipe. I used a combination of this recipe and the recipe pictured below (from my Spanish book). I like the use of the sherry and the parsley in the Food.com recipe.

The recipe

The salad is a recipe from the salads recipe book pictured above. The recipe and a picture from the book is below. I'm happy to report the end product looked exactly like the picture from the book. I loved the mustard and lemon dressing as I'm not a fan of heavy salad dressings. 

The recipe

The salad.

It was a feast of a Saturday night and I can't wait till our next cooking adventure.

*This post is part of the November NaBloPoMo blogging challenge.