What to Cook Tonight #56
Fresh and fabulous Asian flavours — Spicy Sesame Noodles with Smashed Cucumbers, a Prawn & Chilli Omelette with Brown Butter & Herbs, and a Chicken Salad with Avocado, Sesame & Lime.
This week's three recipes are all about quick, easy, and tasty Asian flavours. Sesame, ginger, lime, soy, mirin, chilli, coriander, and spring onion are the key ingredients we are using — these are flavours we keep coming back to, and for good reason.
Loaded with aromatics and lip-smacking umami, together they are a great way to build and layer flavour in your dishes without relying solely on fat.
We’re going to make a tahini, soy, and ginger dressing that we are using in two of our recipes this week — so if you’re making both the noodles and the salad, we recommend you double the dressing.
First, we have some addictively yummy Spicy Sesame Noodles with Smashed Cucumbers that might just become your new weeknight favourite (we are obsessed). Our fantastic creamy tahini dressing is the perfect conduit for tender noodles, crispy tofu, fresh vegetables, and aromatic herbs.
You can mix up the vegetables as you please — shredded cabbage is great in place of the broccolini/broccoli, or green beans when they are in season. If spice isn’t your thing or you’re cooking for kids, skip the chilli.
We made this with Chinese egg noodles, you can make this with rice noodles, vermicelli noodles, or soba noodles if preferred. To make this gluten-free, use vermicelli or rice noodles and tamari in place of the soy sauce.
The crunchy smashed cucumbers add some lovely freshness to the dish, but if you’re tight for time (or they are expensive right now), you can leave them out. This recipe is also great with chicken or salmon instead of tofu — we recommend you cook this separately and add it in at the end.
If you enjoyed the flavours in this dish, you’ll certainly love this easy Spring Vegetable Stir-Fry with Shitakes & Ginger — if spring vegetables aren’t in season for you right now, you can make this with broccoli. Our Shiitake Soba Noodles are also delicious, and an excellent use of dried shiitake mushrooms. This Soba Noodle Slaw with Crispy Tofu makes for fantastic eating any time of year — with a zingy carrot and ginger dressing it’s got a nice immunity-boosting kick too. You can make this with chicken in place of the tofu too.
Our second recipe returns to our fab tahini, soy and ginger dressing with a wonderfully balanced Sesame Chicken Salad with Avocado & Lime. This is such a crowd-pleaser and is bound to be a hit in your household. The inclusion of tahini, sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds adds such a wonderfully sweet and satisfying nutty flavour to the salad.
You can mix up the vegetables as you please — it’s fab with shredded cabbage as well as/or in place of the spinach, and added blanched green beans or broccolini when they are in season. If you want to bulk this out even further, add in some cooked soba noodles. (Be mindful of ratios when adding or substituting — you want to make sure you have enough of the fabulous dressing to coat everything evenly.)
To adapt this to be vegan, skip the chicken and use broccoli/broccolini, asparagus or green beans in its place. We also recommend adding a cup of blanched edamame or peas for extra protein.
Using the breasts from a store bought rotisserie chicken really speeds up the process — you can have a meal on the table in just ten minutes.
This recipe makes a great work lunch — you can cook the chicken and make the dressing ahead of time to have at hand in the fridge ready to portion up and add all the fresh salad components.
Smaller households can scale this down easily. Any leftovers are excellent piled into a sandwich with a drizzle of kewpie mayo.
If you’re in need of more salad inspiration, here are some wonderful, flavourful recipes we keep coming back to — this beautiful Mango & Prawn Vermicelli Salad tastes as good as it looks thanks to juicy mango and a not-so-secret zippy Vietnamese dressing. Both this Japanese Rainbow Bowl and our California Kale Salad share our best-ever miso and ginger dressing, and deliver similarly satisfying umami deliciousness. If you’re yet to try either of them — we strongly recommend you add them to your repertoire.
Lastly, a delicious omelette that brings together two of our favourite ingredients — eggs and prawns, in a deeply flavourful and satisfying way. The gently browned butter takes this to the next level, and a kick of chilli and fresh herbs balance out the rich flavours.
We first had an omelette like this in Bangkok (kai jeow is one of the most popular street foods in Thailand) and it was always one of our favourite dishes at The Chop Shop in Arrowtown (which has sadly since closed). More recently, Rose has been seeing crab, crayfish, scampi, and prawn omelettes popping up in restaurants from London (Mountain) to Cadaqués (Talla). So they are certainly top of mind!
Everyone has their own technique and style of cooking an omelette — for us, it’s all about keeping things as simple as possible (and not holding back on butter). We love serving this with steamed rice for a more substantial meal. You could even serve this with a fresh, herbaceous salad (baby cos, mint, spring onion, coriander, lime juice, olive oil, salt) if you wanted extra freshness on your plate.
As a general rule of thumb, whenever something is spicy we will serve it with chopped chillies on top so that it looks noticeably spicy (a habit Rose picked up when she was working in kitchens that we think is quite a good idea). It also looks pretty :)
This recipe serves two, which you can double if preferred, or scale down if cooking for one.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll find similar flavours in these Thai-inspired Crispy Corn Fritters with Chilli & Lime (excellent eating any time of day). Another fab Southeast Asian winner is our 15-Minute Veggie Laksa — warming, comforting, aromatic, and possibly the perfect dinner for those heading into winter. On the fakeaway front, you can’t beat this tasty Tofu Bánh Mì. Lastly, this quick and easy Ginger & Shiitake Fried Rice jazzes up any leftover rice you may have, and is something we both make very often.
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