025 -- Peanut Thai Noodle Salad

My friend Lulu had a few of us over for dinner a few weeks ago. She had recently introduced me to this awesome food blog, Our Best Bites, which always has yummy looking recipes. To intensify my love for OBB, Lulu made their Thai Peanut Noodle Salad. I have seriously had dreams, ok well really daydreams, about that salad. It was way too yummy for its own good. Obviously (a) I have major issues, and (b) I had to give it a try of my own.

Plus, this gave me an opportunity to use my *new* blender. My parents gave me a blender/food processor combo about 3.5 years ago (I think) for Christmas. They share a base, but have different tops. Since then I have used the food processor tons of times, my general favorite thing to make being hummus. However, I had never actually pulled the blender portion out. Now I feel a lot better about it. I swear I usually don't wait that long to use gifts... the week the infamous pasta roller shows up I plan to make something special :)

In other conversational news... this was the first time I actually used raw ginger in a recipe. I usually sub ground ginger, skip it, or just skip the recipe in the first place. I think am closing in towards having cooked with most of the veggies at our little Kroger save the greens.

Materials
Dressing
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 lime
2 1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbl rice vinegar
2 tbl soy sauce
3 tbl honey
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbl minced ginger
1/4-1/2 cup copped cilantro
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt (or to taste)
1-3 tsp siracha chili sauce
2-4 tbl water (as needed to make dressing-y)

Salad
6 cups chopped Nappa Cabbage/Savoy Cabbage, or some other greens
1 red pepper, sliced
1 yellow pepper, sliced
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 cucumber, sliced or chopped
Handful of baby carrots, julienned
1 box whole wheat linguine

Method
Combine all dressing ingredients in blender and mix. Set to side and chill


Cook linguine until al dente. Rinse in col water. While linguine is cooking chop vegetables.

Toss dressing, pasta, and veggies and serve!

Verdict
Awesome! It doesn't taste like I remember Lulu's tasting, but i could still have dreams about this. I'm sold on OBB! About the only problem i see is that it feeds a bunch! I knew it would be more than a meal or two when I looked at it, but I was dumb enough to think I didn't need to halve (or quarter) it. Really, since the dressing is the super star of this meal, you could make a pretty good meal out of just the veggies and the dressing without the noodles, but what fun would that be? So, anyone want to come over for dinner tomorrow or Tuesday? You can see the super awesome yellow kitchen in person!!