JUNE 10, 2012–SIMPLE SESAME NOODLE SALAD AND PANFRIED SPINACH

See those ingredients above?  Combined they create a salad.  And eating salad is healtier than eating pasta.  So a woman somewhere decided to call a dish of spagetti, “salad”, and immediately we all felt better about what we were planning on eating anyway.  Add a meat and you can even call it a dinner salad, but never, Never, NEVER call it carbs because trendy, healthy, people don’t eat carbs.  They eat dinner salads.

And because I am trendy, I cooked this salad for dinner.  The kiddos loved it.

But before we begin, we have to run across the street to Mrs. Thelma’s to borrow some soy sauce.  I used up all my soy sauce on the HONEY-PLUM-SOY CHICKEN.

What is soy sauce anyway? anchovy extract, salt, pure cane sugar?  Where is the soy?

“Soy sauce is one of the world’s oldest condiments and has been used in China for more than 2,500 years. It is made from fermenting a mixture of mashed soybeans, salt, and enzymes. It is also made artificially through a chemical process known as acid hydrolysis.”

Read more: How soy sauce is made – making, history, used, processing, parts, components, steps, product, industry, History, Raw Materials, The Manufacturing Process, Quality Control, Byproducts/Wastehttp://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Soy-Sauce.html#ixzz2664gRdxt

This article gives the history of soy sauce up to it’s current uses–interesting.  Basically, salt was used to preserve fish, and the juices that leeched out were used for flavouring.  It was the first soy sauce.  That is why anchovy extract is an ingredient in soy sauce on the bottle pictured above.

Before we start chopping and mixing, let’s start some noodles cooking.  I used spaghetti noodles as I wanted the same look as in Ree Drummond’s cookbook.

While the noodles are cooking, chop up some green onions.  And did you know that you can grow  a continual supply of green onions in your kitchen?  Just Place the green onion bulb in a glass of water.  The onion will re-sprout, and you can trim the green part off for your next recipe.  (check out the some photos here.)

While the noodles are cooking, mix together the dressing–soy sauce, sugar, minced garlic, rice vinegar, sesame oil, hot chili oil, and canola oil.  Hot chili oil can usually be found in the Asian section of your grocery store by the rice vinegar and such.

Toss the chopped green onions and the dressing with the drained noodles.  I added left over PLUM-SOY-HONEY CHICKEN to make this “salad” a meal.

Just typing about cooking this meal makes me crave it.  I served it at room temperature, but it could also be served hot or chilled.  The kiddos devoured it, and when I took it to a Boy Scout’s event, I was dissappointed that there were no left-overs to take home and enjoy.  It really is a meal-in-a-bowl.

Now I was feeling a little guilty about not serving any veggies, so I quickly made up some PAN-FRIED SPINACH (pg, 216) which is just like the PAN-FRIED KALE (on page 215)

If you like the menu at Noodles & Co. you will love this recipe.

Simple. Delicious.

–rebecca