Day Nine: Noodle Salad with Spicy Nut Dressing

Another one I didn't want to do! But before we get into that, here is a cookbook condition update, as requested by Raven:

It got splatted with nut dressing while I was mixing it! The first casualty was the banana blueberry muffin page, decimated within minutes - and the Dilip page, as I discovered yesterday, actually became stuck to its neighbour... I've never been known for my neatness.


Back to the cold noodle salad. This inspired me with a chilly, glutinous feeling akin to accidentally putting one's foot in a puddle.

(That's a dressing? Really?)

But this time, I really was quite glad I made it. Even though I lacked coriander (I knew I lacked it, but after work I just couldn't face traipsing round the city in search of the bizarrely elusive herb), and couldn't be arsed to toast and chop any nuts to garnish with, this salad was a genuinely new and pleasant experience. I will no longer grimace at the thought of cold noodle dishes.


My noodles were thai rice noodles, because that's what we had in the cupboard, peanut butter, and my pak choi/bok choi/sui choy or whatever you call it was in fact romaine lettuce (thank you, veg box).

 Not quite so pretty after the sauce had been mixed in:

As a side note, I watched Julie & Julia this evening, as I felt somehow I ought to visit the origins of this challenge, and was pleased to discover Meryl Streep is capable of delivering a performance without her customary air of self-congratulatory Bono-style smugness. Not exactly gourmet film-making, if you'll pardon the expression, but entertaining enough.