Spicy Peanut Noodles

I love Thai food. It's creamy, crunchy, cool, spicy and complicated blend of all sorts of flavors. It has stuff Not The Usual Thing 'round these parts: fish sauce, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, sweet soy sauce, and the curries! O! The curry pastes! Today, I'm not dealing with curry paste. Maybe later.

Last night I was trolling the cookbooks, looking for something to do with chicken breasts. In The Joy OF Cooking, a recipe for Spicy Peanut Sesame Noodles caught my eye. It suggested grilling and shredding chicken breast to make it heartier. I can live with that. And, I absolutely LOVE peanut sauce! Love it! And my kids love it! So, here's the recipe from The Joy Of Cooking. Items in parenthesis are my own substitutions, to due lack of something.

Spicy Peanut Sesame Noodles

Thoroughly blend in a food processor:
2 cups smooth peanut butter (1 cup chunky, 1 cup smooth)-JoC recommends all natural salt free peanut butter, but at $6 a jar, I'll use Jif.
1/2 cup rice vinegar (1/3 cup lime juice, add rice vinegar to make 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 teaspoons sweet soy sauce (if you don't have it, don't bother, just add a bit more sugar))
2 tablespoons roughly chopped garlic (5 good sized cloves)
2 to 6 serrano or fresh chilis, seeded and cut up (3 tablespoons Louisiana Hot Sauce, 1 tablespoon green jalapeno sauce. Any red hot sauce that's not as hot as Tabasco will do, Sriracha is ideal, if you can find it)
3 tablespoons sugar (I used 2, because the peanut butter is sweet, and the sweet soy sauce, you can increase to tase once it's all mixed)

After this is all good and mushed in the food processor, add
1/2 cup toasted sesame oil (WHOA NELLY! Try a tablespoon instead! It's strong, and expensive)
2 tablespoons chili oil (didn't have any, added a couple more squirts of hot sauce)

Gradually add in 3/4 cup of freshly brewed black tea. This thins it nicely and the tea is an interesting flavor.

Cook a pound of Chinese egg noodles or spaghetti. Drain and toss with a couple of teaspoons of sesame oil.

To serve, put the noodles in a big bowl, top with all the sauce, grilled chicken breasts, a peeled and seeded cucumber in julienne strips, some cilantro and maybe a sprinkle of sesame seeds.

For the chicken:
Make a marinade of 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup rice vinegar or lime juice (or combo- I never have enough limes)4 cloves of garlic chopped fine, 4 scallions, sliced very thin. Mix all this up and our over the chicken. Let it sit for a bit, then grill, bastng with the marinade. Cut or shred the chicken and throw it on top of the noodles.


Even though it looks like you're using an obscene amount of hot sauce, the peanut butter really puts the kibosh on the heat, so you get great hot pepper flavor, without the pain.

Sweet soy sauce is this thick stuff, akin to molasses, with a soy sauce flavor. It's used in making Pad Thai (the Thai version of Leftover Casserole). It keeps forever, so if you ever find yourself in an Asian market, get a bottle (it's cheap)and keep it for when you're making a sauce or marinade that you want to sweeten up a bit. It's great for grilling, because the sugars caramelize and make the meat pretty.

Sriracha is a Thai hot sauce with garlic in it. It's pretty hot, not as hot as Tabasco, but hotter than, say, Texas Pete's. It's a good multipurpose hot sauce, and makes awesome guacamole.

Rice vinegar is a very mild vinegar, far less acidic than regular white vinegar or wine vinegars. If you don't have access to some, you can use lemon or lime juice, or dilute some regular white vinegar 1:1 with water.

Fish sauce was not in this recipe, but I've used it before in peanut sauce. It's...well. It's stinky and gross, and if you smell it you wonder why you'd ever use it, but in very small amounts (like, a tablespoon in the above recipe) it adds a depth of flavor that is remarkable. I like Squid brand, and it keeps forever. I found out how they make it: They load a barrel up with little fish, sugar, and salt, and then set it aside and forget about it. Later they come back, put a weight on the contents, a bucket under the bunghole, and collect the squeezings. Ewww! But, it really does add something, if you don't use too much.