..So now here I am, typing away while my wet clothes are hanging off the clothes horse next to my dehumidifier while I dream about the past two long weekends that us Aucklanders have just enjoyed -at the least the weather was good then!
The thing that amazes me about long weekends is how much more productive one can be with that one extra day -I would gladly work a few extra hours in the day just to have three day weekends! I would spend all of them cooking up beautiful salads for sunny days like the recent Auckland Anniversary Weekend.
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| Toss everything together! |
I really enjoy the clean, fresh flavours of Vietnamese food and there's nothing better than sitting down to a nice serving of a cold noodle salad with refreshing cucumber and herbs and the slight kick of a chili pepper.
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| Gluten free too! |
This one's a real goody -vegetarian and can be gluten free as well!
Sorry about the short post, sweeties, I have a work report to write (so I can graduate!) and will be a tad scarce in the next 2 to 3 weeks. But I will be back in full form very very soon!
Vietnamese Noodle Salad (Serves 4)
Ingredients:
200g packet of dried thin rice noodles
1/2 cucumber, roughly chopped
100g snow peas, roughly sliced
1 long red chili, sliced into strips
1 cup mint leaves
1 cup coriander leaves
1/4 cup peanuts, roughly chopped
Fried onion bits as garnish
For the Dressing:
Juice of 2 limes and the zest of 1
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 Tablespoons grated palm sugar
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
Method:
1. Cook the noodles according to the packet, plunge into cold water and drain.
2. Toss the noodles with the cucumber, peas, chili and herbs in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together the fish sauce, sugar, oil, lime juice and zest.
4. Pour over the salad and toss to combine.
5. Garnish with chopped peanuts and fried onion bits before serving.
I like these kinds of salads, minus the fish sauce of course, being a veggie I add a little soy or tamari instead, which I find it also add a sweet taste, as well as salty. I also try never to add sugar to savouries. Do you think I could skip the palm sugar if I used soy sauce, or the taste would be too different?
ReplyDeleteCiao
Alessandra
PS
3 days weekend would be great, starting on Friday though!!!
Hmm.. I'm not quite sure -most Asian dishes I've had are all about the sweet + savoury! I think if you were to omit the palm sugar, you should think about adding some dark soy sauce (the sweet kind)in addition to light. Although the darkness may not make the dish look as appetising..
DeleteI always use the light (Japanese) one, not too keen on the dark one, but I find the light to be quite sweet really, in fact both sweet and salty. Maybe that would be good enough for me :-).
DeleteI'm lucky, I work 2 extra hours a day and get 3 days off a week :)
ReplyDeleteLovely salad, great for this unpredictable weather we've been having!
Wow Jas, where to you work and how do I get in on this?
DeleteMy co-worker and I have had some in depth discussions about how productive we would be with this new type of work week, haha
I love Vietnamese food too and am currently loving the rice paper rolls-this would be gorgeous inside a rice paper roll! :D
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourites, yummo!
ReplyDeleteDear Lucy,
ReplyDeleteThis would be a great salad in summer although our Sydney summer this year has been dismal :(
Love this salad...light & so full of flavour, ever since South East Asian cooking class the other week I am just craving all these Asian flavours.
ReplyDelete