We went from wondering if another ice age was on its way to believing in global warming again this week. The unseasonably warm weather cried out for a cooler dinner, and gigantic chives and Asian mustard that went from salad size to mandatory cooking overnight made me think of some of our favorite pseudo-Asian meals. Tonight we’re having spicy peanut-sesame noodles with broccoli, coconut-crusted chicken, and a mess of mustard greens finished with hoisin sauce.
I first had peanut-sesame noodles a couple of decades ago at a Chinese restaurant in a country house outside Madison, Wisconsin. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure if the place was licensed as a restaurant, but it got a big following quickly. The food was good, but the most fun was the owner’s enthusiastic teenage daughter, Sunshine. After we’d visited a few times, Sunshine told us that she was going to order for us that night, not from the menu but one of her favorite things that her mother made for the family. Out came the noodles. I was in love. These probably bear little resemblance to those, but I can make them with ingredients I have on hand.
Spicy Peanut-Sesame Noodles
This recipe will make more than enough noodles for a whole family of four (or more). I used whole-wheat spaghetti noodles, but you could use udon noodles or thick rice noodles too.
Serves 4-6
- 1/2 box whole-wheat spaghetti noodles
- 1/4 cup chicken broth (or veggie–also okay to use water, but then you’ll need to increase the other ingredients a bit)
- 1/3-1/2 cup good peanut butter
- 1 hot pepper (chile), diced finely–I used a red peter pepper I had in the freezer. Feel free to use more peppers if you like it spicier.
- 1 crushed garlic clove or several garlic chives, diced finely
- 2-3 dashes rice wine vinegar
- 6-7 dashes soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- optional: freshly grated ginger or pickled ginger, slivered
- 2-4 scallions or chives, sliced across the grain (both whites and tops)
- carrot, slivered or coarsely grated
- optional garnishes: cilantro, coarsely grated radish, snow peas, shelled edamame
Begin by prepping the sauce for the noodles. Heat the peanut butter and broth to get everything moving. I heat them in a one-cup pyrex measuring cup in the microwave and then use the measuring cup for mixing everything else. Add in the hot pepper, garlic, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil.*
Now prepare the noodles according to package directions. Pour off the cooking liquid and while the noodles are still hot, add the sauce and stir well to combine. Stir in some of the scallions, carrots, and garnish and pile the rest artfully on top. Set the noodles aside or refrigerate. You’ll serve these noodles at room temperature or even cold.
Do you want to make this a vegetarian one-dish meal? Use the veggie broth, and toss in shelled edamame or stir-fried tofu. By the way, this sauce is an excellent appetizer dip for vegetables! When we take it to parties, people love that it’s not the same-old ranch or bleu cheese dip, and it’s a lot healthier for you.
Go ahead and take a closer look.
Quick Broccoli
I used two cups of florets, fresh from our garden, and tossed them in salted water in the wok. That’s all! Then I used them as additional garnish on the noodles.
Coconut-Crusted Spicy Chicken
serves 2-4
- 1 chicken breast, about half a pound, cut into strips (half of the thickness of the breast, about 3/4-inch wide each)
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2-4 tablespoons lime juice
- optional: 2 tablespoons rice vinegar (use if you only use 2 tablespoons of lime juice)
- 1 large jalapeno or other chile, diced fine (or more to taste)
- 1 egg, beaten You don’t need to double the egg if you double the recipe.
- 1/3 cup coconut
Start by making the marinade by mixing together your liquids and prepped jalapeno. Process everything with a stick blender or in a regular blender. It’s okay if some of the pepper remains unprocessed. If you do not have a blender, just chop the pepper even more and let it meld with the marinade for a little while..
Pour the brine/marinade over the chicken breast strips and let everything soak for several hours, turning regularly to make sure that the marinade reaches all parts. (If you’d like to let the chicken soak overnight in the mix, add 1/4 cup water to make a brine. Otherwise, the acid in the juice and vinegar will “cook” the chicken and make it tough.)
To have un-crusted chicken, pour off the marinade or brine and stir-fry the chicken in a little coconut oil. To crust the chicken, pour off the brine, dry the chicken well, and dip it first in the egg and then in the coconut. Place the chicken pieces on a greased cookie sheet and bake it in a 325 degree F oven for about 20 minutes, turning the chicken over half way through, until the chicken is golden brown on the outside (and, obviously, cooked through inside.)
I also served dinner with mustard greens in hoisin sauce (pictured in the upper right corner of the bowl). Simply prep a mess of greens (see photos above and below for what constituted a “mess of greens” tonight!) by stripping off the tough stems, chopping everything roughly, stir-frying quickly in sesame oil, and tossing in some hoisin sauce to finish wilting the greens. As hot as it’s been outside, the greens were really sharp.
*If you have a family member who’s a little leary of new things, reduce or leave out the toasted sesame oil altogether and add a bit more chicken broth and vegetable oil to thin the noodle dressing. Sesame oil has a distinctive (some say acquired) flavor.
oh, anything Asian.
Love it.
Thanks! We really did eat *all* of those mustard greens, and it was a bit over my limit, but eating seasonally, I know that we don’t have many mustard greens left to eat until fall anyway.
This post tickled me. I was a resident of Madison, WI in the 60′s when there were no such restaurants and five years before there were children named Sunshine and Moonbeam. I learned to cook this way in Iowa City. Thank you for these recipes and your gardening advice.
Thanks, Barb! Sunshine was her English name, and she and her mother were relative newcomers to Madison and the US. Her mother spoke little English, while Sunshine had a faint accent and relished everything teenage American.
Do you mind a little history lesson? Maybe you already know this, but in case you don’t, immigration law in the US banned Chinese people from entering the country from 1882 (Chinese Exclusion Act) until 1965. Even the National Origins and Quota acts from the early 1920s did not lift the ban. Of course, some people slipped in through Mexico (apparently border agents couldn’t tell the difference between Chinese people and Mexican people!) and as “paper sons,” but it was only with massive changes in immigration laws in 1965 that places like Madison, Wisconsin, could even think about getting good Chinese restaurants. Oddly enough, Arkansas, Mississippi, and the Missouri boot heel had more opportunity, as Chinese people had been recruited to work the rice fields before the 1882 ban. Of course, a lot of the “Chinese” restaurants in the heartland of the US opened in the late 1970s and 1980s weren’t being run by Chinese people at all but rather by refugees from the Vietnam conflict. Vietnamese food just didn’t sell so well then as it does now.
Hi Homesteader,
I didn’t know and wouldn’t have thought that Chinese immigrants were banned until 1965. I assumed the name Sunshine was a lifestyle choice of her parents. I had a classmate
in a Madison High school that was from China. However his
father was a visiting teacher so he was not an “immigrant.”
All the other students were caucasian as was the
city then. I know Mexican restaurants
came to Iowa because Iowa farms used Mexican laborers who brought their families. They were temporary residents. Now I live in Toronto, Canada. It’s multicultural now but Canada had it’s own ban on Chinese immigrants even though they supplied the labor to build the trans Canada railroad.
I know: Sunshine sounds so very, very Madison in the 1960s, doesn’t it?
Like with Canada, the US recruited Chinese workers for the railroad in the mid-19th century. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a late outgrowth of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in which Irish railroad workers demanded an end to Chinese immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act was actually repealed during World War II, but the National Origins Quota Act that also restricted Asian immigration remained in effect until 1965.
Arkansas is now experiencing a similar surge in Mexican workers, although many of these workers are permanent recruits for the chicken processing plants.
Toronto is such a wonderful city!
I agree. Madison had an interesting blend of radical student life and conservative behavior. I don’t know much about it now but my sister visits there.
Toronto recieves most of the immigrants who come to Canada. When we came they were mostly Scots-Irish, English, Germans, Ukrainians. I think now there are 58 originating
languages. A positive change is that it’s not so uptight. French is not common except in Ottawa where a combination English/French is used in a single conversation. I enjoy this aspect. It’s the only N. American big city that doesn’t have
the power to raise its own taxes. It struggles to provide
social services to immigrants. Its not eco
friendly. Bicycling’s unsafe. Public transit is old and can’t keep up because the Federal government refuses funding. Canadians who live in other Provinces and
other parts of Ontario love to hate Toronto but at the same time do not allow for its huge problems. I know I don’t enjoy it as much as visitors even though as far as big cities go, it’s safe and there’s a lot to do. But Toronto’s huge attraction, Lake Ontario’s waterfront, has been over run by development that limits access to it from the public. Beaches are not free from bacteria enough to swim.
However I wouldn’t leave because I have wonderful friends. My children were born here and see Toronto as their home.
Well, perhaps I would no longer like Toronto so much as I did when I visited there many years ago–although the diversity still sounds wonderful.
Yes I wonder if you would find it as appealing as you did then but
I think the problems may not be noticeable to visitors.
What part of Arkansas do you live in?
North central Arkansas–on the southeastern edge of the Ozarks.
Just had a look at a map of Arkansas to see if I could find
your mountains. You have a lot of them. The Mississippi
is your E. border. Wisconsin is the same. So interesting.
The Ozark Mountains are the ones that take up the northwest and north-central part of the state. The Ouachitas (pronounced WAH-shi-taaa) are the ones in the southwest.
I hadn’t heard of the Ouachitas. This is a good geography lesson.
Um, once a teacher . . . .?
Yes, I”m a retired RN.