Hello world! It’s been a year and half since my last post but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. In fact, it feels like just yesterday when I was slinging garlic noodles while simultaneously fulfilling a homework assignment for my younger daughter. So yeah, as I’ve said numerous times in these intermittent posts, time is flying by. I’m reminded of that every day when I look at my kids and how fast they’re growing. Don’t believe me? Well, just peruse the catalogue of old posts and vids where I shamelessly injected my kids into the vids (hoping to score more views – didn’t work) and you’ll see them go from being babies and toddlers (chile verde, greenbeans, granola) to young and still adorable -measured completely objectively- kids (fried chicken, chow mein, yogurt, sorbet) to bigger but still objectively cute kids (leftovers, broth, smoothies). As you know doubt noticed, having watched all those vids, from the earlier ones to the later ones, there is noticeable growth and development. I don’t have to point the camera down as much or use step stools. The kids speak more coherently from video to video (shout out, school!). Which brings us to the this current post. Kaya, the older child is now in the eight grade and is now taller than my wife, Shefali (aka the boss) – though not by much and also Shef’s not exactly tall, so it’s a low bar (literally). But Kaya’s on camera persona has also developed and her off the cuff remarks give my witticisms a run for their money! And that is a very high bar because I am witty as fuck! Soon the student will become the master! Mona, the younger one, has also come into her own, but you’ll also see a through line in her personality (spunky and irreverent) that’s obvious whether it’s munching on green beans as a baby or slurping up garlic noodles as an eigh-year-old. Or maybe it’s just me as her sentimental father that sees this. But I also have to give credit to Mona (whose persistence can tread the line to downright annoying – which it often does) for being the driving force behind making this vid. We had some time before the kids started school a few weeks ago and she insisted that we do another cooking video. So, being an amazing father (true fact) I relented. We consulted an old “to do videos” list in our kitchen and settled on peanut noodles.
It’s fairly straight forward dish where you can do a lot of the prep beforehand and at meal time, it’s just about assembly. So it’s a great option when you have company and you don’t want to be working your ass off in the kitchen while everyone else is enjoying the fruits of your labor. Also, it’s fantastic for hot days because you can eat everything at room temperature. Those two factors are basically how I came up with this recipe. It was inspired primarily by Vietnamese bun (room temp rice noodle bowls with vegetables, protein and a sauce) and Indonesian gado gado or pecel (room temp cold salads with cooked vegetables, a starch -potatoes in gado gado, rice in pecel – and some sort of protein) drizzled with a sweet and savory peanut sauce. So that’s what these peanut noodles are: a delicious rice noodle salad with prepared vegetables, protein (in this case chicken) all tied together with a homemade peanut sauce. See the ingredients list below.
Ingredients for the salad part:
rice noodles
carrots
cucumbers
cilantro
chicken
Ingredients for the peanut sauce:
peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
hot water
soy sauce
vinegar
sugar (or honey)
My personal philosophy is to treat a recipe more as a guide more than as doctrine. That’s why for this recipe there are no quantities. You’ll figure it out as you cook and things will change based on the number of people you’re cooking for. Also you should feel free to add any other vegetables you think will work. Likewise for the peanut sauce, you can add other ingredients as well (fish sauce, chile oil/crisp, sriracha). Now for more guidance check vid below for how we do it (or at least how we did it on the day of filming):
