Thursday, August 10, 2006

Peas & Walnuts in a Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce


This was another quick and easy dish that I whipped up on a weeknight this week--it's mostly just about the peanut sauce, which is a fantastically simple and yet surprisingly yummy recipe, but I will admit--the peas and walnuts combination was ALSO surprisingly tasty as well.

Thai Peanut Sauce Recipe: from Allrecipes.com

INGREDIENTS:
  • 4 T. peanut butter

  • 4 T. hot water

  • 2 T. soy sauce

  • 1.5 T. vegan brown sugar

  • 1/4 t. cayenne pepper

  • 1 1/2 t. fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

Whisk the first two ingredients together until they're smooth. Then gradually add each of the other ingredients in one at a time, whisking as you go along. The cayenne pepper may seem like a lot given the small quantity of sauce this makes--I started off with 1/8 t. at first because I was leery--but it's not. It'll have some zip, but it won't sear your tongue off, promise.

I tossed the peanut sauce on some angel hair noodles along with some frozen peas and walnuts. Not remotely gourmet of course, but I was just trying to make do with the stuff I had around the house.

A definite improvement would be to use this on some sort of rice noodle along with tofu, peanuts, beansprouts, etc. I also think next time I would probably experiment more with it--perhaps adding some fresh ginger, maybe substituting the lemon juice for lime. This is a very basic (but really tasty, especially given its simplicity) sauce that allows for a lot of fiddling--I think it actually might even make a good base for a pad thai dish, so that may be my next goal with it.

Oh, and btw, this recipe makes enough for two ridiculously large bowls of pasta or (if you can keep from drowning your pasta in freakish quantities of sauce like I do) 4 medium-sized bowls of pasta.

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