midweek gems #32: Cool Noodles
5 Asian cold noodle recipes + California dining guide
How hot is it where you are? In response to last Sunday’s recipe for Hanoi-style chicken pho salad, Gillie reported 100F temps in Arizona. Gadzooks! That recipe is perfect for AZ and anywhere else this season.
But let’s be real here. Summer lasts months and you’ll get bored with that pho salad (I hope not but it could happen). So, I’ve gathered some more ideas for you.
💎 5 Cool Asian Noodle Recipes
Add these five to the PTFS Chicken Pho Salad and you’ll have a cool half dozen to play with! Most of these are at my website so they’re available to everyone!
Sichuan Cold Sesame (or peanut) Noodles — On our first date decades ago, Rory and I shared an order of Asian-fusion peanutty noodles. It was so delicious that I’ve made oodles of those noodles since but with a recipe that’s more true to the dish’s Sichuan roots. The recipe is here for you to cook up and chill out with.
Vietnamese Bun Rice Noodle Salad Bowl Blueprint — You can turn practically anything into a Viet rice noodle salad bowl. My bun bowl primer and outline provides the parameters and walks you through how to freestyle your own bowl. Get the lowdown here. Practice this recipe and my hope is you’ll never need it again!
Soba Veggie Salad with Carrot Ginger Miso Dressing — Use whatever seasonal veggies you have and enjoy them raw with the noodles and dressing. It’s absolutely refreshing. The PTFS recipes for the dressing and noodles are here. Make the soba salad with or without meat.
Cold Udon Noodles — The thick Japanese noodles are not just for slurping in hot broth. There’s a long Japanese tradition of serving udon noodles cold. I tried them in Tokyo during a sweltering afternoon — very cooling. The fat chewy noodles make for a more luscious experience than soba noodles, which can come off as pretty lean. Get the simple zaru udon recipe.
Peking Meat Sauce Noodles (Zha Jiang Mian) — I cook from old cookbooks a lot and this recipe was an adaptation and update of a 1960s recipe by the great Joyce Chen. It’s simple and delicious. You can set all the components out for folks to assemble their own bowl too! Get the vintage and new recipes.
💎 California dining guide
Don’t want to cook? Go out and let someone else deal with the prep and clean up!
I mentioned Restaurant Josephine in Auburn in last week’s gems and coincidentally, it was include in Bill Addison’s picks for his California dining guide. It was released over the weekend and is here for you to check out. (I subscribe but can’t guarantee that this link will get you past the paywall.)
Bill has been a cook and professional critic for years. It’s great that he ventured near and far and deep for the Los Angeles Times’s guide. Many PTFSers reside in California so Bill and his colleagues have great tips for you!
For this coming paid subscriber Sunday Special — a gingery fried fish dish that I’ve been jonesing for. Join us, if you have not.
Yep feels like 97 in New Jersey right now. Looking to triple digits in a few days. Unlike where I grew up in southern CA, it is humid not dry and won’t cool off overnight. Those cold noodle recipes look like just the thing for a humid heat wave.
It was 92F when I woke up this morning at 6 a.m. but I am on the Atlantic coast, and that was the temp adjusted for humidity etc. Currently it is 90F but "feels like" 97. My FIL is arriving from Seattle on Saturday and could not have picked a worse time to visit. Oops
We eat cold noodles (and cold tofu) all summer (and spring and fall, too.) Few things are more refreshing!