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15-Minute Peanutty Noodles You'll Want to Put on Repeat
Plus two more noodle salads, all courtesy of Mark Bittman.
Mark Bittman is not a fan of cold pasta salads.
"Ice-cold noodles are starchy and often mushy—not the best combination of textures," he told me in an email. "And chilled sauces are never as flavorful as when they’re at room temperature."
But in true Bittman fashion, he's found a brilliant workaround. "It’s a fact that light, satisfying noodle salads are the ideal summer meal. So my solution is to serve what essentially is a hot dish after it cools down a bit," he said.
Enter the "Noodle Salad" section of his newly released cookbook, Dinner for Everyone. Like the rest of the book, it offers three takes on a dish type: one easy, one vegan, and one "all out." In this case, respectively, a 15-minute peanut bun laced with chopped chiles and topped with nine-minute eggs, a gingery noodle salad that treats snow peas as they should be treated (as stars), and a Vietnamese bean thread salad with shrimp and chicken. Each is at its best at room temperature.
Dinner for Everyone is the latest of 20-plus cookbooks authored by Bittman, who recently launched digital food magazine Heated.
"I’m often completely spontaneous in the kitchen, which takes practice and a willingness to serve something that may not be perfect," he said. "I want my readers to succeed, but also to be able to cook like I cook. So the recipes in Dinner for Everyone are based on dishes I make when I wing it, but refined to be as close to guaranteed as possible."
And riffs are more than welcome. "Variations have long been my thing," he said. "There are lots of ways to take the recipe ingredients beyond these."
For Bittman's suggested variations, see below:
"Try other nuts or seeds—cashews, even coconut or sunflower seeds—in peanut bun; then garnish with whatever bits of cooked vegetables, meat, or fresh herbs you’ve got sitting around."
"With the gingery noodle salad, cutting the vegetables in thin strips and then flash-cooking them is the key technique for ultimate twirling. So go ahead and use carrots, Asian greens, or other sturdy vegetables the same way." (Note: We even tried this with mostly whole snow peas, and it was still excellent.)
"And the lesson in the Vietnamese bean thread salad is to use cooking liquid as a way to build flavor. Whether you decide to cook squid instead of shrimp or pork instead of chicken, you’re going to end up with beautifully seasoned bean threads, before you even dress them."
A New Way to Dinner, co-authored by Food52's founders Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, is an indispensable playbook for stress-free meal-planning (hint: cook foundational dishes on the weekend and mix and match ‘em through the week).
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