So, I’ve been thinking lately… as one does. I keep telling you guys how lovely, easy and in line with my values being vegan is. And yet I have not even shared one recipe! As I truly want you to believe me, I’ll share some of my favourite go-to recipes and challenge you to try them out and tell me what you think!
Full disclosure though before we do this. I am not a professional chef nor a photographer and I don’t know a lot about nutrition content, calories and what not of what I eat. I eat varied food every day, trying out new recipes all the time, and improvising with what I’ve got on hand at the moment. Every recipe I’ll be sharing can be easily adapted to your own taste. So feel free to add whatever you like, remove what you don’t, but do make sure to try new tastes. You never know, you might find new favourites!
Last night, I was watching Ramit Sethi’s intro to his new segment of I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I know it couldn’t really sound any scammier, but he’s actually great and you should look him up if you have any interest in developing systems in your life, entrepreneurship or strengthening some new skills. The new category he just launched is about healthy eating and learning to cook when you the only cooking skill you have is boiling water.
During the live presentation, they made some Soba noodles with a peanut sauce. Because it was live, it was not like a video you can pause to double check, and it did not have an actual written recipe to follow.
According to their recipe, it takes 10 minutes top, with fairly easy-to-find ingredients. And I love easy and quick recipes so I had to give it a try! While it took them only 10 minutes, they already had boiling water, so if you start with cold water like I did, you are looking more at 20-25 mins.
At one point though during the live video, I open my eyes wide when they ruined the recipe by adding chicken!! They even said to add chicken if you wanted to add proteins. By then I was literally yelling at my screen… the recipe has peanut butter and added peanuts for a crunchy taste. You don’t actually need to add any chicken for proteins as it’s already packed!
A quick reminder, though, just like a meat-based diet, a vegan diet can be full of proteins and nutrients, or it can be the total opposite, eating tons of fast-food, sugary drinks, desserts etc. It all depends on your choices. And we are lucky, we get to decide three times a day what we will feed our bodies.
One last note, on all the recipes you’ll find here, I tend not to measure anything and usually go by feeling. Not because I’m that good at evaluating quantities, but mostly because when travelling you don’t often get a measuring cup or a scale so improvising is key!
Anyways, I thought I would give the recipe (from what I could remember from the seminar) a try, so here goes:
Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce
Serves 2
Soba noodles can usually be found in the Asian aisle of your supermarket
Ingredients
Soba noodles about the size of a quarter (for CAD and USA or a 10-pence coin for GBP)
Frozen green peas 1/2 to 3/4 cup
Fresh baby spinach 2-3 handful or more (that’s all I had left)
Unsalted cashew nuts 1/4 cup
Peanut sauce
Unsalted peanut butter 1/3 cup (unsalted is better as you’ll add a lot of salt with the soy sauce)
Rice vinegar 3 tbsp or more if you enjoy the taste of vinegar
Soy sauce 2 tbsp
Toasted sesame oil 1 tbsp
Maple syrup or sugar 1 tbsp (you can get excited and add 2 tbsp)
Minced garlic I used 1/2 tsp granulated garlic but fresh would be better
Freshly grated ginger to taste
Steps
- Boil water in a large pot
- While waiting for the water to boil, put the peas in the colander you will use to strain the noodles. Frozen peas being so small, they will start to thaw while you cook the noodles, and once you drain everything on top, it will warm them up perfectly.
- Prepare the peanut sauce by mixing all ingredients smoothly together using a fork. It should look exactly like peanut butter again once the oil and vinegar are added.
- Once the water is boiling, add the noodles and the spinach for 6-8 minutes. Reduce to a simmer.
- Drain noodles and spinach mix over the peas in your colander.
- Put the noodle mix back in your pot and mix in the peanut sauce.
- Serve in bowls, adding the chopped cashew nuts on top
- Before you eat, put water in the pot so it’s not a pain to clean!
- Enjoy, ideally in great company!
Possible variations
Green onions
Snap peas
Kale
Any vegetable you usually boil and which takes less than 6-8 mins to be ready (as you’ll add them to the noodles)
Leftovers cooked veggies (to add to the colander before draining the noodles)
Please do tell me if you try this recipe and any tasty modifications you might have enjoyed!