I was so inspired reading through the recipes of Healthy, Happy, Vegan Kitchen by Kathy Patalsky. I hadn't really tried my hand at vegan cooking until checking out this book at the library. It is an awesome book for those who are new to eating a plant based diet and has a ton of easy vegan recipes without a whole lot of bizarre/foreign ingredients.
I saw this Spicy Thai recipe and even though I didn't have all the ingredients that it called for, I decided to go for it anyways, and sub out what I didn't have with things I did and it turned out awesome! You can make these more spicy, or less depending on your preference and depending on the weather/mood you can serve these noodles cold or hot. I went with hot because I prefer hot dishes and it seemed more "dinner appropriate."
So here's the recipe I adapted from Kathy's book; Healthy, Happy Vegan Kitchen.
Spicy Peanut Soba Noodles
Ingredients
3 cups uncooked soba noodles
Spicy Peanut Sauce
3 to 4 TBS peanut butter, softened
2 TBS pure maple syrup
2 TBS rice vinegar
1 TBS chopped cilantro
1 TBS chopped Thai basil
1 clove garlic
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger
few pinches of cayenne pepper
1/2 cup plain unsweetened almond milk or water
Toppings
1 cup thinly sliced carrots
2 tsp sesame seeds (optional)
2 TBS peanuts (optional)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
Spicy Thai Sriracha sauce
Procedure
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cool until tender, about 5 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Cover the noodles to keep them warm
For the peanut sauce: In a food processor or blender, combine the peanut sauce ingredients leaving out the almond milk until you have blended all the other ingredients. Once blended, add almond milk one spoonful at a time until it reaches desired thickness. Process until smooth. If you need to adjust thickness you can add more peanut butter.
Pour the sauce into saucepan and simmer for 2-3 minutes until just warm. For extra kick add some spicy Thai sriracha.
Enjoy!