Amuse Bouche: A Cool Summer Noodle Dish

This week at create a cook the theme is vegetarian. I spent a long time searching for recipes to use as i didn't want to fall into a rut of the usual suspects and I wanted to introduce the kids to some potential new foods. We made a Camargue Rice Salad with Arugula and Feta, a Bulgur Salad with Chickpeas Roasted Red Pepper and a Spicy Cumin Dressing, Spinach Pasties, Asparagus and Gruyere Feuilletes and in honour of the new movie that opens today that I cannot wait to see, a Ratatouille. All dishes went over very well with the Camargue Rice Salad receiving particularly good reviews but the dish that I think they liked the most was Otsu.

The recipe for Otsu comes from Heidi Swanson's (of 101 Coobooks.com) new book Super Natural Cooking.
I had seen the Amateur Gourmet had made it one sweltering evening to rave reviews and I had also seen it mentioned before on Heidi's blog as a recipe she made based on a dish she had in a local restaurant. I chose to make it because I adore cold sesame peanut noodles, but so many kids today have peanut and tree nut allergies I decided to make this dish instead to see if it would satisfy my cold noodle craving just the same and satisfy it did. We all loved this dish! In fact I liked it so much I made it again for dinner last night. I didn't happen to have plain buckwheat soba noodles on hand so I used mugwort sobu and it was just as yummy and since I don't love plain tofu and I an indeed a carnivore I had mine with some Spanish tuna on top. The dressing uses shoyu but you can sub out tamari or even soy if you can't find shoyu.

This dish has everything you could want for summer. It's quick to put together, the only stove involved is boiling water for the noodles. It's loaded with ginger, lemon and sesame oil with a kick of cayenne so the palate gets a nice punch of flavours. If you want the full recipe, go visit Adam over at Amateur Gourmet as Heidi let him reprint it with her permission. As for me, I'm going to buy her book on the way to work today, I bet she has a lot more dishes up her sleeve for me to try.