noodled & tangled Thai salad
Oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to conceive
a noodled salad of garden things
kitty-kimboed together, dressed with zing!
Once scattered with nuts it’s declared as g o o d
Pray tell – who then shall make it – for
clearly, easily, anyone could!
~
by Wilma Shakespoon
~
Today’s Wegetable Vednesday offering:
An entire vegetarian meal, loaded with raw fresh vegetable goodness, textured and colorful, brimming with citrusy, nutty & Thai chili flavors, tossed into a bed of cushiony yakisoba noodles.
This recipe can be endlessly adapted to whatever is fresh and overflowing from your garden, or whatever inspires you at the produce stand. (Maybe you’ll add slivers of sweet or snow peas, or thinly sliced cabbage or radishes. Or you might decide to even replace the cherry tomatoes with red grapes. You could also add cubes of fried tofu or cooked chicken breast if it pleases you.) The dressing you will love, just as it is.
Noodled & Tangled Thai Salad
Serves 4 as a meal
Simply cut the vegetables into sticks as thin and long as you can, or use a mandolin which will make quick & neat work of it.
- 1 package of yakisoba noodles
- 1½ cups very thinly sliced matchstick carrots (or grated into long slivers)
- 1½ cups zucchini (prepared as carrots above)
- ½ red bell pepper, cut into match-sticks
- ½ – 1 cup Jicama (grated into long pieces)
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes (cut in half if large)
- 4 tbsp (¼ cup) Peanut Lime Dressing (recipe follows)
- ½ English cucumber thinly sliced or thinly matchsticked
- chopped toasted unsalted peanuts
- lime wedges
- chopped or torn cilantro
Prepare the noodles as you like – if dry, you can either boil and simply strain, or strain and then quickly stir fry in a touch of oil (sesame or coconut are good…just go light.) OR, if you’re using pre-cooked Yakisoba noodles, quickly stir fry. Noodles can be warm or room temperature or chilled. All are equally good.
Place cooked noodles in a large, shallow serving bowl or platter.
Pile the carrot, zucchini, jicama, red bell pepper and cherry tomatoes (and/or any other vegetables) on top the noodles and drizzle with dressing. Toss.
Garnish with the cucumber, peanuts, lime, and cilantro.
You may want to drizzle with drops of sriracha sauce if you love the heat, and some might like an additional bit of tamari or soy. But most, including kids, will like it just as it is.
This dressing is delicious…
Peanut Lime Dressing
This dressing will keep for up to a week in the fridge. It is delicious on the Tangled Thai Salad, but would be equally good on any salad or even poured on top of cold noodles.
- 3 cloves garlic, minced (about 1 T.)
- 2 T. tightly packed cilantro
- 2 T. natural peanut butter
- 2 T. + 2 t. lime juice
- 1 T. + 1 t. tamari (or soy sauce)
- 1 T. rice vinegar
- 1 T. peeled and chopped ginger
- 2 t. coconut milk
- 1 ½ t. sugar
- ¾ t. sesame oil
- 1 t. sweet Thai chili sauce
- ½ cup sunflower oil (or other neutral-tasting vegetable oil)
In a blender, drop all the ingredients except the sunflower oil. Purée until well blended.
With the blender running, add sunflower oil in a thin stream until dressing is emulsified.
Refrigerated, dressing will keep for at least a week.
Thanks to my daughter Ali for the inspiration for this dish! And for her overflowing vegetable garden!
~ ~ ~
to print a Noodled Tangled Thai Salad, click here. (There appears to be a glitch in the system at the moment, so check back if you’re interested in a printer-friendly version.)
What a delightful salad to prepare during the endless heat waves this summer…
Apart from the noodles, no heat required. Whew, what a relief it is!
Vonderful!
Danke!
Lovely, lovely salad… and a poem too, today.. Way to go Ms. Vilma Shakespoon!! Love the tangled web you’ve voven, woven.. and a luscious dressing to boot. Oh, I’m so craving a long summer day on the boat and this salad when I get home. I’m bringing you with me to the lake today (on my computer, silly) and will be making this one… probably more than once!! xoxo Smidge
Oh for a second there Smidge I got so excited…even had my boat shoes on! Ah well. I’ll be happy picturing you there, with your ‘puter and the water and the sun! That’s livin’! Have a lovely lovely day! xoxo
That sounds just wonderful. Sensational array of flavours in that dressing. Got to be done. By the way, that Wilma has some good stuff to say.
This is one of Wilma’s lesser-known verses (rightly so – quite amazed in fact that I was able to find it)….But the salad, she’s a good one!
Very clever poem Ms Shakespoon wrote there – I can see why you were inspired to create such a beautiful salad. And I learned something new too (which is always good)…Jicama, that was a new one to me!
Oh I thought I’d remember to say a word about jicama for those who don’t know it. but you see that I forgot. It’s a root, looking a bit like a huge potato, it’s so sweet and crunchy – sort of like a water chestnut, but sweeter – so good in a salad! Probably not widely available on the continent you’re on…I think most of ours comes north from Mexico.
Wilma Shakespoon!!! Perfect!
Speaking of perfect, your Peanut Lime Dressing would make any salad’s ingredients sing. Combined with these, and you’ve made a great salad, Spree, one that I’d thoroughly enjoy. This is one beautiful dish, too.
Thank you John! This dressing is pretty versatile…goes well over all kinds of quickly stir-fried veggies, and shrimp too.
This looks just too fresh and fabulous Spree! A salad after my own heart – I’ll be making this dressing this week – thank you! xo!
Yes, Shira, seems this is just the sort of salad I’d see at your place! Hope you’ll like the dressing…we all sure did! xo
If we could only share it together! I know it will be a hit! I’ll keep you posted!! xox!
Yum. Yum. Yum. It’s the dressing.
One of the things so great about this salad is the varied textures from the various vegetables and the deliciousness from the dressing, which is like you say, Yum.
That dressing looks amazing. We just made one like this and loved it. I will be trying this dressing next time. Happy days, lee
Happy day to you Lee, and thank you too for stopping in and leaving words!
would love to hear how you use it and if you liked!
Absolutely amazing, those images are strikingly excellent! So light and healthy too, really good for summer.
Thank you Nick…it pretty much does smack of summer. We loved it and will have it again and again, in one permutation or another!
That dressing sounds fantastic – and the dish looks perfect for a hot summer day.
Well…it is, and it is…and thank you so much for saying so Jean-Francois!
Wilma Shakespoon, you are adorable!
These colors. These strings of beauty. That dressing. This looks amazing and summer night refreshing.
We sure loved it on a summer night Ash!
Just love this salad! We’ll have to try the jicama next time and you will have to try it with some baked sprouted tofu! So fresh, so pretty, so delicious. We’re bringing this salad with fresh fruit and Vege potstickers to a new mommy next week.
We just love this salad! We’ll have to try it with jicama and you’ll have to try it with the baked tofu! How did you get your carrots cut so perfectly? Did you use your quisinart? Next week we’ll be bringing this meal to a new mommy who will be craving such fresh beauty after a few days of hospital food.
I’m craving it again just from looking at your gorgeous photos!
Ali, we’ve made this twice in 2 weeks. Loved it loved it! Just picked up some sprouted tofu. Thanks for that suggestion! This salad is a hit on so many levels that it’ll be a summer staple around here for sure! We had ours alongside the sweetest cantaloupe with bits of flaky salt! mmmmm!
Very nice, Spree! I might just have a go at this tonight… less the jicama… plus the sweet pea. (Think I’ll get one of the girls to do the chopping.)
I don’t suppose you grow corn do you Val? Fresh sweet corn off the cob, uncooked, would be good addition too. Well, probably most anything from your 100 square meters would be !
This one is a, “FOR SURE” my dear Spree! Yummy yummy good! Posted on my FB for my peeps! Thank you for doing what you so beautifully do…which is, to gather/harvest good things from our Mother Earth and prepare those luscious and delicious offerings. Then take awesome pictures of the process, which entice us all, with how easy it can be for all of “us” to do the same! Your photos are exquisite and your writings are so enjoyable! I am for sure making this one!!! Much love your way, dear heart! Your old soul friend, Kell
Ding, ding, ding!!! I think noodle salads are an all time favourite, and to use fresh veggies from the garden just doens’t get much better! I’m loving your dressing with the addition of the coconut milk. But yet again you made me reach for google, I haven’t heard of Jicama before – an dnow I want to try one
and as ever such great photos. thank you!
Ding ding ding!
Claire you’d love Jicama! I just know it. But even without, this is such a good meal that we’ve had it at least twice more since posting about it. And with all the beauty springing from YOUR garden, well…it’s just a natural! (Thank you always for the kind words you leave behind!)
Lovely ! And I love cilantro . Have u ever made cilantro salad?.
I never have! You think I should?
Do you make one?
i eat but i don’t make! Lol! if ever you do, i hope you share it…i’m sure i’ll be inspired to do one. =>
I just “found” your blog via Claire at Promenade Plantings and what a great one it is! I love this salad, so perfect especially for the hot summer months and anything with a peanut dressing makes me happy! Love the Wilma Shakespoon poem at the beginning.
Why thank you so much for stopping by and leaving such nice words behind! I so appreciate that! (I’m with you on peanut dressings! Aren’t they wonderful!)
What refreshing colors and bright flavors!
In these hot days salads like this one become more and more appealing!
I love the salad but the it is the dressing that I really can’t wait to try
Um, I want to bury my face in that salad. Also, your photos are disgustingly awesome. Especially when one considers that you have been surrounded by renovation gack. My tummy is growling for Thai salad… and it’s only 8:29 am here…
This looks divine! My family loves these kinds of salads and the dressing looks especially delish. Perfect for the summer table!
Oh thank you Karista! This isn’t such an unusual meal out here is it?
I love a meal (especially in summer) that’s basically just an outline into which you plug whatever’s fresh and appealing. We’re awfully lucky, where we live, to have such options!
Looks like a cover of a magazine. Perfect summer meal, early evening on the porch…I imagine bowls in one hand, chopsticks in the other… relaxed with legs stretched out on a chair
Why, you’re almost spooky!
That’s EXACTLY the way we enjoyed it! 
Your noodle salad is so colorful and I’m sure the taste if fantastic. Great for a refreshing summer meal.
I love color in food and am fond of the crunch of nuts and Thai food in general so there is so much to like in this salad. Of course the presentation and the containers are all picture perfect as well but nothing unusual about that from any recipe that passes through your kitchen. It looks absolutely perfect to me. By the way, the recipe is very reminiscent of cold soba noodles in Japanese cuisine as well. [Soba noodles in Japanese cuisine are made from buckwheat whereas "yakisoba" noodles, curiously, are usually made from wheat flour.]