Cold Sesame Noodles

Adapted from Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine

This is our favorite cold noodle salad. Its fantastic on warm summer days when you have a ton of vegetables you want to use up but don't want to fire up the wok. We used dried Chinese noodles, but pretty much any noodle will work. most of the steps can be completed ahead of time and then combined a few minutes before serving. While the flavors blend really well over-night, the veggies have a tendency to get very limp very quickly. The dressing is also works as a great salad dressing if you have left-overs.


 olive oil
1 pound noodles
2 garlic cloves minced
1/2 sesame paste
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon tabasco sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 chunky peanut butter
4 endives
1/2 cucumber
1/2 bell pepper
1/4 cup minced cilantro
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds



Cook the noodles until tender according to the instructions on the packaging. Strain the noddles, toss with 1 tablespoon of oil and lay them out flat on a cooking sheet until cool. You can cover them with plastic wrap and refrigerate if you want to do this step ahead.  

Saute the garlic in 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat until fragrant. Remove from heat and add sesame paste, peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, tabasco and sugar. It will develop into a thick paste pretty quickly, all you are doing here is making sure everything is mixed well. Bring the chicken stock to a boil in a separate pot then add that to the paste, creating a the dressing.

Cut the bottoms of the endives, remove the leaves, and julienne them. Endives are a bit tricky because they are so crisp you risk snapping the leaves if you do not cut off a bit more of the bottom after every layer of leaves. Its hard to describe but you will see once you get going. Julienne the cucumber and the bell pepper as well.

The book suggests to toss the sauce with the noodles and then top with the vegetables and cilantro. This is great for presentation and will store much better than if you toss everything together, but if you are serving a larger group, like a pot luck, you will definitely want to toss it all together. Enjoy!