Cold rice noodle salad

This Vietnamese-influenced salad is perfect for warm summer days. It's refreshing, super healthy, stunningly beautiful, and absolutely delicious. It's super easy to make, too!

I have always found noodle salads exotic and fun; this salad is no exception. The fresh vegetables and tender noodles are smothered in a delicately balanced dipping (or pouring-over) sauce. The trick of this salad is to get the sauce perfect, the spice (chillies and ginger), the salt (soy sauce), the sour (lime juice) and sugar should balance each other and not compete with each other. This delicate balance is what this salad is about. In addition, https://www.abowlofsugar.com/cookbook-index-1/bowlI leave the herbs whole; this gives us a tremendous pop of flavour rather than the subtle flavours that we are traditionally used to.

I serve this salad with grilled meats. The grease and charred flavours compliment the fresh flavours of the salad wonderfully.

You can either dice (as I have done) or cut the vegetables into small strips for this salad. It all depends on how you want to present it. This is just a sampling of the vegetables used in the original recipe. Feel free to add or substitute vegetables as desired. Some suggestions are broccoli, snap peas, radishes, apples, tomatoes, and the list goes on.

This is a wonderful book for one-dish meals. Pho, ramen, Korean bibimbap, salads, and rice bowls from across Asia are perfect for any occasion. I go to it often when I want a great single-dish meal.

For more recipes from this cookbook, click here.

Ingredients:

For the dipping sauce:

1 serrano chilli

1 garlic clove

1 tablespoon ginger paste

3 tablespoons palm sugar or brown sugar

3 tablespoons soy sauce

Zest and juice of 1 lime

Salt to taste (Careful, the soy may have enough salt)

For the salad:

Asian-style rice vermicelli or thin rice noodles

1 cucumber, diced or cut into small strips

2 carrots, diced or cut into small strips

1 red, orange or yellow bell pepper, diced or cut into small strips

3 scallions, diced or cut into small strips

1 pack smoked, baked or plain tofu, diced or cut into small strips

1 head lettuce of choice, leaves shredded or left whole

1 cup mixed herbs, cilantro, mint, basil, leaves left whole

Toasted peanuts

Hard-boiled eggs, quartered

To make the dipping sauce:

Add all the ingredients except the sauce and blitz in a small blender until smooth. Taste and adjust for sweetness, sourness, spice, and sweetness. Allow the sauce to come together for 1 hour in the fridge, and taste again. Adjust as needed and keep chilled.

To assemble the salad:

Cook the vermicelli/noodles according to the instructions on the container. Keep the noodles "al dante" with a bite. Drain completely and chill. Asian noodles tend to get sticky when clumped together. To avoid this, keep the noodles in a small amount of chilled water.

Assemble the ingredients: Cut vegetables, noodles, eggs, tofu, and herbs in a large bowl. Sprinkle the peanuts on top, and serve with the dipping sauce on the side.