Dinner Bowl #3

 

I had a recipe on my list to try for a long time, in one of my physical cookbooks, and it so happened that in my quest to use things up, I had everything on hand. So for the end of my soba noodles for a while, I made the soba noodles with sesame sauce recipe from Live Longer Cookbook (1992), which was already incidentally vegan. Alongside the simple noodles, I had a trio of Korean or Korean-inspired salads: my favorite carrot salad from Lavender and Macarons, Korean broccoli salad from Balance with Jess, and oi muchim (Korean cucumber salad) with chickpeas from Vegan Anh.

This was a great, well-balanced bowl, however messy it may look. The soba noodles actually had enough sauce on their own for once, without me having to double the sauce recipe. It's a very, very simple recipe, which gets most of its flavor from veggie broth--unsurprising for the fat-averse 90s--alongside easily-obtainable ingredients like scallions, ginger, garlic, and soy sauce. At the time, I would have thought sesame oil exotic and different, though, and the bit of sesame oil in this recipe really does contribute a lot to the flavor. I'm pretty sure soba noodles, too, would have been virtually unobtainable in the central Oklahoma town I lived in, back then. Nostalgia is fun, sometimes, even via cookbooks! So anyway: My world has expanded as I have moved through time and space. It's an interesting trip to have taken.

As for the rest, although the broccoli was nothing all that special, it was also super easy and the type of make-ahead recipe we all need in our arsenal, but the spicy cucumber-chickpea salad? Amazing. We already knew I loved this carrot salad, and it now has a protein-hefty, easy complementary friend. I may survive the summer yet, perhaps.

I don't know why it suddenly got and stayed so hot; I feel myself to be tortured, honestly, and it depresses me that the weather is like this in May. But knowing there are some cold foods I can enjoy does help a bit.

If your soba noodles are made exclusively with buckwheat, this is gluten free; hence, I've tagged this as a gluten-free lunch. But if you need to avoid gluten, please make sure to check the label, because many soba noodles also include wheat flour.