Coconut Noodles

I'm sorry about the rather vague measurements in this. I made it up in the middle of a cooking-for-15 session, and I only had a mug to measure with. I'll try and do it under more controlled conditions at some point. I got most of the ideas for what to put in this recipe from the East Asian noodle dishes on the website of the International Vegetarian Union at http://www.ivu.org/.

A "mug", as used below, is about 10 fl oz, 1 1/4 cups or 275ml.

Serves about 6

• 3/4 mug coconut milk
• 1/2 cup peanut butter, crunchy or smooth, but with no added sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
• 5 tbsp light soy sauce (eg Kikkoman)
• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp finely grated ginger
• 2 tsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 - 1 (sweet) red (bell) pepper, thinly sliced
• 280g (10 oz) rice noodles
• diagonally-sliced red chillies (optional)

1. Begin to cook the noodles as directed on the packet, or in plenty of boiling water if the packet's in a language you can't read.

2. Mix everything except the noodles and chillies in a pan. Heat gently for about 10 minutes.

3. When the noodles are cooked, drain and rinse in plenty of cold water. When the sauce is ready, add the noodles to the pan, and keep warm until they've absorbed most of the sauce. Garnish with chillies if required.

Kake's (Vegan) Cookery Site - http://www.earth.li/~kake/cookery/
This page added 18 Jan 1999 - comments and questions to Kake L Pugh (kake@earth.li).