I crave a quick lemon peanut-soy sauce noodle dish way too often than I would like to admit. If I could, I would eat this on a daily basis. Something about the combination of soy sauce, lemon, garlic, ginger, and peanut butter makes me salivate just thinking about it.
Normally, you would add this to two-minute noodles and in less than 5 minutes you have a quick lunch ready. Not the healthiest but surely quick!
Today, however, I tried to add some healthy ingredients, especially since I have an overload of fresh leafy greens growing in my garden at the moment. I have so much, in fact, I do not know what to do with it all. So now I am trying to creatively incorporate it into my diet and cooking.
Today's recipe is thus a normal quick lemon peanut-soy sauce with copious amounts of rocket leaves, some amaranth leaves, and three lonely mustard green leaves. And I have to say, it came out better than I expected. In fact, my girlfriend asked for more!
So please follow along as I show you how I made this dish! I hope that you will make it for yourself as well. It is surely one for the books. Without further ado...
The Ingredients/Recipe
I needed way too many ingredients for this dish, so even though I used two-minute noodles, it took me more than 30 minutes to make this dish! I used the following:
- a bunch of leafy greens (I just picked a small container full),
- one medium size onion,
- three to four garlic cloves,
- a smallish piece of lemon grass,
- 200 gr of pork meat (I used rib-eye),
- a medium size piece of ginger,
- half a head of broccoli,
- 1/2 a lemon's juice,
- as many peanuts as you like, and
- 1 packet of two-minute noodles,
For the sauce, I used:
- 1 tbsp of soy sauce,
- 1 tsp of peanut butter,
- 2 cloves of garlic,
- 1 piece of ginger,
- 1/2 a lemon's juice,
- 1 lemon's zest, and
- a pinch of (i) smoked paprika, (ii) cumin, (iii) coriander, and (iv) cayenne pepper.
After that long list of ingredients, let us get cooking!
Process/method
This recipe consists of three elements, firstly, the sauce, secondly, the filling, and thirdly, the noodles.
I begin with the sauce.
A Quick Lemon-Garlic Peanut-Soy Sauce
Lemon zest goes a long way. Always use it. It adds so much lemony flavour without the acid. Obviously, the acid is important, but the zest is where the flavour is locked in. The zest is where you get that iconic lemon flavour.
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The sauce is quick and easy, and I would argue kind of healthy compared to the other types of sauces. I merely added all of the ingredients listed above into a bowl and mixed it. At first, it will look like the sauce is "broken", but just continue mixing it. It will become a cohesive sauce.
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Cooking the "Filling"
For the "filling" of this dish, I cooked the pork first. I know it is probably sacrilege to cut pork rib-eye into pieces, but it is so tender and the flavour is incredible. I cut it into small pieces.
I cooked these pieces until they were brown, slightly crispy, and still tender. The cast iron pan is perfect for this.
As this was going on, I cut the onions, garlic, and ginger into smaller pieces.
I cooked this until golden and incredibly fragrant. If you have ever cooked just these three ingredients, you know what smell I am talking about! It has even become a meme of sorts. But the flavour is, in its simplicity, incredible.
When the pork and the onion-garlic-ginger are cooked, I cut the broccoli into small pieces. I add this raw to the pan in which the pork is cooking. I always add raw broccoli as I prefer the fresh taste and the slight crunch. I never steam it. The residual heat in the pan will slightly soften it but not too much.
And then right at the end, when everything is cooked, except the noodles, I briefly cook the rocket leaves. It is incredible how much it shrinks in volume. I could have easily tripled the amount I added.
When all of this is done, I cook the two-minute noodles.
Cooking the Noodles in a Lemongrass Tea
Before I started all of this, I added some boiling water to bruised lemongrass pieces. I tried to make a type of "tea" in which I cooked the noodles.
My preferred way of cooking two-minute noodles is to add just enough boiling water to cover the noodles, cook it for two minutes on high in the microwave, and then stir it. I put it back into the microwave to cook an additional one minute. This is my preferred cooking method as it makes the noodles sticky and just perfect in my opinion. So it might be better to call it three-minute noodles!
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Finally, Mix it All Together
And then the grand finally, mixing everything together.
I conclude it all by adding some salted peanuts. Add as much as you like. I added at least two handfuls. I love the crunchy delight when I bit into them!
Even just looking at the mixed ingredients makes me hungry again. The flavours all synchronised to form something delicious, an explosion of flavour in my mouth!
Even though the combination of rocket and peanut sauce does not sound like it would work, it really did. The prominent peppery taste is lost with the cooking process and it becomes just a mellow flavour in the background.
Postscriptum, or Please do try this at home
As I said at the beginning, strangely, this one is for the books. All of the flavours work so well to cohesively come together in a complex symphony of sensory delight. If I could, I would eat this more regularly. It does not feel like a two-minute noodle dish. But it is! And it even uses rocket leaves. Even though I added more than one cup in volume uncooked, I could have at least added three cups. Maybe next time.
Do you have any recipes using rocket/arugula? Please let me know in the comments.
For now, happy cooking and please do try this recipe!
All of the writings are my own, albeit inspired by this dish. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.