Soba Noodle Salad Recipe

If you follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or Instagram, you've probably seen how huge the plants in our garden are. Thanks to the recent sunny, warm weather we’ve experienced, they have really taken off.

To celebrate our first crop of Persian cucumbers, I prepared a chilled noodle salad. I used soba noodles, a variety of fresh vegetables, flavorful peanut sauce, fresh mint (again from our prolific garden) and dill. Soba noodles are Japanese-style buckwheat. If you can’t find them, you could use whole wheat angel hair pasta for a similar texture.

I prepared everything in advance in the morning and assembled the salad later at the last minute. That's what I call healthy, fast food!

If you live in the Bay Area, don't forget to pencil in this Saturday (May 25^th) for my cooking demo and cookbook signing for Haute Potato at Los Altos Library. Hope to see everyone there.

Cauliflower Tomato Salad Recipe

We recently had guests for dinner and I made a cauliflower and tomato salad. I explained to our guests how this "salade de chou fleur et tomates" was made and the following day our guests emailed me back thanking me for this new recipe.

Inevitably, whenever we have guests over, my mother-in-law exclaims "Look what an amazing dish Jackie made today! Did you know Jackie has a food website? She posts daily recipes on PhamFatale.com and she's a soon-to-be published author." And whenever she goes anywhere, she talks about my cooking and about PhamFatale.com. And now that I have my first cookbook coming out soon ("Haute Potato" due on December 18th), she hands out cards to promote my book. She's my own one-woman PR firm!

Back to the dish...I boiled cauliflower very briefly then flavored it with champagne vinegar and a bit of honey. I mixed the cauliflower with beautiful heirloom tomatoes from our garden and shredded lettuce. For a nice contrast in texture, I added lightly toasted almond slices. If you want more crunch you could also top the salad with croutons.

Beet Orzo Pasta Salad Recipe

Orzo salad is an easy one-dish, summertime meal. You could add anything you like, so you can adapt the recipe to fit whatever you find at the market. The most labor intensive work involved in preparing the salad is chopping all the ingredients. For this version, I added cherry tomatoes, broccoli, sugar snap peas, pickled carrots and canned black beans. The main event though, was the addition of the roasted beets. I prepped them in the morning and let them cool to room temperature.

We spent a very low-key, relaxing weekend and I didn't feel like cooking a ton, raising the temperature in the kitchen with the stove and oven during the afternoon, as the temperature got higher. This cold pasta dish was light, complete but still flavorful, and we got to enjoy it by the scoopful in our garden.

Asian Noodle Salad with Peanut Salad Dressing

We went to a potluck this weekend, and I brought along an Asian-inspired salad. I wanted to serve it as a main dish, so I made a pasta salad loaded with tofu and vegetables. But instead of using regular pasta, I used thin egg noodles. I mixed a myriad of vegetables such as crimini mushrooms, baby zucchini, cauliflower, bok choy, sugar snap peas and pickled red peppers with fried, cubed tofu. To finish the dish, I covered it in a delicious peanut dressing made of peanut butter, chili garlic sauce, sugar cane vinegar and ponzu soy sauce.

This cold Asian noodle salad can be prepared hours in advance, making it perfect for picnics and potlucks. Just leave the peanut salad dressing on the side and mix right before serving.

Red Cabbage and Bean Sprout Salad Recipe

I had leftover bean sprouts from a large pot of phở over the weekend, and I decided to make a salad with it. The color of the bean sprouts needed a little oomph, so I added shredded red cabbage. In addition to the red cabbage, I also used diced Fuji apples.

Given the Asian flair of the salad, I made a peanut, lime and condensed milk vinaigrette. This is a very quick and easy first course, which gave me some time to work on a delicious dessert to satisfy my husband's sweet tooth for Valentine’s Day.