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.