Buckwheat Noodles with Peanut Sauce & Veg

Ingredients

• 200 g buckwheat noodles
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 red pepper, thinly sliced
• 3 tbsp peanut butter
• 2 tbsp roasted peanuts, crushed
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 200 g edamame, frozen, thawed
• 2 pak choi, halved
• 1 tsp sriracha
• Crusty sourdough bread, to serve
• Dressed green salad, to serve
• Fresh parsley, to serve

Method

1. Bring a large pan of water to a rolling boil and salt it generously — it should taste like the sea. The noodles only get one chance to season themselves, and this is it.
2. Cook the buckwheat noodles to packet instructions, usually 4–5 minutes, until tender with a slight chew. Drain, rinse under cold water until they feel cool to the touch — this stops the cooking and washes off the surface starch that would otherwise glue them into a single brick.
3. Drop the halved pak choi into the same hot water and blanch for 60 seconds, just until the stems turn glassy at the edges and the leaves flash bright green. Lift out and drain — any longer and they go limp and grey.
4. Whisk the peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and sriracha in a small bowl with 3 tbsp warm water. The warm water is the trick — it loosens the peanut butter so the sauce comes together silky and pourable, the colour of milky coffee, rather than seizing into a stiff paste.
5. Taste the sauce. Most of the salt is doing its work through the soy, but you want balance — a touch more rice vinegar if it feels heavy, a few drops of soy if it's flat, more sriracha if you want heat. Adjust now, not at the table.
6. Tip the drained noodles into a large bowl with the sliced red pepper and edamame. Pour over the sauce and toss thoroughly with tongs or two forks, lifting from the bottom, until every strand is glossy and coated. Fold the pak choi through last so the leaves don't bruise.
7. Taste one more time — a noodle with sauce, a piece of pepper, a bean. Season with a pinch of salt if it needs lifting.
8. Divide between two bowls, scatter with the crushed roasted peanuts for crunch, and tuck a lime wedge alongside each bowl to squeeze over at the table — the lime juice cuts through the richness of the peanut sauce and wakes everything up.