Ottolenghi's Warm Glass Noodles and Edamame

And we're back. Back to Plenty, which is fast becoming my go-to cookbook for all things vegetarian. And this recipe is a fast, healthy, and easy one. I will be heading back to Illinois in a month. Illinois--or at least the rural part of Illinois from which I come--is, quite simply, the land of soybeans and corn. Growing up, we would spend the summer riding bikes, sometimes to retrieve something from the little downtown, other times for no reason at all.  We lived on the outskirts of our town, and we, my brother and I (him on his BMX, me on my red banana-seat bike with tassels on the handles and a white wicker basket) would cut through the cornfields to get out of the little (and only) subdivision we lived in. I still remember that prickly smell of corn in the heat as we cut through the rows at top speed, digging deeper ruts into the mud, especially as we rounded the corner to avoid the barbed-wire fence.  Every couple of years, the farmer would rotate the corn with soybeans, and I remember being flabbergasted by soybeans.  Who ate them?  We, of the rural Illinois town, certainly did not.  

Growing up, I knew my hometown was small, coming in at fewer than 3000 people.  I knew I wanted to move to bigger cities, even then.  However, looking back, I now know I possessed a rural joy that I could not fully articulate, nor even appreciate, as a child. There was the flattened opossum skeleton memorialized by a steamroller in the asphalt just at the top of the hill near the elementary school.  We would skid our bikes to a halt and fling them in the roadside ditch so that we could perform a more thorough inspection, popping the bubbling asphalt beneath our bare feet just to feel the heat and maybe touch an animal bone. There was a one-room schoolhouse in the town park to which we would always ride our bikes on the fourth of July.  We would pretend we had to shovel coal in the stove and we sat behind the wooden desk, imaging a room that housed first through eighth grade.  Little House on the Prairie was on television in those days, and I could certainly picture myself as the young Laura Ingalls, all brown braids and freckles.  In the adjacent pond, we would squat dangerously close to the water's edge to watch tadpoles and catch frogs whose tails hadn't fully been subsumed. 

And during Scenic Drive, an annual tour of autumnal foliage throughout the county, we would bike up to the Court House.  Bored while our mother sold pie or jam at the school bakesale table (lord knows she didn't actually cook either, but she was willing to help our with their sales), we would lock each other up in the Old Jail cells, a terrifying event in which my brother took much delight, given that there were no windows in the cells and metal rings with attached chains were cemented in the floors and were reputed to restrain the mentally unstable prisoners.

And of course, to get to all of these places, we had to tear through that mostly corn, sometimes soybean, field on our bikes and be home by dusk.  No one wanted to be alone in a field after dark, especially if one happened to have an older brother who would jump out from the corn at you.  Not that I did.  Or especially if one didn't want to try to navigate that sharp turn in the dark.  But bike we did, through that field, day in and day out for all of June, July, August, and sometimes September.

Nowadays, I return to Illinois only once a year;  I hardly even go back to that little town, given that my mother and sister moved to the neighboring big(ger) city (at a whopping 32,000).  This trip back to what was once home usually occurs during the summer, a move that induces much complaining about the heat.  This little recipe, once cooled down, would be just fine to serve on one of those hot, humid summer evenings and would give us reason to eat those once mysterious soybeans, indeed.

One Year Ago: Mexican Wedding Cookies
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Ottolenghi's Warm Glass Noodles and Edamame

Adapted from  Plenty

Yield:

Serves 4

Ingredients:  

7 oz glass (cellophane) noodles

For the sauce
2 tbsp grated galangal or fresh root ginger
Juice of 4 limes
3 tbsp olive oil or peanut oil
2 tbsp palm sugar or dark brown sugar
2 tsp tamarind paste or pulp
2 tsp tamari or soy sauce
1 tsp fine sea salt

To finish
2 tbsp sunflower oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 ½ cups shelled cooked edamame beans
3 spring onions, thinly sliced (including the green parts)
1 fresh birds eye chili, finely chopped (optional)
3 tbsp chopped cilantro, plus a few whole leaves to garnish
3 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
4 tbsp roasted peanuts, crushed as a garnish (optional)
Salt to taste

Instructions:

1.  For the noodles: Soak the noodles in a bowl of hot water for about 5 minutes, or until soft (don’t leave them in the water for too long or they will go soggy).  Drain and leave to dry. 

2. For the sauce: simply whisk together in a small bowl all of the sauce ingredients as above and set aside.

3.  To finish: heat the sunflower oil in a large frying pan or a wok and add the garlic.  When it starts to turn golden, remove the pan from the heat and add the sauce and noodles. Gently stir together, then add most of the edamame beans and spring onions, chilies and cilantro.

4.  Pile up on a large platter or in a shallow bowl and scatter over the remaining edamame beans and the sesame seeds.  Garnish with cilantro leaves and serve.  You can also serve this dish at room temperature, adjusting the seasoning when it is cool.