NUTTY THAI NOODLES

Hmmmm....  Noodles, peanut butter.  Yup, that'll work.  Now, from the outset of this particular adventure, I'd never whipped up a peanut sauce before but I'd heard rumors that it could be made with the good ol' PB.  A bit of tippety tapping on the keyboard and a little surfing of el internet and it turned out I was right.  Now, I'm sure that my all my Asian friends' grandmothers would roll over in their graves if they heard this, but hey -- I've got peanut butter and they're not here to tell me no.  Hence, I give you Nutty Thai Noodles a la White Girl.

INGREDIENTS:
Peanut Sauce
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp brown sugar
3/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Noodles
Peanut sauce (see below)
1 package thin rice sticks
1 package frozen green beans
1 package tofu
2 tbsp oil
ground peanuts (for garnish and awesomeness)
soy sauce

DIRECTIONS:
Peanut Sauce:
1. In a saucepan on low heat, combine peanut butter and water.  Make sure to add water gradually to avoid lumpy peanut butter soup.  Mix until smooth.

2. Stir in soy sauce, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, and ginger and blend to a smooth mixture.

Noodles:
1. Boil rice sticks in water or soak, covered, in the refrigerator overnight.  Drain and set aside.

2. Steam or boil green beans and add to noodles.

3. Drain tofu and cut into cubes. Press.  If you've never pressed tofu, you can learn how to do it here or you can get lazy like I did and press it between two plates and paper towels multiple times until most of the water is out.

4. Fry tofu in oil until browned a bit.  Remove from heat and add to noodles and green beans.

5. Add peanut sauce and mix thoroughly.  Add additional soy sauce and ground peanuts to taste just before serving.

Other than the fact that the green beans were undercooked (yeeaaah...shoulda checked that before I mixed them into the noodles....), this was pretty delicious.  If you want to eat it with just the peanut sauce alone, I'd double the recipe; otherwise, just add soy sauce when you serve it.  I also recommend lots of ground peanuts, which give a nice texture and good flavor, plus this is my claim to actual culinary legitimacy -- I learned to add ground peanuts to noodles from an actual Thai chef when I did a project in high school.

Bottom line: Sure, you have to make a sauce but the rest is pretty simple.  I couldn't wait to get home to eat this every night, so that's probably a good sign.  Only because I botched the green beans:

Official Grade: A-