kitchen staples + soba with peanut sauce

If you cook a lot, it's important to always have certain things around that you can use to throw together a quick, delicious meal. Here's a list of what we consider to be kitchen staples:

* couscous
* pasta
* Asian noodles of some sort, could be soba, udon, or cellophane noodles
* jarred sauces. some of my favorites are peanut sauce, thai green curry, and pesto sauce (or whatever pasta sauce you like best)
* sriracha
* canned beans or chickpeas
* canned stewed tomatoes. these are good for making quick soups, since you can use the tomato liquid as a broth
* jarred veggies, such as artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers
* peanut butter
* spices and dried herbs. I find we use cumin, chili powder, basil and oregano the most, but it depends what kind of food you like most.

Using some of our staples, we made some soba noodles with peanut sauce (as you may have gathered from the title), various left over veggies, and sriracha sauce, which is amazing and pretty much makes everything better. I have heard that peanut butter and sriracha sandwiches are delicous, although I have never personally tried one. I guess this is a less odd version of that. It was great, and included 3 of our "kitchen staples", asian noodles, sriracha, and jarred sauce. This is also a good recipe for using up leftovers, since you can just throw in whatever leftover veggies you have.


anybody want a peanut?


Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

* about 2 cups soba noodles
* sriracha sauce to taste
* about 1/4 cup peanut sauce
* 1 cup green onions, chopped
* 1/4 cup roasted peanuts
* 1/2 onion, diced
* 1 cup carrots, sliced
* about 2 tablespoons olive oil

1. cook soba noodles according to package directions. meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large nonstick skillet
2. saute onions, 3/4 cup green onions, and carrots in olive oil until onions are soft and translucent
3. Remove soba from heat, drain, return to pot, and stir in onions, green onions, and carrots
4. Add peanut sauce and stir until coated, adding more if neccesary
5. Add siracha to taste and stir
6. Put in 2 seperate bowls. Sprinkle with peanuts and remaining green onions