People often ask "what do restaurant owners have for dinner?" Anything we want...just kidding, honestly whatever is not on our menu at the time. We spend countless hours a day tasting and tasting and tasting the same things over and over again that by the end of the shift our excitement has simply faded. The food we have been slaving over tastes magnificent, we just need to taste something different. So we often head home to ravage our empty cupboards and refrigerator (we work too much to get any proper shopping done) and attempt to "iron chef" something from nothing.
That is why this is one of my favorites. It's quick, it has loads of umami and we usually have all the ingredients around the house. We normally don't eat out of season but need for something green besides winter greens overcame us, so we treated ourselves to some broccoli. We also stumbled across some local pea shoots and decided to stir them in while the noodles were still hot, delicious. We are pickle fiends so we topped noodles with some sechzuan chili-carrot pickles. Here is the recipe:
2 portions of spaghetti or udon
1/2 C peanut butter, smooth is better but not necessary
1/4 C soy sauce
pinch sugar
1T sesame oil
1/4 C Rice wine vinegar
A few spoon fulls of the pasta water
-Boil pasta as you do, but take it just past al dente
-While pasta is cooking, heat all other ingredients together, add a few tablespoons of pasta water
-Strain pasta and add to sauce
That is all you really need. If you happen to have some chili flakes, or some sesame seeds, or even some scallions you are in for a treat. If you are in a carnivorous mood, I can't think of many meats that this wouldn't be good with so go crazy. If you don't want the meat but still think it needs something, just press some tofu, marinate it in lime and fish sauce then grill it...another perfect addition (even if you don't like tofu).
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