Making dinner for myself often goes something like this:
Scout out the produce section of the grocery store, throw at least three impulse buys into my cart, and arrive home with absolutely no clue how to use it all. So I randomly add things together and hope for the best! Even on the rare occasion I actually do have a recipe to follow, I pretty much ignore the recipe anyway. With today’s green noodles, I’d initially planned to follow a recipe from Vegetarian Times. However, by the time I’d finished substituting and adding ingredients, the results were something completely new… and really delicious!
Green Noodles
- 1/4 cup minced garlic
- 1 1/2 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
- 1 cup fresh cilantro, loosely packed
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vegetable or coconut oil
- 15oz canned coconut milk, lite or regular (If allergic, you can use cashew cream)
- 1/4 cup water
- 2 tbsp sweetener of choice, or 20 NuNaturals stevia drops
- 2 tbsp lime juice
- 5oz raw baby kale or spinach (or 1 box)
- 2 tbsp minced garlic
- 3 tbsp soy sauce (or gluten-free)
- 2 tbsp water
- 6 cups broccoli, cut small (480g)
- 2 servings soba noodles (80g uncooked)
- avocado, optional for garnish
In a blender, puree the first 10 ingredients until completely smooth, then transfer to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower and simmer 15 minutes. In a sauté pan, sauté the kale and 2 tbsp garlic in a little oil or oil spray until kale begins to wilt. Add the soy sauce, 2 tbsp water, and the broccoli. Cover and cook on medium 3 minutes. Meanwhile, put a pot of salted water on to boil for the noodles. When the three minutes are up, turn off the heat on the kale/broccoli but keep covered until the noodles are ready. Cook noodles according to package directions, drain fully, and pat dry. Now combine everything together. Stir well. Serve with sliced avocado if you want even more green! (Technically you can leave the 1 tsp oil out, but it helps to coat the pasta with sauce so I recommend leaving it in.) I cannot vouch for the recipe with carton coconut milk or any other type of milk, so try that substitution at your own risk. Makes 3 large servings, each the size of the servings in the photos.
 
Question of the Day:
When making dinner for yourself, do you more often follow a recipe or just make something up?
Link of the Day: No Bake Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies
Wow you really do add sweetner to everything.
It fits with the Thai flavours here. All the Thai dishes I’ve cooked have called for a sweetner to be added for a balanced flavour.
This looks awesome. Lunches for next week! In general, I follow recipes exactly. The only thing I’ll ever do is cut down on oil IF the recipe calls for a ton. Other than that, I leave it up to the experts 🙂 Katie being one of them!
I’m not a natural in the kitchen AT ALL. I much prefer to follow recipes; any improvising I do will likely be swapping out veggies in a grain dish, while keeping the spices the same.
Your green noodles look incredible. Green things + soba noodles — hard to beat. I’m a big fan of looking at recipe for inspiration, then often taking them in a totally different direction.
I’m all over green foods. I swear when anything is green I’m just drawn in. It makes me feel a lot healthier maybe.
Usually, I’m more of a make something up as I go kind of girl. Unless there’s something I really want to make from a blog or cookbook – but even then I never follow the recipe to a tee.
These noodles look great, Katie! I love adding coconut milk to my meals. It always adds such a satisfying richness to a dish. I’m loving all the green!
When I am cooking for my family I tend to browse recipe sites for inspiration and then make my own recipes. When I am cooking for myself, I just eat the dessert instead. 😉
This looks super tasty, by the way. And, I am in love with how much garlic is in this recipe.
Yum, broccoli and kale, two of my favorites! These look really good.
I love to read through cookbooks but I rarely follow a recipe 100%, I’m always modifying to suit our preferences or what’s most readily available. At this point, I’ve been cooking for long enough that my modifications usually work out (though there have been one or two spectacular fails!).
Yet another recipe that sounds delicious and like something I should make.
Somehow I ended up with not much ability to create recipes, although I’ve come up with a couple of simple ones. I have done some modifications to other people’s recipes and even been able to figure out how to duplicate a couple that I’ve had in restaurants. I do plan to try my own version of a recipe by another blogger – it’s an idea she had that I will try to flesh out. But mostly I depend on recipes. For that reason I love the existence of food blogs, because that’s where I get most of my recipes these days. I’ve been delighted to find several bloggers whose tastes mesh well with mine, so I get lots of inspiration for cooking. So my poor husband who likes the same stuff over and over has to suffer with my desire for variety… Thank you for enabling me… 😀
I have to follow a recipe, I’m not the savvy cook that you are!