Sack Lunch: Mung Bean Noodles with Dulse and Crushed Peanuts
For a month or two now I have been searching for an Asian or Asian-y noodle dish that would make a nice lunch. A few candidates didn't pan out, and the one that did was a soup, which I know some people don't care to bother packing up for work. Finally, though, Deborah Madison came through with her refreshing salad of chilled mung bean noodles with dulse and crushed peanuts from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
I'm afraid it looks as if this week is going to be rainy in New York, but for those of you with happier weather, this is just the thing to eat outside on a warm day: cool, full of bright flavors, satisfying without being heavy. I liked the generous dose of raw ginger, but people who find that kind of thing overwhelming might want to start with 1 teaspoon and work their way up. I also added a few dashes of soy sauce and would not have minded a little more spice; maybe I'll leave the jalapeño seeds in next time. This noodle salad keeps in the refrigerator for four or five days, in my experience, and travels quite well: last week I enjoyed it on an airplane while everyone else made do with a doll-sized bag of pretzels.
—the cheap alternative to large French models—and it's changed everything. Never mind that a cell phone company makes it; this thing works. And it makes me look like a fast, skilled cook, especially with winter salad recipes like this one. Making the dressing, which involves dumping everything into a jar and shaking like mad, is the labor-intensive part. Otherwise, I just lazily slide my vegetables over the mandoline's ceramic blade, resulting in beautiful, paper-thin, uniform slices. I toss, serve, and accept the compliments.
What a comedy of errors. I had some leftover chicken breasts from a roasted bird, and wanted to make a chicken salad sandwich to change things up and use the meat before it went bad. For some reason, I had curried chicken salad on my mind—a concoction I rather enjoy even if it usually only denotes a sprinkling of curry powder on regular old chicken salad. But this time I wanted to dig a little deeper, and see if this quick dish could be a little more flavorful and well rounded than my impromptu imitations. I found this fantastic looking curried chicken salad recipe from 
Winter salads often take on a different quality than those made in summer: they get warm, for one, for obvious reasons. Juicy, fragrant tomatoes become a thing of seasons past, while roasted winter squash and beets take over. Sharp, bitter greens make more appearances, like endive and arugula, cutting the richness and mimicking the snap of winter air.
, caught my eye, because I'd never eaten Jerusalem artichokes—but I always imagined it would be a funny scenario if someone was sent to the shop for the beautiful green globes, and came home with these gnarly tubers. They look like ginger, have the texture of potatoes, and taste faintly of mushroom and artichoke. In this recipe, they're boiled until just tender, then thrown into a hot skillet with bacon and red onion until the whole mixture has been browned and caramelized within an inch of its life. The sticky, crispy, porky mixture is tossed with radicchio and some butter lettuce, parsley, and balsamic vinegar. Less is more—the heat from the artichoke mixture can wilt the lettuce, and too much oil can ruin it—but with the right balance this is mighty good.
