"Thai" Noodles with Basil

Author: Justin
Serves 2-3

 
 
One package (~14 oz) udon ("Japanese") noodles 1 medium red onion
1 red bell pepper lots of fresh basil (~1 cup chopped)
1 tsp unsweetened lime juice 1/2 tsp hot oil
1 Tbl soy sauce 1 Tbl Thai fish sauce
2 Tbl sesame oil

Chop onion and pepper into small pieces.  Cut basil up as finely as is practical.  (Simply slicing is adequate.)

Cook noodles as appropriate.  Drain and rinse.  Stir in all other ingredients, and serve immediately.

Notes and Variations

One of my better inventions -- tasty, quick, pretty easy and well-blended flavors.

Invention notes: Other sorts of noodles would probably also work, but udon proved to be really good.  Used a large red onion very inefficiently, but it was still way too much onion, so use less in future.  Used 2 Tbl. fish sauce, which was a bit much -- not unpleasant, but distinctly the strongest component in the sauce.  Half as much should blend smoothly with the other flavors.

Jane suggests adding scallions (as a partial or complete replacement for the onion), and sesame seeds.  Would probably work well cold as well as hot.

Sources

This isn't in any meaningful sense authentically Thai.  I invented it because I had a pile of fresh basil that wasn't going to last long, so I looked on the Web for inspiration.  This is sort of loosely adapted from several Thai recipes found around the Web.