My First Date with Soba Noodles

As you've surmised by now, I make way more food than I can (read: should) actually consume in a reasonable amount of time. In an effort to correct that, I bought a cookbook that is specifically for one-portion meals. Being the leftover whore that I am, though, I doubled the recipe.

Soba Noodles with Edamame
Adapted from Serve Yourself.

4 oz. dried soba noodles
1 cup shelled edamame
2 tbsp sliced almonds
2 tbsp nut butter*
4 tbsp rice vinegar
2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
4 tbsp hot water
salt
2 scallions, white and green parts, thinly sliced
1 bell pepper

Bring well-salted water to a boil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add soba noodles and cook according to package directions (mine said 3 minutes). Use tongs to transfer noodles to serving bowl when they are done - keep the water. Bring it back to a boil over medium-high heat to cook the edamame according to package directions (5 minutes for me).

While edamame is cooking, toast almonds in a small skillet over medium-high heat or in the oven at 350 F until fragrant but not burnt (about 2-3 minutes). Transfer to a plate to cool and chop if you like. Once the edamame is done, combine with noodles.

In a seperate bowl, combine nut butter, vinegar, garlic and red pepper flakes. Add hot water from the noodle/edamame pot until the dressing has reached the consistency you want; I used between 3 and 4 tablespoons. Add salt to taste. If it needs to be tangier, add vinegar. Spicer? Add red pepper flakes. Etc.

Add dressing to noodles and edamame, along with scallion, bell pepper, and almonds. Toss to combine.

Notes

• The original recipe calls for almond butter but I had peanut butter already so that's what I used. My guess is you can use any nut butter you have on hand (though I'd exercise caution using anything homemade, if you know what I mean).
• The original recipe also calls for a red bell pepper but the orange ones were speaking to me when I got to the market. Red, orange, or yellow pepper would work just fine. I'm not sure about green but if you use it let me know how it comes out.
• Soba noodles, for those of you who've never worked with them, are sticky as fuck. It might be worth it to separate them a bit after they're drained so that when you "toss" to combine the whole meal at the end, you're not just pushing a clump of solidified noodles around.
• I recently invested in a bunch of tiny tupperware containers so when I ended up with 6 extra scallions, I just divided them into green onion pieces and chive pieces and packaged them up to store in the freezer. You could do the same to save some money and then just bust them out the morning before you need them again.

Cost

• As I said, I doubled the recipe, but you could easily multiply this up by however many nights you'd like to eat it or people you'd like to serve. I believe the soba noodles I bought were on the order of 9 oz. so assuming that for the ingredients I could have actually made 4 servings, this totals at $3.24/bowl.
• This took less than half an hour to cook and assemble.