Vegan Soba Noodle Salad

It can be a killer having to cook on a hot summers day, and personally, sandwiches and leafy salads never seem to do it for me. But, it's time to toss away those soggy sangers and replace them with a stunning bowl of cold soba noodle salad. This dish is super easy to whip up and can be altered to your hearts delight. You can replace the soba noodles with vermicelli, sweet potato or rice noodles as they all work in cold dishes. You can also add whatever veggies you like, but here is our preferred way of putting together a mean noodle salad.

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 250g soba noodles

• 1/4 red cabbage

• 1/4 cup rice vinegar

• 3/4 cup water

• Salt

• 1/2 large cucumber

• 1 red capsicum

• 100g snow peas

• 1 cup edamame (not in pods)

• Marinated tofu steaks (you can use any tofu)

• 2 spring onions

• Handful chopped coriander

• Sprinkle of sesame seeds

Sauce:

• Juice of 1/2 lime

• Zest of 1/2 lime

• Juice of 1/2 orange

• 2 tbsp sesame oil

• 1 tbsp soy

• 1 tsp miso paste (you can replace this with another tbsp of soy sauce)

• 1 tsp Sriracha

• 1 clove minced garlic

Method

• Boil a pot of water. Add the noodles and cook for 5-7 minutes. Once they are cooked, add the noodles to a bowl of water an ice to ensure they stop cooking and cool down quickly

• While the noodles are cooling down, start prepping your veggies. If you're adding cabbage, you can add it raw, but I prefer blanching it. Shred it finely and add to a pot with the vinegar, water and salt. Cook on a medium-high heat for 5-8 minutes

• Slice the cucumber and capsicum into matchsticks, half the snow peas, finely chop the spring onion and coriander

• Now on to the sauce. Simply mix all the sauce ingredients and pour into a side dish

• Fry your tofu in a pan until both sides have coloured (we love using store-bought marinated tofu as it's super flavoursome and great for any tofu newcomer)

• Now it's time to assemble. Place a serving of noodles in a bowl. Top with your veggies (including the edamame), then coriander and spring onion, then tofu, and finally your sesame seeds. Serve the salad with the sauce on the side

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