spicy thai noodles

last night i branched out from my typical weeknight meal and made spicy thai noodles with chicken and veggies. i don't make asian food a lot, except for the occasional simple stir fry with rice, so this was pretty different for me. it turned out really well and i liked the flavors a lot.

the one drawback...it was a lot spicier than i realized it was going to be! i teared up and sniffled the whole time i ate. michael can handle a lot more spice than i can, so i think he enjoyed it a little more. i may just cut back on the amount of crushed red pepper i use next time!

i got the original noodle recipe from a small snippet.. i modified it in a few ways:

1. didn't add the carrots, green onion, cilantro or peanuts that the recipe calls for. i don't love cilantro or green onion, and i'm not a fan of peanuts (unless they're boiled or peanut butter of course). i ended up adding carrots as part of my veggie mix but i didn't care enough to go buy carrots when i was shopping for this recipe.
2. added grilled chicken. a meal isn't a meal to me without some source of protein (preferably lean), so i grilled up 2 chicken breasts and sliced them to add to the noodle bowl.
3. added veggies. as i mentioned in #1, i didn't buy any extra veggies to add to this because i assumed i'd have some sort of veggie laying around waiting to be used. thankfully, i did! i had some frozen stir-fry veggies left over from a meal a week or 2 ago, so i added those to the mix.

spicy thai noodles with chicken & veggies

1 box whole wheat linguine or angel hair (i used angel hair...you probably don't need to use a whole box but i knew my pasta-loving husband would eat it)

1 tbsp. crushed red pepper (next time i may be using more like 1/2 tbsp.!)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup toasted sesame oil

6 tbsp. honey

6 tbsp. low sodium soy sauce

2 chicken breasts

stir-fry veggies

pepper

ginger

garlic powder

1. cook pasta according to package directions; drain.

2. pound chicken breasts to even thickness. season with pepper, ginger, and garlic powder (approximately 1/2 tsp of each for each breast.) cook for 10-14 minutes on preheated grill pan.

3. add vegetable and toasted sesame oils to a small saucepan. add crushed red pepper and heat until simmering. let simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

4. strain crushed red pepper out of oil. i didn't have any cheesecloth or mesh strainers in the kitchen, so i used a coffee filter. worked like a charm!

5. add honey and soy sauce to oil and whisk until thoroughly blended.

6. once pasta is done and drained, add sauce and toss until coated.

7. saute veggies in a small frying pan until tender. (i skipped any seasoning here since the chicken and sauce were both pretty heavily seasoned.)

8. slice chicken into thin strips and add, along with veggies, to noodles. toss until combined.

tadaaaaa!

sidenote: i had a happy accident when i took my grill pan off of the stove and put it on my wood trivet to cool off. i should've thought better of it, but i didn't, so after it cooled, it was stuck to the trivet. i'm really glad no one was there to see me struggle to separate the 2. anyway, it turned out well because look how cool my trivet looks now!