On top of steak cooked on the stovetop, pile cold cucumbers, red peppers, and peanuts, then drizzle with a spicy sauce made with fish sauce and dried Thai chiles. Eat it right away or refrigerate it overnight because it's even better the next day.

While you might not know the name, you've probably eaten lots of dishes that fall into the category of ding, a type of stir-fry made with diced chicken and vegetables. A ding also needs something crunchy, such as the nuts in the takeout classic cashew chicken. Jicama adds even more crunch, and we round out the assortment of vegetables with mushrooms, celery, and sweet bell pepper.

Fried-things-in-sandwiches has been a recurring theme throughout Vegan Month, and for good reason; they're delicious! Here is sandwich #3: tempura-battered oyster mushrooms with simmered daikon root. The two play off each other to make a crunchy, savory, chewy filling, and are perfectly complemented by a miso-agave mayonnaise .

The Portuguese soup of caldo verde (literally "green broth") is about as simple as it gets when it comes to vegetable soups, yet its simplicity is the key to its comforting success. At its most basic, starchy potatoes are simply simmered with onions and kale until the kale is tender and flavorful, the onions have melted into the broth, and the potatoes completely disintegrate, thickening the soup into a rich, thick stew. Some really good olive oil drizzled over the top, and you've got a great, filling lunch or dinner. Here, the cauliflower gets charred, taking on a meaty taste, and the addition of chipotle chiles echoes that smokiness.

Colorful bell peppers—red, yellow, or orange—cooling cucumbers, and bean sprouts are the base of this vegetable salad with noodles. It gets heat from ground chili sauce in the dressing, plus optional Thai bird chiles that you add to the fresh vegetables.

If you’re looking for an introduction to Cambodian cuisine, start with cha kreung satch moan. The stir-fry brings together a combination of salty, sweet, pungent, spicy, and herbal flavors. It starts with a paste made by pounding lemongrass, galangal, fresh turmeric, and plenty of makrut lime leaves. This paste gives the chicken a vibrant yellow color while holy basil and jalapeños offer fresh, crisp, and bright flavors.

Perhaps the biggest key to making excellent dan dan noodles is to make your own roasted chile oil. When done right, it gets a rich, fruity, smoky flavor that none of the store-bought stuff can touch. It's really quite simple. Toasted Sichuan peppercorns have a sweet, citrus-like aroma with a mouth-numbing quality, while roasted chile oil brings on the heat.

One of the problems with ordering dan dan noodles at a Chinese restaurant is that you never know exactly what you'll get. Are they gonna deliver the hardcore Sichuan version swimming in red-hot chile oil and laced with pickled zha cai (mustard root) and mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns? Or can you expect the equally delicious but totally different Chinese-American version with more pork, a vinegary soy-based sauce, perhaps some greens, and a sprinkling of peanuts?

Brush watermelon wedges with a mixture of honey, lime juice, and cayenne pepper, then grill quickly, just till the wedges show grill marks. It's so simple and such a creative way to enjoy the most summery of fruits, the juicy watermelon.

This hearty white bean soup with spinach flavored with garlic and rosemary is a great winter warmer, perfect for those evenings when you've just come home from a day on the slopes or from romping with the dogs in the park or taking photos of majestic snowy owls, or whatever it is that active winter folks do in this day and age. The real magic of the recipe is the way the starch released from the beans helps the extra-virgin olive oil (and do use your best extra virgin for this) to emulsify with the liquid, creating a rich, spoon-coating texture in no time at all.

Grind a combination of beef and smoky, spicy Cajun andouille sausage for burger patties. Grill, then top with blue cheese and a sauce of mayo, ketchup, hot sauce, mustard, parsley, lemon juice, cayenne, horseradish, and garlic for the most spicy and flavorful burgers.

There's nothing wrong with packing your fried rice full of other ingredients, but we typically prefer to keep the focus on the rice itself. That means going easy on the mix-ins (in this case, peas, carrot, onion, international pasta guide|https://noodleinsight.com/ and scallion) and seasoning with just a teaspoon each of soy sauce and sesame oil. Despite what you might have heard, you don't necessarily need to use day-old rice; fresh rice fries up just fine.

Speaking of that clinginess, I ran into my first issue with the vegan version of the dish. Traditionally, the sauce base gets mixed with some rich chicken stock, which adds some natural gelatin and body to the mix. Plain old water or vegetable stock is lacking in that body, making the sauce a little too thin. It runs off the noodles instead of sticking to them. The tahini helps a bit, but my base needed a little extra help.