One of the most simplistic salads you can possibly imagine: Yum Woon Sen, literally translated as "glass noodle (woon sen) salad (yum)", at least Romanized for our Western grammatical conventions, but I'm not here to teach you linguistics.
Add another recipe to your repertoire that can be modular to fit your tastes, and even conditional to how you'll be serving this (as a standalone entree, bulk it up with some of the meat and shrimp, as a side for an end-of-summer picnic omit the meat, or don't follow my suggestions at all).
You may be thinking that glass noodles a) don't sound very fun to eat, because of the bleeding and b) that they wouldn't be very filling, like eating an air sandwich. You're absolutely wrong though. This is a delight to make and to eat, and has so much flavor for so few ingredients. Hint: it's the fish sauce. It makes everything magical. Shopping List:
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Hardware:
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Prep:
Prepare the glass noodles as instructed on your package. By this, I mean boil them like you would normally boil pasta. You can optionally loosen up the noodles with some warm water and then cut them in half, but I come from a "Don't-You-Dare-Break-That-Spaghetti" Italian household, so maybe skip that step unless slurping noodles isn't your forte.
Grab a cutting board and a knife. Get to chopping.
If you're serving this with the shrimp and pork, go ahead and cook those separately. I like to leave the pork relatively mildly spiced as you want the dressing to do most of the heavy lifting.
Make the dressing. It's simple: mix it and drizzle in the oil while whisking vigorously to make a light emulsion. You're not looking for a vinaigrette here because a) the ratio is way off and b) the noodles and veggies should ideally soak up some of the aqueous dressing in the process, so you won't want a pool of oil at the bottom of your bowl.
The Business:
Honestly, just toss the veggies and noodles (and meat if you're going that route) together with the dressing, and garnish with cilantro, lime wedges, and crushed peanuts. Traditionally, you could pound out the cucumber and tomatoes a little in a mortar and pestle, but it's not necessary in my eyes. Congratulations, you just made salad sans lettuce.
Prepare the glass noodles as instructed on your package. By this, I mean boil them like you would normally boil pasta. You can optionally loosen up the noodles with some warm water and then cut them in half, but I come from a "Don't-You-Dare-Break-That-Spaghetti" Italian household, so maybe skip that step unless slurping noodles isn't your forte.
Grab a cutting board and a knife. Get to chopping.
If you're serving this with the shrimp and pork, go ahead and cook those separately. I like to leave the pork relatively mildly spiced as you want the dressing to do most of the heavy lifting.
Make the dressing. It's simple: mix it and drizzle in the oil while whisking vigorously to make a light emulsion. You're not looking for a vinaigrette here because a) the ratio is way off and b) the noodles and veggies should ideally soak up some of the aqueous dressing in the process, so you won't want a pool of oil at the bottom of your bowl.
The Business:
Honestly, just toss the veggies and noodles (and meat if you're going that route) together with the dressing, and garnish with cilantro, lime wedges, and crushed peanuts. Traditionally, you could pound out the cucumber and tomatoes a little in a mortar and pestle, but it's not necessary in my eyes. Congratulations, you just made salad sans lettuce.