Sunday Dinner for Father's day: Sesame Noodles with Sate

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Happy Father's Day! It's Sunday, and I'm at the helm, which means it's time for honorary Red Celia Wakefield to give us another fabulous recipe/cooking lesson. She made these Sesame Noodles with Sate on Friday, when my whole household was over to swim at the lake (and do a couple outdoor chores.) It was easy, inexpensive, and so hearty it filled up three hungry twenty-somethings as well as the three oldsters with plenty left for the next day!

I won’t start by stating the obvious, but I do want to give a shout out to Julia.  She has been one of the very few life lines for Victor and I during our current living situation. If you know Julia you will agree with me that she has a way of engaging, entertaining and managing to stay positive, finding a good laugh in almost any situation. 

And, I am once again delighted to join in the JRW blog, with another recipe which is well suited for our current living. It’s also a great meal for Fathers Day. Happy, happy Fathers Day to all the guys who visit Jungle Reds, to our husbands and our fathers. I have a recipe from my father, Douglas Constable, to share with you. 

Food, cooking in particular, was a place where father and I met on equal terms. In fact I may have had the edge on him there. After the Second World War, my father didn’t follow the drum, but did follow colonial ancestors by working all over the world. Our family time in Ceylon (Sri Lanka nowadays) offered curry in all its forms and he loved it. Curries were his favourite foods to cook. People in for a drink? Father would hurry to the kitchen to make up some curry puffs. Most of his cooking involved deep frying and after he painted the hall ceiling greasy black from leaving a pot of oil on the stove without turning it off, my mother banished his culinary exploits to the garage.

Late in his career, he and my mum were in Indonesia, where of course, he fell in love with the food. My mum recounted their arrival where my father was to be head of an FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the special agencies of the UN) mission in Surabaya. The house had been set up with servants etc. But their language was Dutch. My mum, understanding she was being asked what she wanted prepared for lunch, said the only food word she knew, “rijsttafel”. Which a couple of hours later appeared on the dining table. This is a very complex and complicated dish where one is offered choices which include nasi kuning or regular steamed rice, accompanied by dishes such as satay, rendang, gado-gado, grilled chicken rica, red snapper in yellow acar sauce, fried shrimp in sambal, potato perkedel kerupuk and tempeh. (Julia's note: the poor staff must have thought Memsahib Constable was going to be very high maintenance!)  Kerupuk, the tasty shrimp crackers, was my father favourite drinks snack, served with Sate sauce, deep fried of course and hence the banishment from my mothers kitchen.

I wish I could make a rijsttafel for everyone, but let’s make sesame noodles with sate sauce.

This is my fathers’ recipe and serves 6-8 hearty eaters:

In addition for dinner we added these ingredients:

1 1/2# Spaghetti

1 Cooked chicken

Bunch of scallions, chopped small

Tamarind* is available in Asian markets, as are the other spices. The one ingredient not on fathers list is Chinese noodles, or as we say in Maine - Spaghetti. I doubled the Sate recipe. As we had a mix of veggies and carnivores, I got hold of a cooked supermarket chicken whose meat I shredded, which would normally be served on top of the noodles. Julia and I assembled the ingredients and followed his directions.

1)          Put on the water for the pasta

2)          Measure all the sauce ingredients into a pan except for the peanut butter and heat.

3)          Start adding peanut butter once the water boils. Turn the heat down and stir.

4)          Watch out because the sauce will thicken and needs to be thinned with more water.

5)          Peanut butter is oil, so if it splatters, it burns, Ouh!

6)          Cook the noodles or pasta as directed

7)          Drain noodles, dress immediately with sesame oil and pepper oil 

8)          Pour the sauce over the noodles and mix in well.

Add the shredded chicken and chopped scallions when ready to serve. Sesame noodles can be served at room temperature or chilled. They make great leftovers too for a lunch box.

*After tasting the tamarind, I thought freshly squeezed orange juice would be a good substitute - J.

JULIA: Here is the happy result, dear readers, with a quick slaw on the side and lashings of extra sauce, which, by the end, the kids were scooping onto crackers and stuffing into their mouths. Accompanied by a gin/vodka and tonic (the grown-ups) and ginger ale (the kids) it was a perfect meal to enjoy outdoors on a hot summer night. 

Below, we've got videos walking you though the whole process in inimitable Celia style. Take a look, and after you're done, join us in the comments with your own exotic food adventures!