Fresh rice noodles with mushrooms, asparagus and peas is a very Spring-inspired stir-fry of rice vermicelli and Spring vegetables in a simple yet spicy sauce.

Fresh Rice Noodles with Mushrooms, Asparagus and Peas

By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

I’ve been a little slow recently after spraining part of my foot on Saturday. So I’ve been icing it a lot and keeping it propped as much as I can. It doesn’t hurt that bad really. The worst of it was when it happened, coming down stairs too fast in stocking feet. I wasn’t so worried at first but a few hours later the purple bruising started setting in and a bit of swelling.  I was just glad I didn’t break anything. But I do keep my feet and ligaments stretched because of a break I had in the ankle ten years ago that still bothers me. But the bright side of that is, the stretching exercises I’ve been doing on that foot daily as part of my routine has actually helped it to heal up very fast, with minimal hurting now and the wine-stain bruises that covered half my foot are already beginning to fade.

But for the past few days my fridge has been backing up with a few veggies I otherwise would have already used. So while digging in there for lunch ideas today I came across some of that 99-cent per pound asparagus I bought, along with some lovely shiitake mushrooms and white mushrooms. I also found a pack of fresh vermicelli noodles that I picked up at CAM (Cincinnati Asian Market) and I also had a few scallions and some frozen peas. I was going to use a small handful of snow pea pods but they seemed a little limp by now so I tossed them.

The recipe itself is inspired by a recipe by Andrea Nguyen which is a very simple noodles with mushrooms dish.

I came across that last year when I picked up some Chanterelle mushrooms and was looking  for an easy idea to use them up quick. (I don’t like mushrooms sitting around and can be a real food-nazi  about it.

I varied Andrea’s recipe a bit last  Autumn and it has varied yet again, but the spirit is still the same. She uses butter in her recipe and I found that to be wonderful- I’ve always used  just oil or a blend of butter and oil  since I worry about the butter scorching, but in this case, fortunately it does not.

I also use fresh rice vermicelli in this which I find very forgiving to use. If you are using dried rice stick noodles, you are going to want to cook that by package directions, or at least just blanch the noodles for half a minute to soften them and drain.

I put mine in hot water but it is really just to separate them and get an initial softening more than anything else. You will find with these kind of noodles that they really do cook very fast and when they do, get very gummy. Even with something like Pad Thai you will likely want to not fully cook the noodles before you toss them with everything else.

The saving grace  is they will cook in the limited amount of liquid and you can taste-test them. If not quite done, add just a touch more water to steam them to desired doneness.

This recipe is meatless, and almost vegan-vegetarian and almost gluten free, but if you do those you know what changes to make (vegan needs to swap out the chix broth for veg broth and the fish sauce and oyster sauce with soy sauce and maybe ketchup, and the butter needs to be margarine or just oil) (gluten free needs to check the sauce ingredients to make sure they are GF versions).

You can add some sort of cooked meat like chicken or shrimp if you want but this tastes fine on it’s own. It can even be served alongside something like satay or grilled meats or fish.

I hope you enjoy. My next scheduled post is Sunday with  the Sunday Supper Movement when I share my recipe for Fried Green Tomato BLT  salad.  I’ll try to  get other recipes up this week, but nothing is on the calendar  just yet. I do have recipes tucked away I can share.

If you are looking for anything in particular, let me know I might just have it and can share that right away. Just post a request in the comments section!

~Sue