Noodles with Lime Peanut Sauce

I love peanut sauce and I love vegetarian dishes that still have a ton of protein in them. I got this recipe from FoodNetwork and used livestrong.com to figure the nutritional info.


Servings: 6   Prep Time: 30 min   Cook Time: 15   Total Time: 45 min

Ingredients

• 3/4 pound spinach linguine or whole-wheat spaghetti
• 2 cups (about 9 ounces) broccoli florets
• 2 cups (about 6 ounces) snow peas, trimmed
• 2 cups (about 6 ounces) sugar snap peas, trimmed
• 1/2 cup natural creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 scallion, cut into pieces
• 3/4 inch fresh ginger, finely grated
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup shelled unsalted peanuts

Directions

Cook the pasta in a large pot of water according to the directions on the package. Drain and rinse with cold water. While the pasta is cooking put the broccoli in a steamer basket over a large pot of boiling water and steam it for 3 minutes. Add the snow peas and sugar snap peas and steam for 2 minutes more.

Toast the peanuts in a dry pan over a medium heat until they become fragrant, about 3 minutes. Set them aside to cool. Make the sauce by pureeing the peanut butter, soy sauce, water, vinegar, lime juice, scallion, ginger, sugar and red pepper flakes in a food processor or blender until smooth.

Right before serving, toss the pasta with 3/4 cup of the peanut sauce. Divide into 6 serving bowls and top each serving with the vegetables. Drizzle the remaining sauce over the vegetables. Coarsely chop the peanuts, sprinkle them on top and serve.

Nutritional Information

1 Serving:

Calories - 324

Total Fat - 20.14g

Total Carbs - 22.2g

Protein - 13.72

My Modifications

I couldn't find snow peas at the store so I used frozen green beans instead and it worked really well. Fresh sugar snap peas were ridiculously expensive so I used frozen ones. They took longer to cook so I would suggest defrosting them prior to throwing them in the steamer. I used whole wheat spaghetti but spinach linguine would work fantastically I'm sure. The recipe says to reserve some sauce to pour over each individual serving and place the peanuts on top of each serving but I just threw everything in one pot and stirred it all together at the end and it turned out just fine! And, like most recipes, I cut it in half and still had leftovers.