Sour-spicy tomato noodle salad

40 Ingredients Forever is devoted to recipes that are abundant in flavor and joy yet streamlined in process and shopping—because they’ll all be made using my 40 go-to ingredients.

Anna Billingskog is a supremely talented food stylist and also this newsletter’s recipe tester.* There are many reasons I admire her but one is how much joy she finds in her work. It’s hard not to fall in love with food when you’re seeing it through her eyes.

When I asked her if I could share her testing notes about today’s recipe — and if she wanted me to include any professional links — she asked only to include this photo of her:

Her tasting notes on this particular recipe so vividly captured everything I was going for, so she’s going to explain today’s recipe. I, literally, couldn’t have said it better myself.

*A recipe tester is quality control. (Not every recipe you find is tested, even when it is published in a cookbook.) It is someone who cooks a recipe exactly as it is written without making any assumptions about how they think the process should go. They call out any moments they’re confused, or moments where timing didn’t work. And then they eat the food. Their feedback relates both to how to make the process more fluid and how to make the dish more delicious.

This is a super important step in a recipe’s life because it takes the recipe for a spin with different ingredients, cooking equipment, and human. And ultimately, the recipe has to work for someone else to be successful, even if it worked for me.

I adore testing other people’s recipes because it feels like living in someone else’s recipe — noticing this new world and writing down everything I see.

Clarissa Wei’s Heydoh soy sauce is savory but not too salty, a little sweet but not cloying like balsamic. I’d love for you to try a sip, or a shot, and then use it with abandon — it makes cooking easier because it carries so much flavor on its own.

Enter to win two bottles of it! Deadline is 6/12.

Enter here

Serves 4

• Salt

• 12 ounces spaghetti

• ¼ cup less-sodium soy sauce

• 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper

• 1 garlic clove

• 2 pints cherry tomatoes

• 4 scallions

1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add 12 ounces spaghetti, and cook until just past al dente. Drain and rinse the noodles under cold water until cool to the touch.

2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, stir together ¼ cup soy sauce, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 2 tablespoons oil, and 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper. Finely grate or chop 1 garlic clove and add to the bowl. Halve 2 pints cherry tomatoes and add to the bowl. Thinly slice 4 scallions; don’t add to the bowl just yet.

3. Add the noodles to the dressing. Toss to coat. Top with the scallions. Eat right away or let it sit for up to 2 hours (the noodles will soak up the dressing, delightfully).

PRINT THE RECIPE

Add more vegetables

Top servings with kimchi, sliced cucumbers, avocado, corn kernels.

Add protein

Poach boneless chicken breasts in the boiling water until cooked through, about 10 minutes, before cooking the noodles. Or soft-boil eggs in the water before cooking the noodles. Marinate cubed extra-firm tofu to the bowl of tomatoes. Add hot-smoked salmon or trout, or a tin of sardines or mackerel. Top servings with sesame seeds or furikake.

Family tree (what this recipe is inspired by)

This recipe is inspired by Woks of Life’s incredible Sour Spicy Cold Noodles; the tomatoes add another source of sourness and replace the juiciness of the cucumbers.

Recipe testing: Anna Billingskog

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