Twelve minutes, one pan, and a dressing you can make in the mug you are going to drink out of afterwards. This is the dish for the evening when you have arrived late and are not going to cook properly.
The dressing is the whole thing, and it is built on a ratio worth remembering: three parts peanut butter, one and a half parts soy, one part acid, half a part sweetness, loosened with hot water until it pours.
- Put the noodles on. Four minutes, usually.
- In a mug, work the peanut butter, soy, lemon juice, honey, chilli and garlic granules together. It will seize and look wrong. Keep going.
- Steal two or three tablespoons of the noodle water and beat it in a little at a time. The seized paste will come back together and turn glossy. This is the same behaviour as a seized chocolate sauce and it is fixed the same way.
- Drain the noodles, return them to the pan off the heat, and turn the dressing through.
Good hot, and good at ambient temperature twenty minutes later, which makes it unusually forgiving.
Serves 2.