Pulled- chicken soba noodle salad

Soba, which literally means buckwheat in Japanese, is a typical thin noodle from Japan. It is great served chilled with a simple soy sauce dressing, but we have given it a Chinese twist, complimenting it will pulled- chicken, a nutty cashew sesame sauce, cucumber and spring onion. It makes a substantial yet refreshing meal for this unusually warm autumn. It is also a great way to use up leftover chicken for a quick mid-week dinner!

Ingredients

For the dressing:

125g roasted unsalted cashew nuts

75ml water, plus more as required

25ml dark soy sauce

20ml sesame oil

20ml honey

5ml lemon juice

1 garlic clove, sliced

A small pinch of chill flakes, to taste

Salt, to taste

400g hand-shredded roast chicken, meat only

400g uncooked soba

To serve:

3 spring onions, thinly sliced

60g peanuts, lightly crushed

1/2 cucumber, julienned or cut into matchstick-strips

Direction

1. Prepare the dressing. Place all the dressing ingredients in a blender. Blend until you obtain a smooth consistency. You may need to add additional water if the dressing is too thick. Mix 6-7 Tbsp of the sauce with the hand-shredded chicken. Allow it to marinade for 5 - 10 minutes. Set aside the remaining sauce.

2. Cook soba according to package instruction. Once cooked, drain and plunge into cold water to avoid further cooking. Change the water if necessary, to make sure the noodles cool completely.

3. Divide the noodles amongst 4 serving bowl. Top each with chicken-dressing mixture, cucumber, the dressing that was set aside in step 1, peanuts and spring onions. Let the diners mix the ingredients together themselves as per individual preference.