The Sacred Art of Eating

Both Dougal and I were convinced this recipe had peanuts in it. But there are none!

• Rib-Sticking Stir-Fry

The name of this dish and the picture are to blame in equal measure we feel. Firstly, the illustration in the book makes it look as though this is a peanut heavy mix up, when in fact the little creamy ovals are cannelini beans. Secondly, we both felt the name suggested a sweet, peanut buttery sticky sauce for the noodles (like the Sesame Peanut Noodles from the On the Run lunches chapter) when in fact the sauce is quite loose and liquid, almost soupy.

I’d not been looking forward to this dish especially, perhaps because I’d read some negative reviews of it online. I wonder if in fact these other cooks had been disappointed not by the dish itself but by its failure to live up to their preconceptions of it.

I have to say this slipped down a treat as far as I was concerned. There wasn’t much to it- a pretty standard stirfry but using cannelini beans as an express alternative to cooking noodles. I don’t personally find cooking noodles to be such a bind- takes much the same time as frying a stirfry- but I am going through a bit of a beany phase at the moment and enjoyed their soft slight chalkiness in contrast to the succulent (free range) turkey.

This is the sort of thing I will doubtless cook again, but most likely without recourse to the recipe- who needs instructions to cook a highly basic stirfry?

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