Cindy picked this crunchy noodle salad out of Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg partly because of a nostalgic enthusiasm for the classic side-of-the-packet Chang's noodle salad and partly because we had a bottle of plum sauce in the fridge that wasn't otherwise getting used. This is really only a slightly tweaked version of the original - the dressing leans on plum sauce rather than sugar and vinegar and you get a few fancier ingredients in the salad itself (radishes, honey cashews). Why mess with the best though, right? This has the same joyful combination of sweetness and crunch, and takes almost no time to throw together. The noodles loose their punch pretty quickly, so keep some spare to jazz up the leftovers.
Chang-ed up wombok slaw with plum sauce
(based on a recipe from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)
3 spring onions, sliced on an angle
6 small radishes, thinly sliced and halved
1/2 a big wombok (about 600g), shredded
100g crispy fried noodles
50g honey roasted cashews
dressing
1/3 cup plum sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon tamari
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Soak the spring onions and radishes in cold water for 5 minutes and then drain and toss in a large bowl with the wombok.
Whisk together the dressing ingredients.
Scatter half the noodles and half the cashews over the salad and drizzle with half the dressing.
Serve, topped with the remaining cashews and noodles and with the leftover dressing added to the plated salad.
This looks really good - I hadn't heard of chang's noodle salad until a few years back - I think the salads of my childhood weren't that fancy!
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