Cold Udon Noodles With Spicy Tamari Garlic Chili Sauce

I love Japanese food. I love Filipino food. I love Thai food. I love Chinese food. I love...I love Asian food in general. I have recently acquired several Japanese cookbooks. They are beautiful and full of every kind of savory, strange, beautiful food you can imagine, delicious. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

In particular, I have been enjoying the study of NOODLES. I love a good bowl of noodles. Once passing through Hong Kong on a business trip, with time to kill, I thought "I can't come to Hong Kong, airport-only or not, and not eat noodles! I mean this is CHINA. Noodle Central." So I found myself a nice lounge, ordered a delicious bowl of noodles drenched in hot, savory, vegetable-laden broth and I have been soup-sold ever since.

Anyway, while I was making Miso Soup and salad I decided that some noodles would be just about perfect with it, plus I had a large, brand new package of uncooked Udon noodles that I'd been wanting to try. With Udon noodles you can cook them up and eat them hot or cold so the noodle world then mostly becomes your oyster.

The following is easy, simple and tasty. You can modify it according to taste, and you can pretty much add anything you want to it.

Two servings of uncooked Udon Noodles
Tamari Soy Sauce
1-3 Tbsp. Chili Paste: this is completely according to taste and your spice tolerance
1- 2 Tbsp. Sesame Seeds
8 C. Water

Optional: sliced green onions, limes, finely minced peanuts...when is lunch?

Bring your water to a boil, add in the noodles, stirring periodically. Make sure you use a decent sized pan otherwise your starchy noodle water will boil over, not so awesome. Cook your noodles as directed on your package. In my case this was for 10 minutes. Drain in a strainer and rinse thoroughly with cold water, add into a serving bowl.

Add enough soy sauce to cover all of the noodles without making it a soup, in my case I probably used 2-3 Tbsp of Tamari Soy. 1-2 Tbsp of the Garlic Chili paste (you could also use Sriracha sauce instead if you like that as well), and 1-2 Tbsp of sesame seeds. Toss so that all of the noodles are coated and the chili sauce and sesame seeds are well distributed. Eat it up.

That easy. That delicious. Happy Eating!

Addendum:
O.k. I made this for a family party on Sunday, quickly, here is what I did differently:
4 servings of the raw Udon noodles cooked according to the package
1/2 Red Onion sliced as thin as you can get it and then cut in half

Sauce: Mix together
3/4 C. Tamari Soy Sauce
1.5 Tbsp. Minced Garlic
2 Tbsp. Chives
2 tsp. Crushed Ginger
2 tsp. Sambal Olek Chili Paste

Pour over the cooked, drained, cooled noodles, add onions, add 1.5-2 Tbsp. of Sesame Seeds, toss, serve immediately, or cover, chill and serve. If you delay in serving, give it a stir right before to bring the sauce that will have settled at the bottom to the top.

Now go eat some noodles!