Lunch today... Ginger-Sesame Chicken with Peanutty Noodles

Last night, Mr. Fritz and I completed all of our Christmas shopping. Yay! As a result, we were able to relax a little bit today, and I was able to make a decent lunch. So I decided to riff off of another recipe in the January issue of Real Simple: Chicken with Peanut Dipping Sauce. Their recipe calls for frozen breaded chicken breasts, which didn't appeal to me. I appreciated the peanut sauce recipe, however, and used it to launch my take: Ginger-Sesame Chicken with Peanutty Noodles. I started by boiling some Japanese udon noodles, which is sort of interesting, because to do so, you bring the water to a boil, add the noodles, then when the noodles start to rise to the top of the water, you turn the water down and simmer them for 10-15 minutes. Very odd way to cook what I think of as pasta!


While the noodles were simmering, I sauteed a couple of chicken cutlets in sesame oil, sprinkling them with ground ginger once they were in the pan. When they were cooked through, I removed them from the pan and threw in some Chinese pea pods and shredded carrot, let that saute for a couple of minutes, then added the ingredients for the peanut sauce: peanut butter, soy sauce, crushed ginger, fresh lime juice and brown sugar. After mixing that all together and sauteing everything for a few minutes, I added in the noodles (which I'd drained) and made sure it the noodles and vegetables were all nicely coated with the sauce and that it was all heated through. To serve, I put the noodle mixture in the bottom of a shallow bowl, then topped it with strips of the chicken. Good stuff, and very easy!