A Recipe in Search of a Name: Since the bunnies are heating up the Mecha Cooks blog again, I'd like to share my great, great, flexible, amazing, layered noodle salad recipe... if you will help me give the dish a nice name, yes? →[More:]

[Insert Recipe Name Here]

This is a fantastic noodle salad thingy that you can create in a million different ways, because it's all about the textures! You want something chewy, something crispy, something crunchy, something smooth, something cooked, something raw. You layer it all up in a big bowl, and dig in... It's really wonderful for summer, and leftovers are yum yum yummy!

The basic idea is that you begin with a bed of salad greens, on top of this you put your cooked rice vermicelli (the thin, very white ones at the top of the pic), or other thin noodles. On top of that you put your stir fried veggies and/or meat and your chopped fresh veggies, and on top of that your sauce, and maybe chopped nuts.

Here's how I made it last night:

Sauce: half a large onion, or one small onion, one carrot, one large red bell pepper, 1/2 pound mushrooms, two cloves of garlic. Chop to teeeeenyweeenytiny bits in a food processor. Sautee in olive oil with a bit of red wine (something rich and maybe a little bit sweet is nice - or you can leave the wine out) and season liberally with soy sauce (something good - I used tamari), and a little sesame oil. (You'll probably need to add some water to get to a "pourable" consistency.) Cook this together as long as you want to ( I simmered it about an hour), thinning with water if it gets too thick, or thickening with a little cornstarch dissolved in water if it gets too thin. This ends up looking like slightly chunky brown gravy.

Stirfry: I stirfried peanuts and chopped red bell pepper and onion, removed this to a plate, then stirfried thin strips of lean beef with enough tamari to create a "juice".

Fresh Veggies: I chopped up some zucchini and cucumber. I can't often find water chesnuts here - but those would be great, too.

Greens: I used shredded Romaine lettuce and arugula. (Fresh mint is nice in this mix)

Noodles: Some kind of thin noodles. I always use rice vermicelli, and mine are extra-easy: I just boil water and pour it over the noodles, let them sit for 5-10 minutes, rinse and drain.

Then... I put the greens in the bottom of the bowls, the rice vermicelli on top of that, mix together the stirfried stuff and the fresh chopped veggies and put that on top of the noodles, and the sauce on top of that. You can sprinkle chopped peanuts or almonds on top of that, but I included some peanuts in my stirfry.

Whoah! Was this good!

I've also made it with chicken and a thin peanut sauce, mushrooms with a teriyaki sauce, and I'd like to try it with shrimp and ... maybe a sesame-ginger-garlic sauce. A proper "sauce" isn't essential, but you want something a little liquidy-drizzly to seep through the layers of the salad a bit.
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Now, what are we going to call this??? Huh?