Soba noodles with eggplant and mango

Soba noodles with eggplant and mango

Soba noodles with eggplant and mango - sounds like a strange but intriguing combination right? It is delicious!

This is another big hit from Yotam Ottolengthi's cookbook, Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi. Fresh mango, fried eggplant, cilantro and red onion - it has a very southeast Asian feel, like a Thai mango salad with a bunch of other stuff in it. Along those lines, I think it could do well with some crushed roasted peanuts, too, if you like.

The garlicky dressing is almost like a vegetarian version of nuoc cham, the typical Vietnamese mixed fish sauce that is used on everything, except that this has a hint of sesame oil (I have a version of nuoc cham chay, or vegetarian nuoc cham, posted here).

There's a bit of prep work, and if you double it like I did, be prepared for a bit of chopping. But once everything is prepped, all that's left is to cook the soba noodles and fry up the eggplant. I get the water going, then start frying up the eggplant.