I have a confession to make. I misread this recipe and thought that it was a hot noodle dish. It isn’t. It’s a cold noodle salad. I don’t like cold noodles. I made it hot… There’s something else too. They didn’t have any soya/edamame beans in Sainsbury’s, and, after a busy week at work I wasn’t in the mood for hunting them down, so improvised. Basically, what I’m trying to say is, what should have been soba noodles with green soya beans from the Low-GI Vegetarian Coookbook, emerged from my kitchen as something slightly different.

Essentially I followed the recipe, but swapped edamame beans for a mixture of sugar-snap peas, asparagus and tenderstem broccoli, and instead of cooling down the noodles, I cooked them and threw them in a wok hot with the veg, dressing and sesame seeds – a stir-fry if you will. Verdict from the husband: ‘Have we had this before.’ Kind of, but I followed the recipe the first time around. Verdict from the cook: ‘It needs hit of something – maybe some chilli or lime juice – to be honest, it left me a little underwhelmed.’

Recipe from the Low-GI Vegetarian Cookbook:

• 250 g soba noodles
• 1 packet of frozen green soya beans (or a pack a mixture of your choice of green veg)
• 4 tsp sesame seeds
• 1 tbs clear honey
• 1 tbs rice vinegar
• 1 tbs soy sauce
• 4 spring onions, cut into shreds

Method: Bring two saucepans of water to the boil. Cook the beans for 4 minutes and the noodles as per the packet. Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds by stirring them in a small saucepan for a minute of two until they smell toasted and start to jump around the pan. Remove from the heat and tip onto a plate so the don’t continue to cook. Drain the noodles and rinse them under a cold tap. Put them in a bowl, then pour in the sesame oil, honey, vinegar and soy sauce. Toss the noodles to coat them in the dressing and stir in the salad onions and sesame seeds. Drain the soya beans and put them in a bowl, serve with the noodles.