Homemade soy milk is rich and slightly sweet, with just a hint of complex bitterness, and it’s very simple to make. Soak the dried soybeans and let them simmer until they are nice and soft but still hold their shape. Rinse them with water to remove their papery skin, then grind the beans in a blender with cold water. You’re done.
Chilled in the fridge and then generously seasoned, this soy milk is ready to pour over bowls of cooked noodles to make kongguksu, the comforting Korean noodle dish that’s simple, nutritious and refreshing – an ideal summer meal.
Kay Chun’s recipe calls for cucumber and sesame seeds, but you can add or omit toppings to suit your mood. Think halved cherry tomatoes, toasted pine nuts, mild herbs, summer squash batons, blanched frozen soybeans or quartered hard-boiled eggs.
Cold noodles! I don’t want to eat anything else now. One of my favorite recipes is Eric Kim’s Cold Noodles with Tomatoes (he recently made a TikTok video for it), which I’ve tried with almost every noodle variety in my pantry, including soba, somyeon, and spaghetti. It’s always so good.
Salt a lot of sliced cherry tomatoes so that they release their juices and form the sweet and spicy base of the noodle stock. Add vinegar, soy sauce, mustard, garlic, a dash of sugar and sesame oil, as if you were mixing a salad dressing, and cut this intense mixture with water. That’s the delicious, perfectly seasoned no-cook stock for the dish, ready to dress noodles.
And if you’re looking for more cold noodles, Dety McKinnon’s Cold Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce is endlessly adaptable to whatever veggies you have on hand — radishes, shredded broccoli stems, sliced snow peas, herbs. You can make it ahead of time and keep it cool. Just hold the peanut and scallion topping until just before eating, when you want to remix the noodles. They’ll get a little stodgy as the sauce sets and thickens, but don’t worry: they’ll loosen up instantly if you toss them with a splash of water.
Cold Noodle Salad With Spicy Peanut Sauce
Go to the recipe.
one more thing
When I turn on my oven in August, it must be for something worth it, like Erin Jeanne McDowell’s giant summer tomato and corn galette. I love a galette, where the edges are haphazardly folded over the filling on a baking sheet, both in terms of the pastry-to-filling ratio (ideal!) and aesthetics (a little skewed, charming).
Erin’s pie dough contains a buttery mixture of roasted cherry tomatoes and corn, all baked together until the crust is a deep golden brown. It’s a great dish to take to a party or picnic, and any leftover bits are great for lunch the next day with a pile of lettuce leaves on the side.