I tried out loads of new recipes this Christmas but one of the best was Vegetarian Party Cups which can be found on You Tube by Aaron Craze.

I prepared the sauce and vegetables the day before; chopped the nuts and sliced the red chilli (which I forgot to put on until half-way through eating them!!).  Everything was in the fridge ready to put together.  Christmas morning I cooked the rice noodles and then deep fried some to make the crispy noodles which kept crisp for quite a few hours.  When it came to serving, I added the vegetables and nuts to the sauce, assembled the cups and topped with the crispy noodles.  They were delicious and a definite hit with my family.

INGREDIENTS:

Finely sliced vegetables; I used carrots, radish and spring onions. The recipe suggests mooli but I couldn’t find any.
Bean sprouts
Rice noodles
The juice from a large piece of ginger (I have ginger juice frozen in ice-cube trays in the freezer so I used one of these)
½ lime – just the juice
1 part sesame oil
2 parts soy sauce (I used gluten-free Tamari)
Honey – a good squirt
Fresh mint and coriander
Cashew nuts
Sesame Seeds
Red chilli

METHOD:

Finely slice the carrots, spring onions and radishes.

Put sesame oil and soy sauce into a large bowl. Add a good squirt of honey, the juice from half a lime and the juice from the ginger. (Grate ginger and squeeze out the juice).

Add the sliced veg and gently mix.

Add some bean sprouts, some roughly chopped mint and coriander and a few chopped cashew nuts.

Stir in a few rice noodles (I used dried rice noodles which I refreshed in the morning and snipped into shorter lengths)

Place the baby gem lettuce leaves on a plate and pile the mix into them.

Top with the sesame seeds (I added the sesame seeds to the veg mix along with the cashew nuts) and the crispy noodles.

Finally, dress with some slivers of red chilli (which I forgot until we had eaten half of them)

Delicious Vegetarian Party Cups (before adding the slivers of red chilli)

These little ‘cups’ were such a delicious change.  The crisp baby gem lettuce leaf; crunchy vegetables and nuts, soft noodles and the crunch of the bean sprouts, and topping it all lovely crispy noodles.  A superb mix of textures and flavours.