October, the Good Food Month, is over. Sydney in October vibrates with excitement as the calendar is filled with a series of joyful events boosting a feast of flavours for foodies. Restaurants and bars across the city provide fantastic culinary experiences every night of the week, and people keep their gastronomic senses entertained throughout the month. One of the popular outdoor events includes ‘Night Noodle Market’ at Hyde Park where you can also enjoy the photograph exhibition ‘Art&About’.

You think the girl in the photo is me, don’t you? *he he*

The mum and girl posing in front of the photograph seem to have blended into the photograph.

I don’t know what to make of this one, but I liked it.

At the end of these photos were lines of stalls serving a variety of Asian noodles and some other dishes such as dim sum, dumplings and all sorts of fried snacks. The atmosphere was really something, full of delicious smell, colourful lights and happy laughters. I didn’t get to try as many varieties of food as I thought because of a long wait, so I planned to go back there the following week, but that didn’t happen.

The patterns of the leaves on the red lantern look quite pretty, don’t they?

Waiting for summer to settle in is like watching dough rise. One day it’s all warm giving the impression that summer’s finally arrived, and the next day the chill comes back with disappointment. I wonder if I can speed up the arrival of summer by introducing one of my signature noodle dishes, ‘Tuna Apple Noodle Salad’. It is a dish I would often make on hot sweaty summer days to get freshen up and get my energy back. It’s so quick and simple to make, yet the taste is amazingly satisfying and refreshing. You could use real tuna steak to turn this dish into something special, or even tuna slices in a tin would do a job to make it look better. But this was made as an instant dinner fix so I used whatever I had at that time – typical of my cooking

Tuna Apple Noodle Salad

It has lots of fresh vegetables as you can see, so it is a perfect dish when you feel a bit under the weather. One ingredient you may not be familiar with would be the seaweed. You can get it in a Korean or Japanese store and you have to soak it in cold water for about 10 minutes before using it. Another option is to use toasted and seasoned seaweed that is also very popular in Korean&Japanese cuisine, and especially tuna sashimi is often served with toasted seaweed in those countries. But if you are not a fan of seaweed, you can always leave it out anyway. What is the most important part of this dish is apparently the sauce, which has four flavours well balanced together- salty, sour, sweet, spicy. It’s a very versatile dish whose flavour can be adjusted to everyone’s liking. Throw in some fresh coriander and mint if you want, although I didn’t put any herbs in this since I aimed for the Korean taste.

To make this you need:

green apple, cabbage, carrot, red onion – finely sliced
dried seaweed – soaked in cold water and chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
fresh chilli, chopped
fresh coriander or mint – optional for exotic flavour
spring onion, finely chopped for garnish
sesame seeds for garnish

Sauce:

1 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp apple vinegar or white vinegar or rice vinegar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
3 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt

Adjust the amount of each ingredient as you go. There’s no exact measurement in Asian cooking, you know.