Nici Wickes: Cold lunch inspiration and Soba noodles and salmon

This is surely the quickest dinner at under 15 minutes from start to finish and you can serve it hold or cold!  

Serves 2  

Ingredients  

• 160g dried soba noodles  
• 2-3 cups good quality vegetable stock  
• 150-200g fresh NZ salmon, 3cm cubed  
• 2-4 stalks broccolini, halved lengthwise  
• ½ cup snow peas, halved lengthwise  
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil  
• Black or white sesame seeds to serve  
• Wedges of lime or lemon to serve  
• Salt to season  
• ¼-1/2 teaspoon minced chilli to serve (optional)  

 

Method 

1. In a medium pot, bring well-salted water to the boil. Add soba noodles and once they’ve collapsed into the liquid and it’s come to the boil again, time it for 5 minutes, then drain and rinse well under cold water.  
2. In the same pot you cooked the noodles in, bring the stock to a rapid simmer. Add in the cooked noodles and the remaining ingredients, except the sesame seeds. Simmer for one minute, or a little longer of you prefer your salmon well-cooked instead of blushing in the middle.  
3. Serve in bowls, sprinkled with sesame seeds and with a wedge of lemon to squeeze over. Add salt or chilli to taste.  

 

Nici’s note: Keep it simple as I have or add in soy sauce, grated ginger or miso to your broth. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Teams podcast
from News Talks a B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Right now, they're time to catch up with our cook.
Nikki Wicks is here this morning. Killed are yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Oh you Chris. I was going to say, you've stolen
my heart. You've stolen my heart from the three this morning.
So you're there for word, are you?

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I'm there for words? The Beautiful Writers Festival.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
It's one down here. I had both of my events
last night, so now I get to relax, be free
and go and listen to other great writers, which is
fantastic bluebird day down here. So just after this, I'm
off out to Sumner for a for a wake up swim.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Ah. Look at you. You never miss a day, do you?
Good for you, Nick? That's so impressive. I mean it's
always a bluebird day in the But did you crush it?
Did you absolutely crush it? Yes?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Of course I was stabulous.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
I was older panel with absolutely fabulous other woman and
one gentleman and two different events.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I did well, I did, we did.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
And now of course I've got that thing where you
feel like you're just so ordinary and a better job.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
No, No, I'm sure you're amazing. It was Greaty are
you into leftovers?

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Look a little bit?

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Who works from home so I get to cook lunch
if I need to. But I really understand that people
are often off to the office on a you know,
five days a week, and so therefore cooking something the
night before it's great if you can cook a little
bit more and take it into the office. Yeah, it's economic.
It's probably healthier for you and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Do you love a leftover?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
It depends on the leftover, to be perfectly honest, but no,
but sometimes you know, like a cold like cold pizza obviously,
what a.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Web obviously what a I know.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, yeah, it depends a little bit on the leftovers,
I think. But you have a.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Great cold roast potatoes amazing. Put a squeeze of lemon
juice over them. Cold pastas can be fantastic if you're
just making a little bit of extra pasta and you
can steer anything through them. Loosen them up with a
bit more olive oil and a bit lemon.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Juice is great. You know a lot of cultures actually do,
in fact eat their food at room temperature.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
We've got this thing about everything needing to be piping hot,
which is crazy.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
But look, I've got to cook sober noodles recipe, and
this is great hot and cold. So what I love
to do is always cook a bit more of the sober.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
Noodles when i'm making it for dinner. I'm serving this
with salmon, and it's so sober noodles are those they've got,
but they're made primarily with buckwheat a little bit if
we get a flour in there. So in a pot
you cook up your sober noodles.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
This sous too.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
So once for dinner next day, you've got left over
about one hundred and sixty grams of dried sober noodles,
which is about half a packet of them. And put
those in some well salted boiling water. As soon as
it comes to the boiled. Time it for five minutes.
That's what I tend to do. Most of them seem
to work out just that's the exact right amount that
you need to cook them for this recipe. Drain them

(02:57):
off with them under cold water, and then use that
same pot that you cook the noodles, and to bring
some stock. I use about two to three cups of
good liquid stock, or if you've got a powder, mix
that up into a liquid or one of those gels,
Continentals gels. So you've got your stock on a rapid swimmer.
And then what I do is add in the cooked noodles.

(03:17):
So they're going to do a little bit more cooking.
And I've taken about one fifty to two hundred grams
of cubed salmon, beautiful fresh salmon. So got two to
three stalks of broccolini, half a couple of sort of
snow peas that I've generally halved lengs was you could
use atamamae beans, the shelled ones.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Would be fine.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
A good tea spoon of sesamele, that's.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
What really gives it the kicker.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
I reckon and some of that off, just until you
know the vegetables and the salmon there cooked all the
way through a couple of minutes. Really, this whole dish
is really under sixteen minutes.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Servad and bowls with a sprinkle.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Of sesame seeds, maybe a nice wedg of lemon squeeze
and lime something like that. A bit of salt to
season it, perhaps a bit of ginger grated ginger on there,
perhaps a bit of chili, perhaps a bit.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Of soy sauce. And what I love is the next
day just as good cold, in fact, particularly good quite chilled.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah, so some of those other things. I like a
pizza when it's cold, but it's not got the fridge
on it, if you know what I mean. I like
to bring them up a little bit to that room temperature.
So you know, I mean, this one's.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
A beautiful pop it in little tubleware.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
I don't know tuble is a thing anymore.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
And great.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
It means you don't have to run off and use
the you know, the office or the factory or the whatever.
Microwave is usually in a dire state.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Totally, let's be honest.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, yeah, no, I think it sounds amazing. It sounds
and you're just a little bit of yeah, like a
little bit of lemon over the top or something freshens
it up the next day away you go.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Yeah, brings everything to life the next dayes.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
That's the deal with leftovers.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, okay, very good. Yeah, okay, well that's a perfect one,
I reckon. If you've got a quick, easy dinner at home,
you want something for the next day as well, little thought. Yeah,
thank you so much, Nikki. We will make sure that's
sober noodle and salmon recipe is up on the news
talks You'd be website. You enjoy being in christ to
it you. We'll catch you next week.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
That is Nicki works like, oh hey look at this.
Here you go, hi Jack. Nicki more than crushed it
at her word events last night. She was absolutely incredible.
Well that there you go, and I can check the number.
Nicki didn't manage to text us that text at the
same time as she was speaking with us, so we
know that it's legit. Thank you very much for that.
Like I say, the recipes on the website. Actually, everything

(05:29):
from our show goes up on the website. So if
you want to find something that we've been talking about
on the radio, the easiest way to do it is
to go to Newstalk zb dot co dot NZ forward
slash Jack.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
to news Talk z EDB from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.