This is a recipe I adapted from my mother. During my pregnancy (10 months ago) and the couple months following my daughter’s birth, I consumed a lot of it. I’ve never been huge on Asian flavors, except for the usual fried rice, but this sauce is just heavenly. It’s sweet, spicy and creamy. It’s ready in 15 minutes too! The sauce is healthy in the sense of the fairly healthy ingredients, but there is some fat in it from the peanut butter and peanut oil…so go easy when drizzling the sauce. 
It’s so good though, I’ve been known to eat a couple spoonfuls by itself. I even ate it at Thanksgiving!
I just made a couple of changes to adapt to my liking. The original recipe calls for shredded chicken and brown sugar. I omit the chicken and swap out the brown sugar for Turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw).
It’s a beautiful and filling salad because the sauce is no wimpy sauce!
Recipe: Serves 4 Prep time: 15 mins Click here for a printable version
Ingredients for sauce:
1/2 cup quality peanut oil (I use Spectrum brand)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all natural organic creamy peanut butter (no additives)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
4 teaspoons Turbinado sugar (I’m sure you could also use agave or your preferred sweetener)
2 teaspoons peeled minced fresh ginger
2 teaspoons hot pepper paste
Vegetables:
1 large bag of mixed field greens
1 red bell pepper sliced
1 green bell pepper sliced
1 carrot shredded
Tip: Do not use a poor quality peanut oil. I’m telling you, it makes a HUGE difference. I tried using an inexpensive brand and it was terrible. A quality peanut oil will overwhelm you (in a good way) with a deep roasted peanut smell. I use Spectrum brand. I found mine at HEB but I’m sure they sell it at most grocery stores.
Prepare all the vegetables and add them to a large bowl. Add all the sauce ingredients to a small bowl and whisk until smooth and emulsified and thick. (the more you whisk, the thicker it becomes) If you are serving the whole bowl at once, you can drizzle the sauce over the whole salad. However, it’s a lot of sauce, so I just poured the sauce on individual plates and stored the leftovers in the fridge. Enjoy! You can thank me…and my mom…for this one.
Tip: If you are storing the extra sauce in the fridge, it will thicken and harden some, so remove it about 10 minutes before serving the following day.
Yum! This is my kind of food! I saw that you love my cashew straberry spread. I think you also would lover my vegan arugula cashew spread. It is thicker then the strawberry one. Here is the link: http://sophiesfoodiefiles.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/vegan-rucola-arugula-cashew-cheese-spread-yeah/
Your pictures are appetizing too!
Which part of Asia is this salad from? Looks pretty good though.
Thank you Sophie! I love doing food photography, hehe!
Ooh that sounds delicious! I’ll check it out! I made a problano cashew cream sauce for dinner this weekend for “meat” tacos that I still need to post. Thank you…your arugula sounds amazing…I love arugula!
Asmartrock-the ingredients typically used here for Asian/Chinese cooking here are ginger, soy sauce, peanut butter and rice vinegar which is what the entire sauce is made with…hence the name!!
If you don’t mind I would like to mention this link when I post my Poblano cashew cream recipe??! I don’t mind at all. Just link back to me! A huge tahnks to you!
xxx