Recipe Review: Cooking Light's Cold Sesame Noodles with Chicken and Cucumbers

I tend to gravitate towards recipes that include a lot of items I already happen to have in my kitchen. This Cooking Light recipe for Cold Sesame Noodles with Chicken and Cucumbers is an example of that. This recipe is from the September issue of Cooking Light.

The ingredients.

If you read the recipe and then look at the faux mise en place above, you'll notice that there are a few changes that I made. First, I had bought chicken thighs from Wegmans this past weekend and used those instead of buying a premade rotisserie chicken. I just grilled the chicken on a cast iron grill pan with some salt and pepper, then shredded it as instructed in the recipe. Also, instead of the "sambal oelek or chile paste with garlic", I used Gojuchang, a Korean chile paste, since that's what I had. Finally, no green onions not a huge fan of them; besides, it's just a garnish.

Yes, there is chicken in there, but it's the same color as the sauce/noodles.

This was a pretty easy recipe, and I'm sure it'd be even easier if you had a cooked rotisserie chicken on hand, haha. I liked this dish a lot, it was pretty quick from start to finish, and the sauce is very tasty. It's a great dish for a hot day like the past couple days have been. I've brought in leftovers for lunch, and the only complaint is the cucumbers soaking in too much of the sauce after a day or two. I'd recommend keeping the cucumbers separate if the texture of the cucumbers bothers you. The sauce isn't spicy- if you want it to be, I recommend a little Sriracha sauce or red pepper flakes in the dish.