Asian-Inspired Pasta

Asian cuisines take a different approach to noodle dishes. For one thing, the sauce is not the main show, as it is in Italian and Italian-inspired dishes. Asian pasta dishes often include some other stuff—vegetables, cubes of tofu, bits of chicken, meat, or fish—that are not incorporated into the sauce. The sauces tend to be thinner and lighter and function as more of a foil for the noodles and other featured foodstuffs than as the star attraction. This next group of recipes of Asian-inspired pasta dishes is therefore set up differently. If you make the whole recipe, you’ll generally have a complete, one-dish meal. The sauces and pasta alone together, while perhaps not substantial enough for a main meal, make wonderful side dishes, savory snacks, or midnight suppers—which happens to be a popular Italian use for a lightly sauced pasta dish too.