For sauce:
Place garlic and ginger in food processor. Process until chopped fine. Add vegetable oil, tahini, peanut butter, soy sauce, rice wine, sherry vinegar, honey, chili oil and sesame oil. Puree the sauce.

For noodles:
Put a large pot of water up to a boil. When boilingh, add salt. Add noodles and cook according to package directions. Drain pasta in colander, place in a large bowl, and while still warm, toss with three-quarters of the sauce. Add the garnishes and toss well. Serve warm or at room temp. The remaining sauce may be added, as needed, to moisten the pasta.

NOTES : Risa's notes:
* I used Garlic Honey I got at a festival. Use whatever you have, nothing too fruity flavored.

** This is optional. For the Chile-Heads in the household, add the chiles. For the non-CH leave them out. You can serve them at the table instead of putting them in when cooking.

Book Note: Don't combine the sauce with the pasta until the last minute; the soy sauce tends to break down the noodles and make them mushy.

This was adapted from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten, one of the best cookbooks in a long time IMHO. The food is so simple and yet tastes so wonderful. I made a few changes - I used rice wine instead of dry sherry, I chopped up some chiles and put them on top as a garnish along with some shreds of ginger (My DH hated that part, I loved it) and I shredded some red onion and some cooked chicken to put on top.

This was delicious and so easy to do. Well worth the fat and calories IMHO.

From: RisaG Adapted from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook
Posted By: RisaG,radiorlg@yahoo.com. Via: Chile Head Mailing List
Post Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001