But sometimes, the recipe development goes awry and the dish just fails. Yes, so bad it would ruin my rep as the kitchen superstar. In those moments, I whip out my never-fail-save-my-dinner-party dish. Of course, I hide all evidence of the earlier recipe disaster in the trash. So, what’s that dish? Well, honestly it’s not even MY recipe, it’s part of a recipe from Heidi’s 101 Cookbooks blog called Otsu. I’ve committed to memory the lemon-ginger dressing that’s in the Otsu dish and use it for everything - tossed with warm noodles, drizzled on roasted cauliflower, as a salad dressing and even to top grilled fish. Yes, it’s that good. I’ve left the recipe really flexible for you - in case you want this as your emergency back-up dish too! In this dish, I used some really nice Japanese shimeji mushrooms, but you can use any type of fresh mushrooms that you want, even thinly sliced button mushrooms. The pasta that I used in the photo is dried Japanese udon noodles, but standard dried spaghetti is just as good. For the fresh herbs, just use what you have either growing in the garden or bagged in the refrigerator.
