Bean Sprout Salad with Crunchy Peanut Dressing

One of the joys of living in this Northern Virginia suburb is shopping at the giant Asian market about a mile away: not only does it have every Asian ingredient imaginable, and many that we could never imagine in a hundred years, it also has excellent and inexpensive produce. No more do we have to make do with little bags of mushy, half-decomposed bean sprouts—we now get one-pound bags of crispy sprouts that last a week or more.

The only problem is, once we've used a couple of handfuls of sprouts, we still have almost a pound left. What to do?

As usual, the Internet has lots of good suggestions, including this recipe for a bean sprout salad that came from Henry Chung's legendary Hunan Restaurant in San Francisco. We thought that the author's recipe sounded tasty but a little on the wet side, so we slightly adapted it, with happy results.

Bean Sprout Salad with Crunchy Peanut Dressing

1 pound mung bean sprouts
1 cucumber, peeled and cut into small chunks
1/2 cup carrot, cut into small chunks

Dressing:
2 T. soy sauce
4 T. rice vinegar
1 T. dry white wine
1 t. cayenne pepper
1 t. sugar
1 t. dry mustard
1 t. salt
1 T. minced ginger
1 T. minced garlic
1 T. minced scallion
3 T. toasted sesame oil
4 T. crunchy peanut butter

1. Mix the vegetables in a large bowl.
2. Mix together the dressing ingredients. A blender works great for this.
3. Pour the dressing over the vegetables.
4. Chill, but don't wait too long to serve this, as it gets soggy the longer it sits.