Tapioca Noodles?

If you've ever had Pad Thai or Pho, you know how tasty rice noodles are. Nice and chewy, they are my favorite in any size, so I always try to keep some on hand. Unfortunately our grocery store only carries one pricey brand of the wide noodles, so I stock up on those when we visit the Asian market. Earlier this year we made one of our too-infrequent trips to the Asian market, but I couldn't find my beloved noodles. After searching the shelves again and again I could only locate one opened bag of the wide noodles and one random bag of medium width. I foolishly thought one of the workers could help since I had a bag in hand already, but she still had no clue what I was asking about! Finally I just grabbed a few bags of smallish ones and figured I'd try again next time. When I got home I realized I had accidentally grabbed three bags of Tapioca noodles! My only experience with tapioca noodles was back in 2006 when I couldn't resist trying the crazy crinkly things below. (They were disgusting, but that might have been my fault!) I wasn't optimistic, but I figured they deserved another try! The cooking directions were odd; something like, 'Soak in hot water for 20 minutes, drain, boil for 20 minutes, let sit in the pot of water for 15 minutes'. When they were finished I was left with a fat, white noodle, similar in size to udon, but chewier. Not bad! I used the black pepper sauce from a new recipe and tossed the noodles with sauteed onion, shredded savoy cabbage, and some shredded, cooked chicken. It ended up so good that I made these Black Pepper Noodles for lunch again and again until I'd finally used up all three bags! Soon I'd like to try the recipe again with udon, since that is a much more accessible and familiar noodle. Hopefully the result will taste just as good and the recipe will be ready to share. I probably won't pick up another pack of tapioca noodles on purpose again (unless the recipe calls for it), but it was a tasty experiment!