Peanut Satay Sauce
Right so first recipe using the spice mix in the previous post. You can of course go and buy a Thai curry spice mix ready made just double check the ingredients if you are coeliac like me you might be surprised.
You will need:
3 or 4 shallots or 1 red onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 or 2 Lemon grass sticks, 3 teaspoons Thai spice mix, 1 tablespoon of tamarind puree, 2 teaspoons of palm sugar, 7oz unsalted peanuts, large tin (400g) of coconut milk.
The first job is to toast off 7oz of unsalted peanuts. Use a dry frying pan on a medium heat and keep them moving so they don’t just burn. When they are suitably toasted leave them to cool a bit and then grind/blend or chop use whatever method suits you best. It is your choice how fine you make it, I like it quite rough so it has a nice bite to it.
Next chop the shallots, garlic and lemongrass, just use the softer white middle bit of the lemongrass.
Gently fry the onion, garlic and lemongrass in a little oil until turning translucent but be careful not to let it burn as that will give a bitter taste. Then add in the peanuts and fry for another couple of minutes.
Then add in the tamarind puree, Thai spice mix, coconut milk and palm sugar, if you don’t have palm sugar then a soft brown sugar will do just as well. Cook through for a couple of minutes and leave to cool for a while.
Once it has cooled down a fair bit you can use it as a marinade for whatever you would like. In this case I was feeding a house full of carnivores so it was chicken, but it would work just as well with pork, beef or king prawns. If you are a vegetarian you might like to try large field mushrooms or skewers of mix veg such as courgettes, mushrooms, peppers, baby onions or tofu.
I used chicken breasts and sliced them into long pieces all a similar size so the cooking time will be equal. Mix these strips with a good amount of the sauce to coat them thoroughly and leave for an hour or two. You could prepare them the day before and keep them in the fridge ready to cook the next day if that worked better for you.
Take each of the strips and skewer them several times down their length ready for cooking. I used long metal skewers but smaller wooden ones would be fine but remember to soak them well first so they don’t burn. Place under a medium grill turning once when the first side has begun to brown. If you are using meat ensure it is cooked all the way through before serving. They would also be excellent on a barbeque if you had one other them going.
While the skewers are cooking scrape any left over marinade back into the pan with the rest of the sauce (it is way too good to waste any!) and cook through, this is particularly important if it has been marinading meat of any sort. Add some boiling water to thin it down a bit so it becomes a little more pourable. This can then be served either over the top of the cooked skewers or on the side.
