Satay

My cousin's wife and their children came over to cook the other day* (you may remember them from when we made dumplings) and we made chicken satay. Charlie also demanded that we made bread so there was a quick detour for that to happen but ultimately we made some amazing satay that tasted just like the stuff I ate all the time when we went to Boat Quay or Chinatown in Singapore. Now, this isn't as much of a coincidence as it might seem - the cookbook author, Ghillie James, is an expat in Singapore. If you want little ones to help then juicing the limes with an electric juicer was deemed excellent fun, as was pressing the buttons on my mini processor (it's fairly noisy). Holding the hand held mixer to knead the bread definitely met with Charlie's approval - he loved the shape of the dough hooks but interestingly didn't want to touch the dough itself.

The recipe is quite straightforward but I'm not happy with the marinade for the chicken and want to tweak it using a satay recipe I previously used. Therefore I'm only going to give you the recipe for the sauce, with my changes, and will upload the marinade another time. When I can't be bothered to marinate, thread and grill the chicken I often just fry the chicken and cook some rice/noodles and peas and serve with this sauce on top. You could use beef, pork or prawns if you'd rather.

*Other week - I forgot to finish this before I went to Sweden (more on that next time) - sorry!

Satay Sauce

Serves 4 with chicken and rice

Ingredients

4cm fresh ginger, peeled and grated

2 garlic cloves, minced or grated

1 onion, small dice

1 red chilli (not too spicy), deseeded and finely diced

100g-150g roasted unsalted peanuts (get more if you snack on them like we did!)

100ml coconut milk (low fat or regular)

1tbsp clear honey

1tbsp soy sauce

1 lime, juiced

Method

Heat a little oil in a medium sized saucepan and add the ginger, onion and chilli, gently cook until soft before adding the garlic.

While the onions etc are cooking, smash up 100g of the peanuts using a mini processor, pestle and mortar or a good old fashioned sealed bag and rolling pin (excellent to take out your frustrations with), so that they're in pieces but not powder.

Add the peanuts, honey, soy and coconut milk to the pan with the onions in and simmer gently for 10 minutes along with 100ml water.

Add the lime juice.

Taste and adjust the seasoning as you wish (soy, honey, lime juice).

If you want the sauce to be thinner then add more water, if you want it to be thicker then smash some more peanuts and add them to the mix.

Serve with meat of your choice, rice and cucumber wedges.