Daring Cooks January Challenge: Satay

Daring Cooks January Challenge: Satay

This was my first Daring Cooks challenge that I completely forgot about until Monday night and it had to be posted today! Yikes! Fortunately I had everything I needed and it's satay, why wouldn't I leap at an excuse to make that? So I set about following the challenge recipe. We had a bit of latitude with this one in that you could pick whatever protein or vegetable you wanted to "satay" (can that be a verb?), we could add some heat, extra ginger and fish sauce to the marinade if we chose (I chose) and then make the peanut sauce and/or two other sauce options in case peanuts were an allergen for some. The marinade part was very very good. The sauce recipes were not, I'm sorry to say, to my liking. I am posting the marinade portion and would suggest you use your favorite peanut sauce recipe for this. Kris at Bake in Paris suggested dipping the skewers in some reserved coconut milk before grilling which I will do next time I attempt this and also made a wonderful cucumber salad that I really must try, you can find that recipe here. The DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious  and came from 1000 Recipes by Martha Day. Thanks to Cuppy for her enthusiasm and energy. Happy days!

Recipe: Satay Marinade

Ingredients

1/2 small onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 T ginger root, chopped (optional) (2 cm cubed)

2 T lemon juice (1 oz or 30 mls)

1 T soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)

1 tsp ground coriander (5 mls)

1 tsp ground cumin (5 mls)

1/2 tsp ground turmeric (2-2.5 mls)

2 T vegetable oil (or peanut or olive oil) (30 mls)

1 pound of chicken, pork (loin or shoulder cuts), tofu etc. (16 oz or 450g)

Feeling the need to make it more Thai? Try adding a dragon chili, an extra tablespoon of ginger root, and 1 tablespoon (0.5 oz or 15 mls) of fish sauce. (I keep some premature (still green) dragon chili peppers in the freezer for just such an occasion.)

Directions

1a. Cheater alert: If you have a food processor or blender, dump in everything except the pork and blend until smooth. Lacking a food processor, I prefer to chop my onions, garlic and ginger really fine then mix it all together in a medium to large bowl.

2a. Cut pork into 1 inch strips.

3a. Cover pork with marinade. You can place the pork into a bowl, cover/seal and chill, or place the whole lot of it into a ziplock bag, seal and chill.