My Spicy Peanut Sauce

This was originally published here back in 2007.  Again in 2009.  It’s time for another round of sharing…

It’s summertime which means I’m cooking a lot satay for dinners and parties. It’s one of those dishes that is easy to make, great to take, and always devoured.

First cut chicken or pork into small pieces: 1/4″ by 3″ is a good size to aim for. Marinate these pieces for 4-6 hours in:

1/4 C coconut milk
1/4 C vegetable oil
1 TBS. Thai Kitchen’s red curry paste
1 Tbs. sugar
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. lime juice
1 tsp. fish sauce

Now you can thread these chicken pieces onto skewers (soaked in water), but I find this awkward on my grill. So I just place them on the grill . They are small and cook up quickly! About two minutes per side.

Now the best part: The Spicy Peanut Sauce you serve along with it.

Debra’s Thai Spicy Peanut Sauce.
This is adapted from Barbara Tropp’s The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking.

I LOVE this stuff.. and use it like I used ketchup as a kid (on almost everything!!) It’s fabulous on chicken and pork, but possibly at it’s best on soba noodles or wholewheat pasta.

3-5 cloves ofgarlic (Tropp uses 10… but I found that then I couldn’t taste anything except the garlic. Not the sauce I was going for…). I actually prefer to use roasted garlic, but that means planning ahead.
1/2C Soy Sauce
1/2C all natural peanut butter (it has no transfats… so it’s healthier).
5 TBS. Sugar
1-2 TBS Thai Kitchen Red chili sauce (depending on your tolerance for heat)
1 TBS. vegetable oil
1 TBS. lime juice

Mince the garlic in your food processor or blender. Add the rest of the ingredients, and puree for 1 minute (is you are using a blender, pulse the blend for about 10 second intervals).

Let the flavors blend for at least 2 hours.

Will stay good in your fridge for 2 weeks. If it lasts that long, you mustn’t really like it, so send it to me!!

Healthy Eating: Apple-Pom Turkey Thigh

Yes, FDA, I was given the POM wonderful juice which served as inspiration for altering this recipe. But, just as the food going into my mouth was my own, these words comin’ out are mine, too.

After FitBloggin last spring, I had an opportunity to receive some small bottles of Pom Wonderful juice. While at the conference, they handed out samples of the juice and a recipe book, but I was disappointed in the recipes including. I had thought that POM was a natural for some kind of sauces for chicken or turkey- and found none.  I was given several bottles to use them in developing some healthy recipes using the juice the way I wanted.

Uhm, yeah, it was also two weeks after I started working as a personal trainer at a gym 25 miles from my home.  Between time spent at the gym and commute time, I was limited in my creative cooking time.  But last week I was inspired.

Turkey thighs are healthy and one of the few fairly inexpensive cuts of meat.  My local supermarket had a special on packages – so I went searching the internet for a recipe to use them.  Ideally, a recipe that I could adapt to use the POM juice.

I found it at Martha Stewart:  Apple-Braised Turkey Thighs.

Now I suspect that POM may lose a lot of its anti-oxidant properties if it’s cooked too long, so my plan was to add the juice after the thighs were cooked, as I was warming and thickening the sauce.

I followed the recipe fairly closely (for me)- only substituting onions for shallots.  But when I lifted the lid for the last 1/2 hour of cooking, the pan looked a bit dry.  I decided to add the POM at that point and let it cook blend more with the pan juices.

The results?  A wonderful dish.  Tender, flavorful turkey -moist and appealling.  A pan sauce of apples and onions and wonderfully complimentary pan sauce.  Served it -like the photo in the article- with green beans.  It would wonderful with chunky-ish garlic mashed red potatoes- but I didn’t have time to fix those.  So we had brown rice instead.

I STILL have a couple bottles of POM.  Suggest a recipe for me to try -or adapt- to use these.