Look Ma! I'm done on time! Ha ha!

The January 2010  Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

I must say that I have never had satay at a restaurant before.  Which is not to say that I have not meat on a stick… I have had pork skewers with teriyaki sauce (actually in an Asian household - it was the best damn meat on a stick ever!), chicken skewers with teriyaki or bbq sauce, shrimp skewers etc… but nothing that I would actually refer to as a Thai Satay.  I always thought satay was very exotic sounding.  And complicated.  How silly of me.  

Satay, according to Cuppy, is meat on a stick (corn dogs included).  You could use any meat or tofu and probably veggies too, but perhaps that starts to venture into kabobs???  It’s a fine line, this sticked food. 

I chose pork loin as my meat, well, because I had it and I like it and on the off chance the girls might try it, they also like pork (they didn’t try it, they are under the weather and had chicken soup instead - but really, meat on a stick?  We will have to try this again). 

I interpreted the recipe as a methodology and sort of eyeballed ingredients.  For instance, I didn’t have ground coriander, so I put in a big bunch of fresh cilantro.  Wait… the recipe.  You probably want that so you can follow along?  Okay, recipe is here.  I also only marinated it for 90 minutes.  Not really by choice, but said sick child had to go to the doctor last minute and that’s all the time that I had.  Still very flavorful.  And can I say easy?  Sure I had 250 different dirty dishes from the sauce making, the marinating, the skewer soaking and the sides, but hey, that’s what the dishwasher is for right?

The only problem that I had was with the peanut sauce.  And let me start off by saying that the reason that I have always avoided Thai food is that I do not like peanuts or coconuts.  I know right?  But even as a child, the smell of pb made me vomit.  And coconut?  I am vomiting just thinking about it.  (Hey you readers from The Daring Kitchen - stop laughing about the coconut thing!  I will figure out the next Bakers challenge). 

But… I prepared the sauce without any substitutions.  WTF???  Why would I do that?  Well let me tell you… if you read feedback and comments about satay, comments from Thai eaten folk, they alwaysgo on and on about the peanut sauce.  So why should I deny myself this experience?  Sure 90% of the ingredients make me want to vomit, but with only a few weeks left in this pregnancy, I am reaching a professional level of vomitting (Winter Olympics?…  No?..).  Really, bulimics step aside, I got you.   

Weird, I don’t know where that all came from…

Okay, so I prepared the sauce with the vile pb and coconut milk (crazy daring), and it was so freekin sweet I almost… but I didn’t.  Taylor walked by as I was making it and said “Gross Mommy, that stinks”.  Ah, the wisdom of a child.  She is so my Miny Me.  I fussed with it a bit, adding fish sauce and sriracha to try to balance it and the pb was actually palatable (shocking), but I could not cut that damn coconut.  This is why there is no “Curries” in the categories.  Oh well.  Anyone out there have any fantastic sauce they prefer? 

Along side these most excellent satay, I served a Thai inspired Noodle Salad and a quick pickled cucumber.  It was a great meal, light and flavorful and we will be having this again soon (with a different sauce).

~Blondie