CEiMB: Chicken Sate with Spicy Peanut Sauce

It’s Thursday again, which means it’s time for CEiMB! This week was hosted by Cathy of The Tortefeasor, and she chose Chicken Sate with Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce. It seems like we are continuing with the Thai theme from last week, which is fine with me because I love Thai food but don’t eat it all that often.

Once I read over the recipe and got over the initial shock of the lengthy ingredient list, I rummaged around my pantry and realized I only had to buy three things to complete this meal: coconut milk, chicken stock, and bamboo skewers. Yes, that’s correct – I have fish sauce in my pantry but not chicken stock. Crazy, right?

When I mixed the marinade for the chicken, I have to say that I wasn’t that fond of the smell and was afraid I would not like the finished product. However, I think the ingredients really came together in the grilling process, just like last week’s Thai salad dressing/marinade. The chicken was very moist, slightly salty from the soy and fish sauces, and had a little bit of brightness from the lime zest.

I also really enjoyed the peanut sauce. The only change I made was to substitute sriracha for the red curry paste – I don’t like curry very much, but I love chili sauce. I used a generous amount, probably close to 1 1/2 tablespoons, and found that the sauce was perfectly spicy for my taste. I noticed that some other CEiMB members commented that the sauce was too thick, but I didn’t think so. It may be because I used a no-stir natural peanut butter than regular, but I also blended it for a long time. Maybe that made a difference, maybe not.

As you can see in the picture, I also stir-fried some broccoli and straw mushrooms to go along with the chicken. It was very simple. I used vegetable oil, broccoli, and one can of drained mushrooms then finished it off with a drizzle of sesame oil for extra flavor. This was my first experience with straw mushrooms, and they were just okay – next time I’ll use sliced fresh instead.

To round out the meal, I wanted some kind of starch. Since I love spicy things and Scott loves pasta in any way, shape, or form, I picked up these Simply Asia Chili Garlic noodles at the grocery store for a quick addition to the meal. I’m not sure what kind of noodles these were, but before cooking they looked similar to soba noodles. The spiciness level was labeled “medium,” but I found the noodles rather mild. They were good, but next time I would probably add some sriracha to spice the dish up even more. The best part was definitely the chili flakes sprinkled on top!

I’ll mark this one as a success. Thanks to Cathy for another great recipe choice!

CEiMB: Grilled Thai Beef Salad

This week’s CEiMB recipe was Grilled Thai Beef Salad and was hosted by Jen of Jen B’s Cooking Carveout.

My husband and I just ate a steak salad last week with balsamic vinaigrette and bleu cheese, so I considered skipping this week in favor of trying something new. We both enjoyed the first salad, however, and I don’t want to get into the habit of skipping weeks in the cooking club since I’m enjoying it so much. So, I decided to make it anyway, hoping that Scott wouldn’t ask “Didn’t we just eat this a few days ago?” (Which he did, by the way.)

I think the best thing about a steak salad is that they provide a great way to incorporate beef into a dinner that is otherwise light and low in fat. We had our salad served with a baked potato (one that Scott and I split in half) and it made a very filling meal.

I also love Thai food and this was a good way to recreate and enjoy the flavors at home while still having a healthful meal. I have to admit, though, that I usually steer away from Thai dishes that are extremely heavy on basil, so the amount called for in this recipe (1 cup) seemed like too much to me. I cut it down to less than half and still found the flavor a little overwhelming.

This recipe requires you to make a dressing (using lime juice, oil, soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar and garlic) that is divided to both marinate the meat and dress the salad. I thought the marinade was quite good on the beef, but I did not enjoy it uncooked as a salad dressing – I think the flavors needed to be heated on the grill to really come together. I also believe this would be a good marinade for other protein as well and I will probably try it on chicken or shrimp in the future.

I did make two changes to the dressing – first, I used crushed garlic and grated ginger rather than mincing the two ingredients. I personally hate biting down on a piece of either of these items raw, and I found that crushing them helped to emulsify the dressing rather than having these ingredients sink to the bottom. I also used sriracha instead of curry paste just because I enjoy the flavor more.

Finally, I used thinly sliced onions on top of the salad instead of shallots. Unfortunately my grocery budget for the week did not allow me to pay $4.00 for three shallots when I already had an onion at home.

Overall, I enjoyed the flavors of this recipe but not the final product. If I make this again, I will marinate and grill the meat and possibly serve it with a side salad, but I do not plan on combining all of these ingredients into one composed dish again.

Cooking Light

I bought the September issue of Cooking Light several weeks ago, but didn't have time to really look at it until a few days ago. I think this issue had a lot of great recipes. It's probably not on the shelves any more, but you should definitely search for this month's recipes on their site.

The first recipe was Turkey-Ricotta Meatballs. Sorry, the recipe isn't posted on their site yet, but I'll try to remember to link it once it it. These meatballs were great - they were very easy because they are baked, and they stayed moist due to the addition of ricotta cheese. The recipe called for part-skim, but I used fat free since that is what I had on hand.

I think my favorite part of the recipe is that it did not give specific directions on how to serve them, and I have found that they are extremely versatile. I put one half of the batch in some homemade tomato sauce (more on that later) and served it with pasta, and tomorrow we are having the second half in a stroganoff-type dish. I imagine they would also be tasty in some barbecue sauce or something similar as an appetizer.

Here they are, straight from the oven:


Now my dilemma is this - I have over half of a container of ricotta left over, and I don't like it on its own. Does anyone have a good recipe that incorporates ricotta?

Tonight I made the Thai Coconut Curry Shrimp. I really like Thai food (and by that, I mean all I have ever had is pad thai), so I decided to try making it. I have to admit that I have never ordered a curried dish at a Thai restaurant before because I was didn't think I would like something with coconut milk in it, but this recipe was quite good and very light.

I only made one substitution - I used dried basil instead of fresh because I couldn't find any at the grocery store.

With brown rice and steamed broccoli:


We also had some frozen and thawed mango for dessert. Yum!

I think I may subscribe to Cooking Light. I have really cut down on the magazines that I subscribe to due to so much paper used and the fact that I can find them online. There are some that I still really enjoy reading in print, though.

What magazine subscriptions do you have?