Pork Satay III

The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by me, and I chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay with Peanut Sauce from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

I picked this recipe for the DC challenge because it’s what I was cooking some 8 hours after offering to be the last-minute host, three days before the challenge was to be posted. The focus of this challenge is to marinade.

Total time:  40 minutes, plus marinade time.

1/2 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Thai dragon (bird’s eye) chili pepper
2 T ginger root, chopped (4 cm cubed)
2 T lemon juice (1 oz or 30 mls)
1 T soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 T fish 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 pork (loin or shoulder cuts) (16 oz or 450g)

Pan-fried tofu satay and broiled chicken satay

Directions:
1. 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, ginger and peppers really fine then mix it all together in a medium to large bowl.
2. Cut pork into 1 inch strips.
3. 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.
4. If using wooden or bamboo skewers, soak your skewers in warm water for at least 20 minutes before preparing skewers.
5. Gently and slowly slide meat strips onto skewers. Discard leftover marinade.*
6. Broil or grill at 290°C/550° F (or pan fry on medium-high) for 8-10 minutes or until the edges just start to char. Flip and cook another 8-10 minutes.

* If you’re grilling or broiling, you could definitely brush once with extra marinade when you flip the skewers.

Shown above with peanut sauce.

TexMex Pork Satay

I also did this challenge using my trusty Pork Satay II marinade on tofu, pan fried (middle picture), chicken satay marinated in raita (shown with tofu), and the experimental but oh-so-wonderful TexMex Pork Satay marinated in a Chevy’s inspired chipotle and jalapeno cream sauce.

I also did all three dipping sauces suggested in the challenge (peanut sauce, Thai pepper dip, tamarind dip, with changes), as well as using the TexMex dip and my favorite raita.