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| Sauce, jarred |
Do you love really authentic Thai food? Something painstakingly reconstructed from an old recipe handed down through a family? Something just like what you'd get at a family house in Pattaya? Well, this is probably not the blog for you! Try out
this because it looks pretty awesome. For the rest of you, welcome!
I like satay sauce (the peanuty sauce that comes with the moo satay at your favorite Thai restaurant), but the one time I bought a bottled version it was really dull. So, when I came across a recipe in my current favorite
cookbook, I thought I'd try it out. It's awesome, but it does take a little over an hour. So last night I thought I'd try to adapt it some so that I could 1) make it before 10 pm and 2) not have to use my food processor. I also adapted some of the spices and sugar so that it wouldn't be overly sweet.
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| Sauce cooking, pre-peanut butter |
A few of these ingredients might be hard to find if you don't have a good Asian or Thai grocery store where you are. Our grocery stores tend to stock their "international" sections pretty well, so you might be surprised by how much you can pick up. If you can't find tamarind paste, try using red curry paste, roasted if you can find it but plain will work too. You might need to add more if you use the curry paste, so taste as you go. For the lemongrass and ginger, you can chop them up fresh or pick up the pre-minced versions in the tube. If you want a smoother sauce, process the garlic, lemongrass, sambal oelek and ginger before you cook them and use smooth peanut butter instead of chunky. The whole recipe is really adjustable, so play around with the amounts of everything to find what you'd like most.
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbl lemongrass, minced
3 Tbl sambal oelek
2 Tbl minced ginger (or two small pieces)
1/3 cup grapeseed oil (or another mild oil you have, avoid olive oil)
1 Tbl salt
5 Tbl sugar
1 Tbl sweet paprika
2 Tbl tamarind paste, whisked with a bit of water to thin
1 cup natural peanut butter, chunky
In a small saucepan, whisk the oil with the garlic, lemongrass, sambal oelek and ginger. Bring it all to a medium heat, whisking frequently. You want the mixture to be uniform, with only minimal separation between the oil and the paste. Once it starts to bubble a bit, reduce the heat to medium-low. Keep stirring and let it cook for about 10 minutes.
In a small bowl, mix together the salt, sugar, paprika and thinned tamarind paste. Add these to the saucepan, and whisk thoroughly. It should look even more uniform. Cook for another 10 minutes. At this point, the mixture should be fairly thick. When you drag the whisk across the paste, it should take a few seconds for it to flow back into the path made by your whisk. If not, bring your heat up a bit (not past medium) and continue to cook. Once the paste is thick enough, bring the paste to low heat and whisk in your peanut butter. Whisk until it is uniform, then remove from heat.
At this point, I added the sauce to two jars and set aside for it to cool. It'll keep in the refrigerator for at least a week.
I like to use the sauce in a lot of ways. Thin a bit out with water and marinate tofu in it. Then grill or bake the tofu. I also like to whisk some with a few tablespoons of coconut milk and simmer vegetables in it. Or, use as is to dip vegetables, baked tofu or grilled meats. Mix it into soba noodles or whisk some into a soup. It's pretty versatile.
