Nr.1 Daring Cook's challenge - Pork Satay with Peanut Sauce

This is my first Daring Cook challenge and I was very excited about it. Hopefully I will be able to collect some new recipes for dinners.

The January 2010 DC 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.

Satay Marinade

1/2 small onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon ginger root

2 tablesoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric

2 tablespoon vegetable oli ( or peanut or olive oil)

450g pork (loin or shoulder cuts)

1) Put all the ingretiantes to food blender and blend it until puree. Place the pork cuts into the marinade and chill it for 2 hours.

2) Grill pork cuts or fry on a sizzling pan.

Peanut Sauce

180ml coconut milk

4 tablespoons peanut butter

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1-2 dried chillies, chopped

1. Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Add soy sauce and lemon, mix well.
2. Over low heat, combine coconut milk, peanut butter and your soy-lemon-seasoning mix. Mix well, stir often.
3. All you’re doing is melting the peanut butter, so make your peanut sauce after you’ve made everything else in your meal, or make ahead of time and reheat.

Feelings about this recipe: Satay marinade was quite nice and something I might try again once in a blue moon. Peanut sauce was something absolutely weird. Somewhat sweet and peanut tasting, no, no, no in my house.

Cheese puffs for a tea party

A friend of mine was stopping by for Saturday afternoon and so then I invited another one and what was a meant to be a simple visit grew into a serious tea party with 4 participants!!! Life is what you make of it, isn't it ?!

I did some searching in the recipe department of my brain and cheese puffs came up. Recipe that I once spotted somewhere and have wanted to try out. I chose David Leboviz's cheese puffs making some of my own adjustments to the recipe.

Cheese puffs

Recipe gives around 30 bite-sized pieces

125 ml water

40g butter

1/4 teaspoon salt

70g flour

pinch of chile powder

2 large eggs

90g of grated cheese

Put all the ingredients ready, because the mixing has to happen without any interruptions. Preheat the oven to 220 C.

1)Bring water, butter, salt, chile to boil.

2)Dump all the flour in and mix vigourously, until it comes together into a ball.

3)Add eggs one by one and mix fast again. Add next one only when dough has come into homogenous mass. Don't mind the lumps at the beginning, keep on mixing and it will become nice and uniform.

4)Now add the 3/4 of the cheese and mix well.

5) Put dough into a pastry bag. Press small cherry tomato size balls on the greased baking sheet. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.

6) Bake 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 190 C and bake 20-30 minutes. You want them to be nice golden brown and crispy. 5 min before taking them out, poke the puffs with a knife on the side to let the air out, so they can become crispier.

I didn't do the poking part and they stayed softer in the middle and still very tasty. You decide. Comment form all four participants was that the puffs were delicious.

Ready for the oven

As the tea party evolved the bottle of good Portuguese wine was brought to the table and that eventually led to a friendly snow fight out doors. Cheers to tea parties!