Actually the only thai peanut sauce I have ever made, period, but my god was it good. You know how when you make cookies the best part is licking out the bowl? Well tonight I licked out the pan that I cooked the shrimp and sauce in. It was so good that I'm going to attempt to share it with you all.
Now notice that I say attempt to share, and that is because I am not really one for following a recipe or doing measurements of any kind. I just kind of wing it and go by taste, i.e. does it need more sweet or tang... So the following are the list of ingredients that went into the sauce:
Peanut butter
Tahini
Lime juice
Chicken broth
Agave
Ginger
Garlic
Chilli Flakes
Pepper
Now the rough estimate of measurements/instructions are as follows:
Mix 2-3tbsp of peanut butter with 1tbsp of tahini and 2tbsp of lime juice. This turns into a weird thick paste-like consistency and makes you think "oh good god, what have I done." Meanwhile, microwave 1 cup of chicken broth until it boils over and causes a huge mess in the microwave. After you clean up the mess and the chicken broth is cooled down to a temperature you can handle pour about 1/4 of it into the peanut/tahini lime paste and whisk well. Add one clove of minced garlic, one tsp of grated ginger, 2 tsp of agave and one tsp of chilli flakes. Whisk some more until the peanut/tahini paste is totally dissolved in the chicken broth. Now this is the important part. Taste the sauce and see what you think. I found that it needed more peanut butter at this point to counter act the chicken and tahini flavours. Then I found that it was a bit too sweet so I threw some more lime juice in.
Now for the cooking part. This got a little hairy and I'm thinking that next time I do it, I'll do it differently. I decided to cook the shrimp in the peanut sauce (raw shrimp). It turns out that when this concoction gets heated the chicken stock just disappears altogether and the peanut/tahini paste makes a reappearance. Thinking quickly (or rather panicking a bit, it was burning) I tossed some more chicken broth from the remaining 3/4 of a cup into the pan and stirred like mad until the paste was back to a sauce consistency. The next large problem I discovered was that it was very hard to tell what colour the shrimp was once it was covered in peanut sauce making it difficult to tell when the shrimp was cooked through. So I left it on there a bit longer until the paste reared its ugly head and I had to throw more chicken broth in. In the end I took a guess at how long I thought it should take to ensure the shrimp was not poisonous. I put the whole mixture overtop of some rice and voila, dinner was served, and, as I've previously mentioned, it was fantastic. I was worried that, with the excess amount of chicken broth I'd added, that I'd have lost some of the peanut-ty flavour, but it turns out the broth just evaporates right off and eaves the flavour more robust then ever before.
Tomorrow I'm going to try my hand at chicken in peanut sauce over rice!
Cheers,
No comments:
Post a Comment