Daring Cooks January Challenge: Pork Satay

I finally completed the January challenge for the Daring Cooks last night - only four days late...

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.

The Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay can be found here.  Satay is not my favourite food of all time however I enjoyed the challenge as it forced me to cook something I never had before AND I discovered Tamarind which is now my new favourite flavour!

Cuppy recommended serving the pork with a satay sauce, tamarind dip and pepper dip.  I particularly enjoyed the tamarind and pepper dips.

I decided to continue in the Thai-ish theme and served the kebabs with home-made roti and spicey chicken lettuce wraps.

Spicey Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Ingredients

250g minced chicken

1/4 small onion finely chopped

1/2 red chilli finely chopped

2 cloves garline finely chopped

1 T chopped lemongrass

1 1/2 T fish sauce

1T lime juice

small handfull Thai Basil

1 T peanut oil

sesame oil

Plus: Lettuce leaves and chopped capsicum, carrot, spring onion, bean sprouts etc.

Heat the peanut oil and gently fry the onion, chilli, garlic and lemongrass over a low heat for 2-3 minutes until the onion is translucent.

Increase the heat slightly and add the fish sauce, lime juice and chicken, stirring continuously to ensure the meat doesn't clump, and cook for 4-5 minutes until the liquid has evaporated and the chicken is cooked.

Season with salt and pepper - carefully as the fish sauce is quite salty.

Remove from heat and stir through basil and a splash of sesame oil.

Serve when cooled, using lettuce leaves as 'wraps' and topping with salad ingredients as desired.

I used a whole large red chilli including seeds when making this but we found it too hot, however you can adjust the heat to your taste by adding more or less chilli and including the seeds or not.

Basic Roti

I occasionally go with a group of friends to spend an evening at the Asiana Cooking School here in Wellington.  We have a few glasses of wine and listen carefully as the lovely Mindy teaches a new dish, before attempting to cook ourselves.  It's always a fun night topped off with delicious food!  This is Mindy's recipe for roti, which I have now made many times at home and find to be fail-safe!

Ingredients

2 c flour (all-purpose)

1/2 t sugar

1/2 t salt

3 T margarine

3/4 c luke-warm water

vegetable oil

Sift flour, sugar and salt into a bowl.  Using your fingertips, rub the margarine into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Add the water and mix to a soft dough - do not over-work.

Separate the dough and roll into six balls.

Lightly coat the balls in oil and leave to rest for a minimum of 2 hours.

After resting, take a ball and flatten on your work surface, then gently pick up each edge (one at a time) and stretch it out before replacing it on the surface - as you will see from the photo it will be a bit misshapen which I like, but you could work towards a perfect circle if you wish!

Heat a heavy based pan with about a teaspoon of oil and cook the roti, one at a time, untill slightly browned on each side.

Notes

I have only used the margarine to make this but butter would probably work just as well.  A friend once made it with olive oil in a pinch and it worked out fine!

The longer you leave the balls to rest the better it is - I left this particular batch for about six hours.  The balls can also be frozen at this stage for future use.

When stretching the dough out it may not seem to go very far at first but keep gently working your way around the edge until it gets bigger.

Keep a close eye on them while cooking - they burn easily!  This is the time I usually have problems but I don't think I can blame the recipe!