Satay and a recreated restaurant dish (baby bok choy with pork)

Yesterday while writing about Bali for my updated 'Travel' pages (Check them out), I got an insatiable desire to eat some satay and craved the sweet, sour, salty and spicy tastes I had been writing about. Satay was everywhere in Bali, from the small mini accompaniment skewer served with Nasi Goreng, to a full mixed platter with pork, beef, chicken and ground shrimp moulded onto lemongrass skewers. The meats and shrimps are fantastic alone, being char grilled to a perfect crispy exterior, but the dipping sauces are the real pull for me.

I decided to take a recipe from a Thai cookbook and so the two sauces I made are more familiar with that cuisine, although they do share similar ingredients to Balinese cooking, such as lemongrass, ginger, garlic and fish sauce. The marinade used on the meat is also more Thai, but taking an Indian influence with ground cumin, coriander and curry powder. This all adds to the layers and depth of flavours that makes South East Asian food so intriguing and complex.

 

I chose pork only, thinly sliced and marinated for one hour. These skewers are also insanely good if you just use soy sauce to marinade the meat for 1 hour before grilling. A lighter soy would probably be best as the version I bought recently, mushroom flavoured soy, is too thick and intensely flavoured to be used in the same way as regular soy.

The sweet and sour dipping sauce, synonymous with food of these regions and a great lighter, sharper version to counteract the rich, nutty peanut sauce. Also very pretty with tiny cubes of carrot, chili and bell pepper, (all hand cut, by the way).

 

The peanut dipping sauce. Here you can see the dark intensity of the soy sauce I used. My Magic Bullet was brought out for this, one of the first times I've used it. This sauce is sweet from the peanut butter and sugar, with a slight tang from the rice vinegar and herbal and fresh from the cilantro. It is an adapted Weight Watchers recipe and one I come back to again and again, sometimes tweaking a little to ring in the changes.

I like to cook satay for a little bit longer than is probably necessary. I am more concerned about crispy edges and caramelized crusts than succulence when it comes to this kind of food. The dipping sauces provide all the lubrication I need so these were grilled until they were really well done, but not too dry.

  

The recreated dish I made was from the restaurant we visited on Friday night. Baby bok choy with ground pork. The original was an outstanding dish, full of interesting tastes and textures, the bok choy still firm with a bit of bite and the sauce sweet, tangy and strong. The ground pork had been cooked to a crisp which provided an interesting texture. I made an estimation of what I thought they used, and although it was good, it was not as interesting as the restaurant version, but that's OK, another visit could only be a good thing.

 

Recipe: Pork Satay (Adapted from Australian Women's Weekly - Easy Thai Style Cookery)

Marinade

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp curry powder

2 tbsp oil

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp fish sauce

1/4 tsp Sriracha sauce or Sambal oolek

1 fillet pork, sliced into long, thin slices and thread onto skewers.

Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pour over the pork skewers. Cover and marinade in the fridge for at least one hour.

Peanut sauce (Adapted from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook)

3 tbsp creamy peanut butter

2 tbsp soy sauce

4 tsp sugar

1 tbsp water

1-1/4 tsp rice wine vinegar

1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Blend until fully combined

Sweet and sour sauce

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

4 - 6 tsp sugar

1 tbsp water

1 carrot, very finely diced

1 green chili, very finely diced

1 baby bell pepper, very finely diced

Combine everything together 

Satay

Grill (broil) the pork under high heat, turning once, until cooked, browned and crispy.

Serve with the dipping sauces.

Recipe : Baby bok choy with ground pork

1 cup baby bok choy

2 tbsp ground pork

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp Chinese wine

1 tsp chili sauce

1/2 tsp sugar

Heat a pan of water until boiling and add the bok choy. Cook over medium heat for about 4 minutes until the vegetable is soft but still has some bite.

In a frying pan, heat 1 tsp oil and add the pork. Stir fry over high heat until the pork is golden brown and crispy. Add the soy, wine, chili sauce and sugar and stir well. 

Add the cooked bok choy and stir fry everything for a few minutes to thicken and reduce the sauce. Serve