Month 6 day 3: Chicken Satay

Today I got home and was hungry-- I wanted to eat fast. But I haven't been to the grocery store in a while, so there's nothing in the fridge, and I'm leaving tomorrow for California again, so if I bought anything now anything extra would be wasted (same with leftovers). So I went for this chicken satay recipe, which I basically had the ingredients for in the freezer and the pantry. It called for a 1 hour marinating step, which I shortened.

Today I made:
Chicken Satay, Cooking Light July 2011

The marinade is made from peanuts, lime, sesame oil, various spices/aromatics, and coconut milk. The only things I didn't have were a serrano chile (subbed some red pepper flakes) and a shallot (subbed onion). It's very fast to throw everything together in a food processor and mix with the chicken. Since the pieces of chicken are small, they cook pretty quickly too. I used our grill pan instead of going outside.

This was pretty good, especially given how simple it was and most everything was stuff I normally have on hand (the coconut milk was kind of lucky-- that's not a typical staple in our pantry). I will keep this recipe to have on hand as a spur-of-the moment recipe, except it just sucks to have the long marinade. I guess it would be best suited for a lazy, rainy day, when you have time, but you just don't want to go outside so you want to cook with what's on hand.