It's been quite an adventure to make this dish. First, I had to get a meat mallet. Then, today I went to the Dollar Store to get skewers (they don't have any yet, but plan on getting these soon (not soon enough for me), and then I went next door to do grocery shopping at Sprouts and completely forgot to see if they had any skewers, so now I have to go to Fry's when I get the kids. Arrrgh.
So, I end up getting 6 pounds of chicken breasts for $1.99/lb. That's an okay price, but I would rather have chicken tenders for $1.99/lb. They were $3.99/lb. Came home and pounded out the chicken breasts (got sorta tired doing this) - all 6 pounds and really pounded the crap out of some of the breasts . . .they'll be like chicken shreds on the skewers. The first package of breasts were hard to do for some reason, but by the 2nd package, I got the hang of it.
Making the marinade for the chicken wasn't too bad. Melissa has in her instructions to put the chicken on skewers and then marinade. That makes no sense to me, so I altered this part of the directions to apply the marinade to the chicken pieces, making sure all the pieces got thoroughly coated in it, putting all the chicken in either a stainless steel or glass or ceramic bowl, covering with plastic wrap and putting it in the refrigerator for hours. That was done about 9:30-10 am. It's now 11:15 am.
After that, I decided that I would make the "peanut" sauce, though, I have no peanut butter. I ran out of almond butter and thought about getting this at Sprouts, in their bulk food section, but I really didn't want to pay $5.99/lb for this. Remembering that I paid $3.23/lb at Costco the other day, and seeing a recipe on Bill Staley's site for Almond Butter, I decided to attempt making this, knowing full well that I didn't have a VitaMix or a Blendtec, which are very high powered blenders. Anyway, I learned, I'm going to have to buy the Almond Butter or any nut butters until I get one of these blenders because mine doesn't do a good enough job (my food processor or blender).
Oh, to make Almond or any Nut Butter, you take the nut and add macadamia nut oil to it. Sprouts had Almond Oil, Walnut Oil, Grapeseed Oil, Avocado Oil, Coconut Oil, and other types of oils, but NO macadamia nut oil. I figured Walnut oil would suffice. It was probably way less expensive than macadamia oil. So, I got some Walnut Oil. Put in a cup plus of almonds into my food processor with a little walnut oil. It really turned more into a crunchy almond meal with oil. Great! Wasn't going to waste that.
I threw in the rest of the ingredients into the food processor, including chunks of fresh ginger and all that liquid (very bad idea). As I started the food processor, liquid began leaking out QUICKLY. Shut it off and dumped everything into the blender, as I cleaned up the mess. Earlier I had spilled the coconut milk I made (bought coconut milk powder for those times I don't need to use a whole can of coconut milk, which was this time). So, the table had coconut milk, the counter had this "peanut" concoction. What a fricken mess!
Then, I found my "peanut" sauce was too watery, so I looked for some sunflower seed butter and scooped up some and threw it into the blender (okay, dropped it into there). It thickened it up some and I think all the fresh ginger is ground up now. Poured it into 2 bowls. One for life group. One for my kids & I.
Anyway, I will let the meet marinate until I get the kids from school, then I will thread the chicken onto the skwers (after I pick up skewers at Fry's - hopefully they have them), which will probably take an hour and then place them on baking trays to BROIL and then it will be time to leave for life group.
Wow! I need a nap!
Okay, took a short nap. Got the kids. Found skewers at Fry's.
Came home, found an aluminum pan that was big enough to hold water and soak the 12" long skewers in. While attempting to take the skewers out of the bag they came in, I almost skewered my hand. Boy, those things ARE sharp. My hand hurts now and I screamed out in pain.
Okay, so I partially fill up the aluminum pan (which incidentally had a small hole in it that I didn't see or know about), put the bamboo skewers in there to soak for 25 min. so they don't burn up in the oven. I go do other stuff and come back to use the skewers to put the chicken through. There's water all over the floor and table. Great!
Anyway, I was able to skewer most of the marinating chicken to some semblance of what they should look like, but there were a handful of times where I got the sharp end of the skewer. Hopefully I didn't bleed onto the chicken. I think I did around 40 skewers, got them to bake on 4 different cookie sheets (only had 3 sheets, though) for 15 min. with 2 trays in the oven at the same time, while I finished off skewering the other chicken.
The last step after baking was to put them on BROIL for 3-4 min. to brown. I didn't have time to wait for the oven to heat up from 375° F to Broil. Nearly burned my hands trying to put the now cooked skewered chicken on the serving platter. But, finally everything was ready to go to life group.
Left about 1/3 of the chicken satays for my kid and "peanut" sauce (their own bowl) for them to enjoy at home. When I got to life group and recounted my story, in part, it sounded torturous. As I took my bite of my first chicken skewer, I nearly skewered my upper lip. Boy, that was soooo painful. This is awful!!
Anyway, thankfully I didn't have to feed anyone, but we have a nurse that is a part of the life group, so if I needed medical attention, she could've helped me. Good thing I love my life group and children so much, otherwise, this was one of the toughest dishes I've ever made, and probably one of the most dangerous ones.
Needless to say, I need prayer for protection the next time I make chicken satay. Now that I have all the tools, hopefully, if I ever dare attempt this dish again, it will not take very long nor be dangerous.
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