SpiderFarmer

I mentioned this recipe on my twitter feed, and a couple of people asked for the recipe, so here it is: Chicken Satay so easy your 7 year old can do a lot of it.

It’s important to note here that we deviated from the traditional Thai recipe and methodology. This is a kid-friendly recipe, which dramatically cuts down on the “hot” and ramps up the peanut. Kids have so many more tastebuds than adults that they taste things more dramatically. Also, traditionally, the chicken is skewered and grilled, with the sauce served on the side, whereas I pan sauteed everything in one pan. We served it on a bed of jasmine rice, which complimented it very nicely.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken (we used breasts, traditional recipe uses thigh)
• 1/2 tsp hot chili powder (more or less to taste)
• 1/2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp veggie oil
• 1 sweet onion (we used purple)
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 tbsp extra crunchy peanut butter
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp cumin (ground)
• 1 tsp coriander (ground)
• 5 tbsp water
• (fresh lemongrass if you’ve got it…but don’t kill yourself trying to find it if you don’t live near an Asian market.)

Directions:

(If making rice; start it first, it’ll take longer than the rest of the prep.)

Dice your onions, and garlic, then cut your chicken into 1 or 2″ cubes.  (For sanitary reasons, do the chicken last.)

Heat your oil (I used olive) and sweat the onions and garlic.  (Don’t get them brown (caramelized), just soften them up. Remove them with a slotted spoon, and toss in your chicken to brown, stirring as needed to keep them from sticking or burning.

While the chicken is cooking, combine everything else and wisk until smooth.

When the chicken is fully cooked, reduce heat to a simmer.  Add onion mix back to the pan.  Pour on the sauce, heat until bubbly and slightly reduced.

Serve, and sprinkle with chopped fresh lemongrass (if available).

Voilà, you are done! Easy Americanized Chicken Satay.

I’m about to start baking a doghouse cake (carrot cake with cream cheese icing…which should make decorating all kinds of fun), and make chocolate dog and bone for Igor’s birthday. And like any impossible task, I have to try and get the whole thing done before he gets out of school. I’m apparently quite insane.

Creep out everyone at your Halloween party with witches finger cookies. You can use any shortbread cookie recipe, but here’s one for you to use if you prefer.

Witches Finger Cookie Recipe

Yield: 5 dozen

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup Butter, softened
• 1 Egg
• 1 tsp Almond extract
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups Flour
• 1 tsp Salt
• 3/4 cup whole Almonds, blanched
• 2 squares of melting chocolate, or chocolate bark

Combine the sugar, egg, butter, almond extract, and vanilla in a bowl. Mix in the flour, and salt. Cover and refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes, or until it’s firm.

When you’re ready to shape the cookies, only take out a small portion of the dough at a time. Shape the cookies into fingers by rolling and working with your hands. Score the top of the cookie with a knife or spatula to make it look like the wrinkles in your knuckle. Press an imprint into the tip of the cookie with your finger to make a spot for the almond finger nail. Press an almond into the tip of each finger to look like a fingernail.

Placed on a cooking sheet lightly coated with no-stick cooking spray and bake at 325` for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the cookies are a very light golden brown. Let the cookies cool on a drying rack.

Use melting chocolate to go around the outside of the almond nail, giving a ghoulish appearance. Just melt the chocolate, put it in an icing piping bag, and cut a very small hole in the tip. Then pipe around the nail.

If you use red melting chocolate the look will be even more dramatic, you can also make small drops of chocolate blood, or chocolate cuts on the cookies if you really want to gross out your guests.

Image via stock.xpert, recipe from Linette, recorded here because stuff on the intarwebs tends to go poof in the night, and I didn’t want to lose this recipe.  It’s great fun.

So, in prep for Halloween, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the little figures that are going to go with the haunted house cake I’m going to bake.

I could use fondant, but it dries really hard, and it doesn’t taste all that great…where as chocolate…well, everything tastes better with chocolate.

I know how to make modeling chocolate with real chocolate, but I was wondering if it was possible to make it with the candy melt disks. Mostly because I have a ton of them, and they come in a wide variety of colors, so that’s a step already eliminated. As it turns out; it works pretty well.

Modeling Chocolate from Candy Melts:

• 7 ounces (200 grams) Candy Melts
• 3 tablespoons light corn syrup

1. Melt the candy in a large pyrex measuring cup in the microwave, 1 minute /half power, then 2 more bursts of 30 secs at half power, stirring at the end of each heating cycle.
2. Grease your measuring spoon with veggie oil or shortening, so the corn syrup will easily slide off.
3. Stir the candy until smooth and lump free, then add the corn syrup. The candy will start to seize almost instantly, but keep stirring until you’ve incorporated all the syrup. You’ll end up with a big blob of warm candy. It’ll have the texture of a tootsie roll. (Well, a warm tootsie roll.)
4. Put your blob in a freezer safe resealable bag and pop it in the fridge. Once your dough is cold, you can take it out, cut off a piece that you want to work with, and knead it until it’s a workable mass.

It’ll be really hard when you first take it out of the fridge. If you have time to let it warm up a bit, it will be easier to work. You can mold it like it were fondant or marzipan. Here’s some pictures at google on the groovy stuff people are doing with modeling chocolate. Wrapped well, you can store this stuff in the fridge for darn near forever.

If you’d rather use real chocolate; here are the ratios for doing that: (keep in mind that for melting chocolate, you may have better results using a double boiler, bain marie, or chocolate pot…although I’ve done it successfully in the microwave; the idea of nuking chocolate tends to make chocolatiers get the vapors.)

Dark Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup (60 ml) light corn syrup

Semi-Sweet Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
3 1/2 – 4 tablespoons light corn syrup

White Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) white chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 – 2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Milk Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) Milk Chocolate
2 1/2 – 3 tablespoons light corn syrup.

Working on vegetarian recipes in anticipation of a visit from one of my dearest friends.

I think I’m going to try Montrachet/basil tarts with fresh figs and zucchini pasta with broiled tomatoes from the garden.  I was going to make a zucchini tart, but I think it’s just too busy to put all that stuff in the little teeny tart cups I’m going to make.

I’m going to use phyllo dough; each sheet cut into 6, then layered in three sheets in muffin tins as the base for the tarts, rather than pie crust.  Phyllo has such a nice texture, that I think it will add something to the recipe.

Update:  Phyllo dough…it’s such a pain in the ass once you try cutting it.  It really is.  It’s fine for stuff like baklava or spanakopita, where you’re using big pieces, but good god, what a pain when you’re trying to do little bits.  For me; way more work than it’s worth.

Next time, I’ll just whip out a quick pie crust recipe. Pie crusts are simple, quick and painless, and everyone loves a good flaky pie crust.  The tort recipe I tried was good, but more quiche than tort.  So, the drawing board on these recipes remains open.