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This weeks Craving Ellie in My Belly is Chicken Sate with a Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce. It was chosen by the hilariously funny Cathy of The Tortefeasor. It can be found at the aforementioned Food Network link or on page 54-55 of The Food You Crave. This is in the appetizer section of the book, but I decided to make it into dinner portions and serve it with some rice.

This recipe starts with marinating the chicken in a mixture of chicken stock, lite coconut milk, soy sauce, shallot, garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar, lime zest, and ginger. I marinated my chicken for about 8 hours instead of the 1 hour Ellie suggests. The chicken was very flavorful on it’s own and my favorite part was the flecks of lime zest that stuck to the chicken from the marinade.

I enjoyed skewering the chicken but I only got about 6 skewers instead of 8. I guess I over stuffed my skewers, but it really did not matter since it was just the two of us. I did only use 1 pound of chicken breast and I felt like it was a generous amount of chicken for dinner. I couldn’t finish it all. However, Nick, who increasingly complains that he is always so hungry finished all of his and the rest of mine.

The peanut sauce was very good, similar to but definitely not the same as the sauce from the lime peanut noodles that we made a few weeks ago. The dipping sauce was made from peanut butter (I used up the rest of my homemade PB ), chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, lime juice, garlic, chili flakes, red curry paste, and shallot. I think I liked this sauce better, and I was pleased to see that Nick enjoyed it as well. I was worried that this would end up being a pizza night because he is not a big fan of peanut sauces or sauces in general on his chicken. However, to my pleasant surprise he not only tolerated but sincerely liked the sauce. I left out the red pepper flakes because I don’t really like any heat in my food. Though I did think the sauce still had a bit of a kick from the green curry paste (the store was out of red curry paste - but they smell the same to me - very strong and kind of gross).

Instead of tossing the leftover coconut milk I decided to make some rice with it. I combined 1 cup of light coconut milk, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of uncooked basmati rice, 1/4 tsp of grated fresh ginger, and a splash of lime juice. Just cook it up like you would normally cook rice, this took about 15 - 20 minutes. The rice was very creamy and it definitely retained flavor from the coconut milk. Though I could not taste the ginger or lime at all, so if I make this again, I would increase both.

Overall this was a very tasty dinner and I would absolutely make this chicken and the dipping sauce again.