Two Meals

I hope I am not the only person trying out all these recipes lately! I have been enjoying having new things to cook as my old stand-bys have gotten a little boring.  Anyway we have tried both of the recipes Nika chose so I will report on them.

The Coconut Beef Satay with Thai Peanut Sauce
I have been wanting to try this one for a while so I was excited that it was finally picked.  I really like things with peanut sauce and we usually have it with lettuce wraps.  I cut the steak into strips and marinated it in the coconut milk mixture for several hours before it was grilled.  I put it on squewers for the grill.  Sean did the grilling and although he is usually an excellent griller, the meat got a little burnt this time.  It was probably the marinade that made it cook a lot quicker and chare up on the outsides.  It might work better to cook it on a grill pan if you want to retain the coconut/curry flavor.  I followed the recipe for the peanut sauce but it was a little bit bitter for my taste so I added some brown sugar and garlic powder.  We liked this meal and when you dipped the meat into the sauce you couldn't even taste the burnt flavor:)  I might try this again with chicken. 

Chicken Gumbo

I ended up making several adjustments to this recipe but it turned out very tasty. I looked at the recipe and wrote down the necessary items on my shopping list but apparently I missed a few things so I made some accomodations.  Instead of the green pepper I added about a cup of chopped carrots along with the celery and onion.  I used all the spices but only put a small amount of thyme in and added a little curry powder.  I couldn't find any frozen okra at the store I went to so I just decided to skip that although I think it would change the texture and consistancy quite a bit! For sausage I used some leftover turkey sausages I had in the freezer from the sandwiches a few weeks ago.  It wasn't precooked so I gave it some time to cook with the chicken before adding the broth.  I only used about 2 1/2 cups of broth and eliminated the tomato juice.  I am sure this didn't turn out anything like it was suppose to but we thought it was really good.  It reminded me a lot of the Mulligatawny Stew that we made a while ago.