Wednesday Dinner - Chicken Satay

Tonight's menu:

• Sauteed chicken with peanut dipping sauce
• Cucumber salad
• Basmati rice

This dinner was extremely satisfying. The chicken is based on a Thai dish, but we used a recipe from my files that called for sauteeing the chicken rather than grilling it (since grilling is rather unpleasant in 20-degree weather). Unfortunately, I don't know where the recipe came from so I can't give proper attribution. If you've seen it somewhere, let me know!

The ingredients (for 4 servings) are:

• 1.5 lbs chicken cutlets
• 1 tsp Asian chili sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 2 tsp lime juice
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup hot water

Cooking it was very simple. We just sauteed the chicken in oil until it was browned on both sides and cooked through. Then we mixed all the other ingredients together for the dipping sauce, and it was done! The cucumbers were just sliced and mixed with a little rice vinegar, lime juice, and brown sugar. A fast, easy, and delicious meal.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the rice. Normally I wouldn't even comment on cooking plain rice but tonight we discovered a new method that was so great we were both raving about the rice...just the rice! The instructions, from startcooking.com, involve adding some butter to the rice as it's cooking, and the butter makes a huge difference. The rice came out creamy and wonderful. If you've never cooked rice this way, I definitely suggest trying it.

A quick note: I really liked the peanut dipping sauce, but Matt thought it was too rich and too peanut-y. I'm thinking this could be toned down some by thinning it with extra water. It was a little thick for a dipping sauce, so maybe we'll try that next time.