3/4 cup coconut milk
1 tablespoon red curry paste
1 tablespoon tamarind
2 tablespoons boiling water
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons peanut butter

1. Dissolve tamarind in boiling water.
2. Heat coconut milk in a small sauce pan over medium heat while stirring in the red curry paste.
3. Once the oil begins to separate from the milk, stir in the peanut butter, sugar and tamarind until well blended.
4. Transfer to a shallow dish for dipping Satay

Makes 4 servings

1 small English cucumber, halved and sliced
2 shallots, sliced
1 red chili, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Heat vinegar in a small sauce pan over medium heat and dissolve sugar and salt in it. Allow to cool.
2. Place cucumber, shallot and chili in a bowl. Cover with vinegar and refrigerate before serving.

Makes 4 servings

1 pound pork tenderloin, sliced into 1/4" wide strips
2 tablespoons yellow curry powder
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar

1. Combine curry, coconut milk, salt and sugar and marinade the pork for at least half an hour.
2. Meanwhile, preheat the grill until the coals are very hot.
3. Place pieces of pork on soaked bamboo skewers, reduce grill heat and lay pork on the grill.
4. Allow the contained heat to cook the pork, about 10 minutes per side.
5. Serve immediately with Peanut Thai Sauce

Makes 4 servings

I came across a link entitled The Truth about Peanut Sauce and had to read it. It had an aura of mystery, you see. What could the truth be? The mystery is quickly solved in the first paragraph: the truth is that Thai people don't know what peanut sauce is. What most people think of when it comes to peanut sauce and Thai food is satay. Perfect, because that's exactly what I was looking for in the first place.

So, dinner was Pork Satay with Peanut Thai Sauce. Shannon loved the satay (even had seconds) but I didn't care for it too much, for two reasons. One because of the quality of the curry powder I've bought, it doesn't really do anything for me. It's just a general bland blend of spices that sort of smells like foot. The other reason is because the marinade was very thick and did a good job of sticking to the meat, so once it was cooked some of the marinade had become a texture almost like a paste over the meat. This did help to keep it moist and incredibly tender, but didn't really do anything for me.

I had to substitute the red curry paste for a selection of things that would be in one (dried chili, garlic, coriander, salt and pepper) which probably didn't yield as great of a flavor. By itself I thought the sauce was quite flavorful and unique (the tamarind and coriander especially seemed to go very well with the peanut), but on the satay I thought it was basically like peanut butter. Of course, since the satay is curried it did an excellent job of burning up my taste buds and masking all other flavors, so that stands to reason.

The Thai Cucumber Salad is supposed to help cool the burning sensation and cleanse the palette. I suppose it did. As far as I can tell, this salad serves no greater purpose than that; it's just a simple cucumber salad with vinegar (not particularly flavorful or amazing). I figured I'd use up some of the rice leftover from the Chicken Biryani, so I served the satay on that. Of course, the flavor of the curry and peanut pretty much overwhelmed any flavor from the rice, so I suppose I could've put plain grits on the plate and not noticed any difference.