Thai Tuesday

     I realized at 9:00pm this evening that yet another factor contributed to my cooking inertia: washing the dishes.  The number of pots, pans, bowls, utensils, and kitchen tools one must use (and then wash) in order to make a dish rises exponentially in relation to how interesting a dish is.  Tonight, instead of my usual suspects, I made Beef Satay with Peanut-Ginger Ramen and Thai Cucumber Salad.  Here are the results...  


     I found the Beef Satay with Peanut-Ginger Ramen recipe in the September 2012 issue of Everyday FOOD.  The recipe did not have any heat in it so I figured it was "safe" to try out on my kids and that my husband could still add some chili pepper or other spicing.  The recipe called for a few cucumber slices to be served with each portion but that struck me as a bland addition. However, it did inspire to me to look up a recipe online for Thai Cucumber Salad (made with rice wine vinegar, sugar and red onions).  I found a simple recipe on the WashingtonPost.com site.  One of the things I like most about cooking nicer meals is that I tend to get the ingredients that same day.  Since I was getting beef, I went to our local "gourmet" grocery.  Despite my upscale shopping trip, the ingredients for this meal only cost me $15.29. ~ way less than eating out at a Thai restaurant!  The dishes were fairly easy to prepare but a little bit time consuming.  I grated fresh ginger and squeezed fresh lime juice, soaked wooden skewers in water, marinated the beef and then threaded it onto the skewers, mixed the peanut-ginger sauce*, cooked the rice wine vinegar and sugar together until the sugar dissolved and the sauce reduced, and finely sliced cucumbers and onions.  My husband grilled the skewers while I boiled the ramen (Top Ramen minus the flavor packet - no wonder the meal was so cheap!).  *The only issue I had was with the KitchenAid chopper I tried to mix the peanut-ginger sauce in.  It would not turn on so I finally transferred the sticky (it had 3/4 cup of peanut butter in it) mixture into my big Vitamix and blended it there.  Unfortunately, that meant one more appliance to clean!

     The verdict: The kids were excited to eat the dinner since it looked and smelled great.  As they ate, they were surprisingly less than enthusiastic about the peanut buttery ramen noodles - I think the sauce just had too much peanut butter in it and that was overwhelming.  Everyone loved the beef skewers which were made using flank steak.  My husband and I, in particular, gobbled up the cucumber salad but my daughter liked it too (my son would not touch it with a ten foot pole).  I thought the food was really tasty although lacking a lot of complexity.  At the end of it all, I was just glad that my family seemed to like it.  It's hard to put a lot of effort into cooking only to see the kids sticking their noses up at the food!  If I recreate this meal in the future I would use only one package of ramen (I used two per the recipe) and half of the sauce and I would reduce the amount of peanut butter in the sauce.  One other great thing about the meal: it inspired us to eat in the underused dining room tonight!

Peanut-Ginger Ramen

Beef Satay

Thai Cucumber Salad

The meal!

     As is often the case with any new challenge we give ourselves, our enthusiasm may hold our interest at first but wane as time goes on.  The real challenge is to keep it up.  In my case, I have successfully completed Day 1. Here's hoping that I make it to Day 2.

Wish me luck!