Apparently Liège was hit by flooding a week or two ago. There’s a video of the flooding and some interviews here: http://www.rtc.be/content/view/5199/166/
Also I thought I’d share a recipe for making chicken satay. I made Nasi Goreng to go with it, using a recipe in a book published by the UN which I picked up at the headquarters in Geneva (it’s a book about rice with recipes from countries around the world – part of the proceeds go to UNICEF as well). Anyway, the recipe is from Waitrose which is an up-market supermarket in the south of England. They have a bunch of good recipes on their website and they sell some good products.
Chicken Satay
Ingredients:
1 stick lemon grass, outer leaves removed and roughly chopped
50g root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds
½ pack fresh coriander, leaves removed
500g pack chicken breast fillet, roughly chopped
1 tbsp Waitrose Dark Soy Sauce
For the satay sauce:
1 stick lemon grass, outer leaves removed and finely chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds
125g Waitrose Natural Roasted Peanuts
1 tsp cumin seeds
50g root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
3 shallots, roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp caster sugar
400ml can Bart Spices Coconut Milk
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
Little gem lettuce to serve
Method:
- First make the satay sticks. Place the lemon grass, ginger, coriander seeds and fresh coriander in a food processor and pulse until roughly chopped. Add the chicken and soya sauce and process for a few seconds more until mixed together and the chicken is coarsely chopped.
- Place the chicken mixture in a bowl, cover and place in the fridge for 1 hour or preferably overnight until it becomes firm.
- Using wet hands, divide the mixture into 8-10 portions and shape into ’sausages’ along wooden skewers, pressing down to flatten each one a little.
- Place under a preheated grill on a preheated griddle pan or barbecue, and cook for 10-15 minutes, turning occasionally, until the chicken is golden brown and thoroughly cooked. The juices should run clear and there should be no pink meat remaining.
- Meanwhile, make the satay sauce. Place all the ingredients in a food processor and mix until smooth. Pour into a pan and simmer gently for 15 minutes or until beginning to thicken. Serve the satay skewers on little gem lettuce leaves and the warm satay sauce in a separate bowl for dipping.
It doesn’t taste exactly like the satay sauce I remember from Indonesia, but there are so many variations of satay I guess it’s hard to say what’s ‘genuine’ and what’s not (also, I didn’t serve it with lettuce leaves…). It did bring back good memories though! It’s been ages since I last had satay… Either way, it tastes good and that’s what I care about, and I’d definitely recommend trying it.
