RECIPE: Spicy Peanut Sauce, Marnie's First Post

Hey everybody, I wanted to share two things I bought/made recently that are awesome. The first is a tasty sweet treat that is loaded with deliciousness instead of calories. I don't know if you all can find this brand, but they are these puff pastry twists that come in a variety of flavors, my favorite is the 'traditional'. Here's a few pictures so you can see the nutrition info/etc. (Arg, can't make the pictures straight, sorry!)



The second is that I had some shrimp, green peppers and pineapple hangin out in my fridge the other day so I grilled them and served them the first day in lettuce wraps with peanut sauce.The second day tossed them with chinese noodles and the peanut sauce thinned with light coconut milk and low sodium chicken broth, and the last day I stirred it into some homemade 'fried' rice - YUMMILICIOUS and versatile! (And these can easily be made vegetarian, by substituting tofu or extra veggies).

Spicy Peanut sauce recipe I used came out of "The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue":

1/2 c. Peanut butter (recipe said creamy, I wanted crunchy, worked great)
1/4 c. hot water
2 T lime juice (~ 2 sm. limes) I only had lemons, they worked fine too
2 T Asian chili sauce (you could use the rooster sauce that is common in the Asian section of most grocery stores or any chili-garlic sauce you like)
1 T dark soy
1 T dark brown sugar (I only had white sugar - I KNOW - but it worked fine too)
1 T chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 medium garlic clove, minced or pressed
2 scallions, thinly sliced.

Whisk the PB and hot water together in a medium bowl. Stir in all other ingredients and serve.

For the shrimp/pineapple/peppers/onions. I just tossed them with a little oil and salt and lemon or lime juice I can't remember let them sit in the fridge for awhile (I think the pineapple juice helped to tenderize the shrimp too). I grilled them on a hot cast iron skillet and served them in the lettuce wraps with the sauce on the side. As I mentioned above, when I used the leftovers, I used lite coconut milk and Low Sodium chicken broth to thin the PB sauce and tossed it with the veggies and pasta.

I used the very last bit of the peanut sauce in this 'fried' rice dish I made last week. The rice is purple because it's a mix of Korean wild rice (which is has black rice) and white rice. I just sauteed some carrots and snow peas with garlic and a green onion, in just a tiny bit of olive oil, added s+p, stirred in leftover cold rice, heated that through then cracked an egg in the center and scrambled it in the rice. I stirred in the last couple teaspoons of the Peanut sauce and voila - delicious and healthy in about 10 minutes.