Satay Club Adventures

Three weeks into Ramadhan and it's going well. Starting Ramadhan, I was having big issues with my energy levels. I was tired all the time and would feel like it'd been a long day when in actual fact it would've only been 12.30 in the afternoon! I got used to it as the days went on and I'm quite enjoying the experience. I felt really skinny last week (all in my head, no doubt) but am feeling quite pudgy this week. Perhaps it's all the cake finally catching up to me.

I give in to cravings a bit more during Ramadhan and I eat a lot more sweet stuff than I usually do. I've been having serious cake cravings and have since bought 2 cakes in the last few weeks! I try to cook food that's relatively plentiful, yet cheap, so I've been eating a bit of pasta. Spaghetti bolognaise, crabmeat pasta, and so on... However, I've been craving Asian food lately. I miss rice and I don't cook rice dishes as often as mum would back in Singapore. So yesterday, I went trawling online for Asian recipes with rice and settled on black bean beef with rice. Yum...

I was so excited. I'd just been paid and payday Wednesdays at the supermarket are a strange source of excitement for me. I'm strange. I was at Coles and I had everything I needed except the black bean sauce. I got the recipe from the Coles website and I was searching high and low for it in vain. Ah! I really dislike Brisbane supermarkets because they are very poorly stocked. From a marketing point of view, that's just bad business. Anyway, I was so disappointed that they didn't have the sauce, so I racked my brain trying to come up with a plan B.

Then I noticed satay sauce. The last time I had satay was probably in January 2007 when Damien and I were in Singapore. Mum bought satay for dinner so Damien could try it and the three of us and Azri ate the satay at home. Memories... So I grabbed a couple of jars of Yeo's satay sauce. There were a few other varieties but the colour and texture seemed so different! I figured, if I was going to do satay, I was going to get the Singaporean stuff dammit (the sauce was imported from Singapore).

I went home, marinated my beef in the sauce with some lemon juice from the fridge, curry powder, salt, and sugar from my pantry, and chopped up some onion and chilli to toss in. It all got mixed together and marinated for an hour, after which I tossed everything in a pan and served it up with rice with chopped corriander mixed in.

It was awsome. Not the traditional satay, but awsome nonetheless. I swear I'd make a great housewife.