Malaysian Chicken Satay

Ingredients:

•  1kg chicken breast / or lamb
•  14 shallots / 2 small brown onions
•  1 tsp chilli powder (optional)
•  2 /12 tsp ground coriander
•  1 ½ tsp ground cumin
•  2 tsp turmeric
•  3 cloves of garlic
•  1 tsp salt
•  Juice of 2 lemons (1/2 cup, 100ml)
•  1 heaped Tbsp brown sugar
•  Peanut or sunflower oil

Instruction:

To make the marinade for the meat, simply add the shallots (onions), garlic, turmeric, cumin, coriander, chilli and salt into a blender and whiz until it is all finely ground.  You can add a dash of oil to help it blend better.  Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a frying pan or wok and add the blended ingredients.  Cook for 3 minutes stirring all the time.  Then add in the lemon juice, sugar and cook for a further 2 minutes.  The paste will be looking much darker in colour now.  Leave to cool.

Whilst the marinade is cooling, Slice the chicken or lamb into thin slices, roughly ½ cm thick. Put in a large bowl.  Save one tablespoon of the marinade in a separate bowl.  You will use this later for the peanut sauce.  Add the rest of the marinade to the meat, mix it in and make sure all the meat is covered.  Leave in the fridge over night preferably, or minimum 2 hours.  Then thread meat onto your skewers and whack it on the BBQ.
Note:  if using bamboo skewers, soak them in water overnight.  This helps to stop them from splitting and also burning so easily on the BBQ.

Vegetarian alternative, marinade some vegetables like, aubergine, onions, peppers, and also some fried tofu or bean curd is very nice with this, and it can be put on a skewer.