Thai Peanut Sauce

Are you ready for the worst excuse ever for my absence these last two weeks?  Revenge.  As in all 22 episodes (and bonus features of course) from Season 1.  My mom had ordered the DVD set a while back and loaned it to me last Sunday.  I had only seen bits and pieces from an episode or two, but once I started the series I might as well have been sucked into a vortex.

My poor husband didn't really get anything all that special for dinner because I was too busy glued to the TV.  A bowl of cereal and 45 minutes of this soap opera trumped a made from scratch meal and blogging every day for the last 14 days.  Whoops.

But hopefully today you'll accept my peace offering: a quick and easy version of Thai peanut sauce that doesn't skimp on flavor in the least.  I know peanut sauce isn't exactly something you're probably itching to make at home, but it's so much better than the bottle store bought version and it makes a great addition to so many dishes.

I added some of this sauce to a meal of quinoa, chicken and veggies, but you could easily serve it on it's own as a dipping sauce.  Or you just might want to lick it off the spoon [guilty].

I adapted the below version by cutting down the amount of sugar added (the original called for 3/4 C) and might consider cutting down the salt next time.  

This sauce freezes beautifully, so don't worry if you don't polish off the entire quantity the recipe yields.  

กินเกลี้ยง 

(that's "Eat up!" in Thai)

Zaxby's Style Sauce

At the beginning of this week I posted some yummy sweet potato chips.  Along with those chips I made some Zaxby's style sauce that I served with the chips and on the burgers we ate that night. 

I'm not sure how far the Zaxby's franchise stretches, but I'm guessing it isn't too far out of the southeast.  Zaxby's is a chain restuarant known for it's chicken-centric menu and A-mazing sauce that diners generously douse their sandwiches, wings and fries with.  There's still a lot of debate over what all goes into it (and in what quantities), and I'm pretty sure that even the best copy cat recipe still doesn't quite hit the nail on the head.

I did some digging and found the below recipe hailed as the best copycat around.  While it didn't taste exactly  like Zaxby's sauce, it was really good and therefore worthy of sharing.

Post-dinner that night curiosity got the best of me and I hopped back onto the computer for an online search for the exact list of ingredients in the sauce.  I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before.  Geez.

The Zaxby's website was gracious enough to list the ingredients as follows.....

Soybean oil, water, tomato paste, high fructose corn syrup (!!!!), corn syrup, distilled vinegar, salt, egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce concentrate (distilled vinegar, molasses, corn syrup, water, salt, caramel color, garlic powder, sugar, spices, tamarind, natural flavor, sulfiting agent), spice, sugar, garlic*, potassium sorbate (preservative), xanthan gum, calcium disodium EDTA to protect flavor, natural flavor. *Dehydrated.

Let me interject and ask: WHY is high fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING?!  I had expected that it was in there, but it's frustrating to see that it's very high up on the list and is therefore in the sauce in a pretty large amount.  Sigh.

Despite my sauce not matching up to Zaxby's tit for tat, I still loved the outcome and didn't have any problem slathering my burger with it :)  And hopefully you won't either.

Cherry Sauce

Growing up I always loved eating those maraschino cherries out of the jar at my grandparents' home.  You know, those bright red ones that always top off an ice cream sundae?  I would eat those like candy and then drink the juice in the jar.  Kind of gross, but they were oh so good at the time!  I'll still ask for a small cup of them any time I see them at a bar alongside the limes.

While I also love those big, plump cherries you can get in the summer, I always miss them when they're out of season.  Enter dried cherries.  While they definitely can't compare to the fresh, ripe fruit, they are great for adding delicious cherry flavor to dishes and desserts.

I had some dried cherries left over from some granola bars I made the previous weekend (that post is coming soon...promise!) and decided to figure out a way to incorporate them into my pork loin that was sitting in my freezer.  I've had cranberries with pork, but never cherries.

This sauce was incredibly easy to make and I loved the different flavor the cherries lent to the dish.  It was sweet, but the balsamic vinegar balanced that out perfectly.  I served the pork with the honey glazed carrots I posted last week, but next time I'm definitely going for some mashed potatoes.

And don't be shy about adding this sauce to something other than pork.  It would work great with turkey or chicken as well (I'm having a Thanksgiving vision....).

The recipe below is just for the sauce.  I seared and roasted my pork loin and simply added the sauce over it at the end.