Chicken Satay | Yogurt-Cucumber Dipping Sauce

This week's Project Pastry Queen recipe was selected by Beth of the powdered plum. The chicken is marinated in a curry-spiked blend of cumin, onions, chiles, garlic, cilantro, lime and lemongrass and then thrown on an open flame or under a broiler to char. The chicken is paired with a yummy and refreshing cucumber-lemon yogurt (Pastry Queen's version of a greek tzatsziki sauce).

It was my first time using cheesecloth to strain yogurt - it was cool to see how much liquid ended up dripping out - almost 2 cups full.



The recipe definitely makes more than enough dipping sauce - I think you can probably get away with scaling it down by half for the 6 pieces of chicken (we used a mixture of thighs and breasts). The breast pieces were very dry in comparison to the dark meat, as was expected. I have to agree with the Foodie Bride - chicken thighs are always the way to go!



For the chicken satay skewers, I tried to minimize the extra work by throwing all the ingredients into the food processor (except the lemongrass) and processing until the mixture resembles a thick paste. I folded in the strips of lemongrass after. Definitely saves alot of chopping time.



It was raining pretty hard during dinner so grilling outside was out of the question. We lined the skewers on metal cooling racks and threw them under the broiler - about 5-7 minutes on each side.



I served the chicken satay alongside some saffron basmati rice, courtesy of Steamy Kitchen.



Overall, the skewers were decent. It was the yogurt-cucumber sauce that really enhanced the dish. While I probably won't make this again (not too much of a fan of the heavy curry flavors), it was fun to make and a great technique to learn and apply to other marinades and sauces.

You can find the full recipe at the powdered plum.