CEIMB: Chicken Sate with Asian Noodle-Vegetable Salad

It's been two weeks, so it's time for another great Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe! As it turns out, this week's selections mark three great new recipes for the price of one. Danica of Danica's Daily chose for us to make Chicken Sate with Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce and a Soba Noodle-Vegetable Salad. I was actually quick shocked to discover that I hadn't made any of these dishes yet. Well, I was going to fix that for sure!



First off, we have the Chicken Sate. It's a simple enough recipe. Take your chicken pieces, coat them in a yummy marinade, then thread the pieces onto bamboo skewers and grill until cooked through. A sprinkle of basil (and chopped peanuts, which I didn't use) goes on top, and then you can dip your chicken sticks in the Spicy Peanut Sauce.

The chicken turned out juicy, succulent, and flavorful. It almost didn't need any dipping sauce....almost. The sauce is addictive stuff! I love anything that contains peanut butter, so I knew I would be a fan. However, Ellie adds a couple unique touches to her version of peanut sauce, such as a small amount of curry paste, which make this particular dip unforgettable. It's just spicy enough, just sweet enough, and just tangy enough to be, in my book, perfect. Yum.

The Noodle-Vegetable Salad is great, too, although I did like the chicken and peanut sauce better. For my salad, I chose to use a combination of some skinny brown rice vermicelli that I had left over from a soup I made long ago, and some wide Asian noodles. The latter noodles were similar to a fettuccine noodle, so I thought the two contrasting cuts of pasta would be fun. And it was fun, but a bit confusing. In the future I will definitely stick to just one type of noodle! The salad was very delicious. It was fresh from the chopped herbs, crunchy from the red bell pepper and carrot, and zingy from the Asian dressing. The dressing was the best part of this recipe, no doubt. I will be using this dressing in other salads! I did not follow the directions to the letter here. Ellie says to present the salad in lettuce cups, made from Bibb lettuce leaves. I didn't have any nice lettuce to use for this, so I just served up the salad as is. In my opinion, it worked out just fine.

Thanks to Danica for the excellent picks! Together, it all made for a fantastic Asian meal that my family truly enjoyed. To see if the other CEIMBistas loved it too, check out the blogroll, here. For the Chicken and Peanut Sauce recipes, click over to Food Network's site, here. The Noodle Salad recipe is over there also; click here.