Peanut butter lunch

We are American, so you might think our peanut butter lunch would consist of sandwiches with PB and jelly (a.k.a. jam, confiture) on them. But no. We made a spicy peanut sauce out of the peanut butter and served it with broccoli, pasta, and a satay of skewered turkey breast meat.

The main thing about this meal is, of course the peanut sauce, and it's easy. Combine in a blender (or in a bowl if you want to use a stick blender) all the ingredients:

Spicy peanut sauce

¾ cup peanut butter

2 Tbsp. molasses (or black treacle)

¼ cup hot water

¼ cup cider or rice vinegar

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 tsp. lemongrass

1 clove garlic

1 Tbsp. chopped onion

1 Tbsp. fish sauce

1 Tbsp. hot chili sauce

1 Tbsp. chopped or grated ginger

The lemongrass and fish sauce are optional. Blend all the ingredients to a smooth paste. Cook the sauce on low heat for 15 minutes, adding pinches of salt, pepper, and sugar to taste. Add more hot water as needed to get a medium consistency, neither too thick or too thin. Add a little more hot sauce (tabasco, for example) if you want to make an even spicier version.

Meanwhile, marinate a couple of boneless turkey (or chicken) breast filets in a mixture of fish sauce, soy sauce, chopped onion, chopped garlic, and chopped ginger. As you can see, I added an herb too — it's kaffir lime leaf, from a jar. Instead, you could use basil, or even some lemon zest or juice.

You can let the meat marinate in the refrigerator, covered, for as long as four hours if you have the time.

Wipe or shake most of the marinade ingredients off the turkey filets and flatten them slightly with a meat mallet if necessary.

Cut the meat into strips about 2 cm (1 inch) wide and thread them onto skewers. Brush them lightly with vegetable oil.

Put the skewered turkey strips on a rack. When the broccoli is ready, broil or grill them for two or three minutes on a side, until they are just cooked through.

Serve the turkey skewers with some of the peanut sauce at the table.

I was a little bit skeptical when I read somewhere that stir-fried broccoli would be good with spicy peanut sauce. Now I know that it is delicious. We get beautiful broccoli here right now, at the supermarket. I imagine it comes from Spain, but I forgot to look at the label.

I had half a red bell pepper left over from another meal, so I sliced it up and cooked it with the broccoli.

I stir-fried the broccoli and red pepper in vegetable oil, adding in the marinade I had saved from the turkey breasts. Then I added a little bit of water to the pan and put on a lid so that the vegetables would cook through just enough to stay slightly crunchy.

At the end, I added some cooked pasta (linguine here, but any pasta would be good), and spooned in a good amount of the peanut sauce. As soon as the peanut sauce had melted and I could stir everything around, it was done. Add a little hot water to thin the sauce if you need to. You don't want it gloppy.