The Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: I’m Just Here for the Spicy Peanut Sauce

Summer has arrived with a vengeance these past few days here in North Texas, prompting my lovely wife to ask me to put her favorite vegetable-packed gado gado bowl with a spicy peanut sauce on the short list this week.

We’ve had a favorite Spicy Peanut Sauce recipe we’ve used for years, and I even wrote about it years ago (2012) on ChiWulff.com, a fly fishing blog –

She was caught red-handed and she knew it.

I ran into the kitchen after the party had moved to the backyard and there she was in all her glory, emitting a moan of almost sensual ecstasy, leaning over the counter in what some might have considered to be very nearly a provocative pose.

My noisy entry startled our damned attractive friend (let’s just call her LB, and wife of residency training mate MB) enough to make her bump her 4-month pregnant belly on the counter and smear a streak of this Thai Peanut Sauce across her cheek.

We stared at one another wide-eyed for a moment and she simply offered up “I’m just here for the peanut sauce” as a matter of explanation. She then wordlessly reached into the drawer, handed me a spoon and moved the bowl midway between us.

We enjoyed a laugh (loudly enough to arouse her husband’s curiosity in fact) and stood at the counter and scraped just about every drop of this great peanut sauce from the bowl.

Haven’t seen LB in years, though we enjoyed yet another batch of this Thai-inspired (the coconut milk) peanut sauce with chicken satay hot off the grill this past week. There are a million peanut sauce recipes out there, for sure, but we keep coming back to this for its deep array of flavors and (for the most part) quick and easy prep…

It really is good enough to eat right out of the bowl, and it was amazing drizzled over a spiralized gado gado vegetable bowl (just zucchini, carrots, and daikon) with a piece of blackened mahi throw on top last night (image below).

2/3 cup + full fat coconut milk
2/3 cup chunky peanut butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 and 1/2 tbsp. fresh ginger, minced
2 Thai or serrano peppers, seeded, minced OR
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded, minced
4 scallions, green and white parts, minced
2 tbsp. tamari or coconut aminos
2 tbsp. fish sauce
2 tbsp. + fresh lime juice

Optional
1-2 tbsp honey, maple syrup, sweetener of choice
1/4 cup (+) fresh chopped cilantro

Combine all the ingredients (noting the sweetener and cilantro are optional) in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir to combine, bring just to a simmer, then reduce heat and simmer very slowly for 20-30 minutes, adding more coconut milk if needed.

Remove from the heat, let cool for ten minutes, and adjust the tamari/coconut aminos, fish sauce, and lime juice to taste.

Serve with your favorite pile of vegetables in a gado gado bowl as we did yesterday, or with your favorite chicken or beef satay. Or just a big spoon.

Enjoy.