Last weekend, I decided it was about time to lite the Q again. It was way overdue, since I had some very busy weekends and no time to grill anything. I needed to smell the charcoal and meat again, as well as dive into some marinade with my bare hands. If you’re addicted, you need to keep your addiction alive, I guess.

Not much in the fridge anymore, but I managed to find some chicken thighs and decided to turn them into some nice satay sticks, spring style, since the weather is finally turning around here.

I used the following to make a nice marinade.

a lot of chicken thighs, to start with.

The juice of 2 lemons

2 tablespoons of sesame oil

4 tablespoons of brown sugar

4 tablespoons of soy sauce

5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 spring onion, very finely chopped

2 teaspoon of ground cumin

some fresh coriander 

2 tablespoons of dried ginger

salt and pepper to the taste

I mixed this all up very well and tasted it. In my case, the ginger was quite overwhelming, so I added about 2 tablespoons of fine white sugar and some 2 tablespoons of soy sauce to it. It mellowed the taste a little. I didn’t want to scare of the kids.

Now I removed the fat from the chicken thighs and sliced it up in nice and evenly parts and placed them in the marinade. Covered it with plastic and placed it in the fridge for about 6 hours. (longer was probably even better, but I didn’t have anymore time. Starving of hunger is not an option in my book, so it had to be done).

Waiting is always the hardest thing, but I covered my time with some veggies. We decided to eat green asparagus rolled in parma ham with it and some pasta. Pasta is not my thing from the grill, but the veggies on the other hand …..

Well, see for yourself in the pictures.

While the satay was marinating in the fridge, I placed a handful of wooden sticks in a bowl of water.

When the time was up, I took the meat from the fridge and started putting them on the sticks. I was able to fill up around 15 of them. Men hungry ….. roar…

For fuel I used the old fashioned weber charcoal. Nothing beats the taste of burning coals.

Once hot, I grilled them, 5 at a time, for about 5 minutes on both sides, turning them regularly to make sure we didn’t burn them. After that, I placed them all indirectly on the OTP, freeing up space for the asparagus.

The asparagus have been grilled similar to the satay sticks, turning them around frequently in order not to burn them. Once grilled, I wrapped them in parma ham and placed them back on the coals for some more time to crisp up the ham. By now, it smelled fantastic.

I’ve served them with the pasta and grated cheese and can honestly say that it was fabulous!

A very fine ending to a beautiful sunday here in Holland.